Swedish regulator the PTS has reported that during the first half of 2013 total revenues in the retail market for mobile voice and data services rose by 3% year-on-year to over SEK14 billion (USD2.1 billion), with 59% of mobile revenue still accounted for by voice services, but with the share of mobile data (internet) services on the rise, reaching 28%. The watchdog calculated that the number of ‘active’ users of 4G LTE data services reached 811,000 by the end of June 2013, helping to drive up mobile data traffic in the first half of the year to 124,700 Terabytes, or 68% more than during the first half of 2012. The number of mobile broadband subscriptions with download speeds of 30Mbps or higher increased by more than two million in a year to nearly 2.7 million at 30 June 2013, while the number of subscriptions to smartphones increased by 30% y-o-y to 5.4 million. Meanwhile, the number of text messages sent declined by 8% while the number of MMS increased by 22%. Outgoing call minutes from mobile networks increased by 4% to 12.6 billion minutes in H1 2013, compared to the number of outgoing traffic minutes from fixed networks which declined by 17%, resulting in the total number of outgoing traffic minutes decreasing by nearly 5%.
Sweden’s number of subscriptions for fixed broadband via direct fibre connections amounted to 1.1 million at the end of June 2013, up by 16% y-o-y, which offset a decline in accesses via other fixed technologies, meaning that the total number of fixed broadband subscriptions increased by almost 2%. In June 2013 there were 840,000 subscriptions for fixed broadband with download speeds of 100Mbps or higher, representing 27% of all fixed broadband subscriptions.