Increased broadband connections in Asia Pacific will generate USD1.2 trillion of GDP growth and create up to 35 million new jobs by 2020, according to a new report from the GSMA, “Today, Tomorrow and the Future – Managing Data Demand in Asia Pacific”, developed by Analysys Mason with global analysis from Huawei.

However, this opportunity can only be realised if governments act now to fully release existing harmonised mobile spectrum bands and allocate more spectrum for mobile to meet rising consumer demand and support the development of new mobile services in the longer term. The report’s findings were presented at the Global Mobile Broadband Forum, 12 months ahead of the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-15) treaty negotiations, which will be pivotal to determining the future of the mobile Internet.

“As this new report highlights, there is an urgent need for regulators across Asia Pacific and around the world to assign further mobile spectrum to enable the penetration rates and social and economic benefits promised, while avoiding interference along country borders. This will ensure that operators in the region can support governments’ broadband access goals with the investments necessary to deploy next generation mobile technology, benefiting both business and society,” said Ryan Ding, President of Products and Solutions, Huawei.
 
The findings of the report are further supported by the GSMA’s spectrum estimation model, which predicts a global shortfall of mobile spectrum of between 600 to 800MHz. In particular, the GSMA’s model finds that there is insufficient spectrum available in the Asia Pacific region to meet predicted future mobile traffic growth and support planned advances in technology.

This latest report shows that faster-than-expected growth in both mobile data subscribers in China, using 3G and 4G networks, is set to result in almost 15,000 petabytes of data per year being carried on China’s mobile networks by 2019. This is approximately 25 per cent of total traffic forecasted for the entire Asia Pacific region and a compound annual growth rate of more than 55 per cent between now and 2019.

Based on a number of third-party estimates, the report also highlighted that a 10 percentage point rise in broadband connections leads to between 0.26 and 0.92 per cent increase in GDP and that for every extra 1,000 broadband connections, 33 new jobs are created.

Other report findings include:

• With consumers increasingly using mobile devices to access the Internet, 3 billion mobile broadband (3G and 4G) connections are predicted in Asia Pacific by 20207, consuming over 50,000 petabytes of data per year. Sufficient bandwidth and spectrum must be made available to enable operators to deploy the latest mobile technologies.
• Operators in the region lead the way in commercialising the use of multi-frequency bands to deploy LTE-Advanced. They will increasingly need to use spectrum in multiple bands (typically aggregating 5X20MHz carriers) to maintain the region’s leadership in 4G.
• New services, including streaming video, location-based apps and the Internet of Things, are all supported by today’s mobile networks. To enable future growth, networks will need to accommodate different traffic loads and cater for the connection of many more types of devices.
• Operators are changing fundamentally the way they use existing spectrum in order to meet market needs. This includes refarming, which requires technological innovation to enhance the efficiency and flexibility of spectrum usage. Refarming of 2G spectrum for 3G use has resulted in the swift adoption of UMTS900 handsets in Asia Pacific. One example is the refarming of 900MHz spectrum in Hutchison’s network in Hong Kong, using Huawei’s single radio access network (RAN) infrastructure to provide UMTS900.
• Concentration of use of existing services into smaller bandwidths and a range of other options are available to national regulators and policy makers in order to release new spectrum for mobile use. Ultimately, choices should be guided by the benefits of using different bands for new mobile use, relative to the costs of alternative options to meet existing users’ needs.

“The negotiations at WRC-15 in Geneva next November provide a unique opportunity for leaders in the Asia Pacific region to support the next generation of mobile networks and services. We urge governments to make a clear and strong call for significantly more spectrum for mobile, to promote the future growth of their countries’ digital economies and to enhance the lives of their citizens through widespread access to digital services and, hence, greater social inclusion,” said Tom Phillips, Chief Regulatory Officer, GSMA.