The purpose of ‘The Swedish Telecommunications Market 2008’ is to survey the development of a large part of the Swedish market for electronic communications.
The task of the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency (PTS) is, first, to monitor the development of the market for electronic communications, second, to promote competition within the sector. As part of these tasks, PTS works with market statistics and market analyses. It is also important that the public, operators and other undertakings and organisations gain access to statistics and market analyses, a factor which provides a further incentive for PTS to publish market statistics.
|
This report
‘The Swedish Telecommunications Market’ should primarily be viewed as PTS’s report on electronic communications market
statistics, and we therefore focus on reporting market statistics. The report
is also available as a half-year version, but the full-year version of the
Swedish Telecommunications Market contains in addition a number of more
advanced sections that focus on developments within a few areas of relevance
for the market. Both the parts that describe the market and the more advance
sections contain a number of figures and diagrams clarifying the numerical
material.
The gathering of full-year statistics for the years 2000 to 2008 has been undertaken in collaboration with the Swedish Institute for Transport and Communications Analysis (SIKA) [1] and Statistics Sweden (SCB). However, PTS attends to the gathering of half-year statistics internally. An important reason for this collaboration with SIKA and SCB is to make matters easier for information providers as, among other things, this collaboration reduces the number of questionnaires distributed. The statistics for the full-year 2008 have been gathered by use of a web-based questionnaire.[2]
PTS has
access to various details considered to be commercially sensitive according to
the Secrecy Act.[3] Such information has for instance
been requested from notified operators in the course of compliance work, but is
not published in this report. The details that have been requested from notified
operators for the gathering of statistics for ‘The Swedish Telecommunications
Market 2008’ are exclusively used as a basis for:
-
Statistics contained in the report ‘The Swedish Telecommunications Market first half-year 2008’ (PTS).
-
Statistics contained in a public statistics portal.[4]
-
PTS’s market analyses and decisions concerning significant market power (SMP).[5]
-
Any PTS decisions concerning universal services.[6]
-
PTS’s other operations as a supervisory authority.[7]
-
The official statistics on telecommunications operations in Sweden, the report Televerksamhet 2008 (Telecom Operations 2008) (SIKA).
It is
specifically stated in the questionnaire circulated to operators which
information will be used for each area. A duty to reply was introduced in
conjunction with the gathering of information for the year 2003, which also
applies to the gathering of half-year information. For details of those
operators that submitted answers, see the chapter ‘Schedule of participants’.
The statistics presented in the Swedish Telecommunications Market, which are based primarily on the data received from operators, should be viewed as PTS’s assessment of the market, even if other public sources have also been used to a certain extent. In total, the questionnaire was sent out to 532 stakeholders. At the time the report was published, 491 had responded, corresponding to approximately 92 per cent of those asked.
There are
of course measurement errors during the gathering process, as there are
operators in the market that do not respond to the questionnaire. However, the
operators that have responded represent a significant proportion of sales in
the market for electronic communications, and consequently the measurement
error should not be particularly large. PTS considers that information on
revenues that has been received for 2007 corresponds to a proportion of at
least 99 per cent of the retail revenues in the market for fixed call services,[8] mobile call services and mobile Internet and also for television
services. For Internet services, the corresponding proportion is at least 90
per cent.[9] Measurement error may also arise if
those asked have not answered all of the questions in the questionnaire, if the
responses were misleading owing to carelessness, inadequate or misunderstood
instructions or if it was not possible to derive any exact value from the
company’s accounting. Such attrition and possible inadequacies in the responses
received may often be compensated through proceeding on the basis of data
collected previously or by making estimates based on related responses in the
questionnaire.
Historical
statistics are continuously updated whenever further information becomes
available to PTS, and for this reason statistics for one and the same period
may differ in the various editions of the report. It is therefore important
that those using the Swedish Telecommunications Market have access to the
version published most recently. The most recently updated database is always
available on the PTS web-based statistics portal (www.svensktelemarknad.se).
Market development
is reported by statistics, which in some cases stretch back to 1992. As of and
including ‘The Swedish Telecommunications Market 2006’, PTS also publishes
market shares for the retail market for each period that information was
gathered, though no historical market shares that are older than the full-year
2006. Market shares for a number of different units are contained in this
report, but PTS publishes considerably more details on market shares on the
web-based statistics portal. This portal includes market shares for all the
retail market variables as of and including the full-year 2006, except as
regards the market for television services.[10] In those cases where variables are considered to be inadequate or misleading
in some other way, these are not published in the statistics portal.
In the questionnaire, definitions have been used, which also form the basis of the reports. These definitions are revised and clarified continuously so that they are in phase with developments in the market. Segmentation of individual sub-markets may also change from year to year. Since the questionnaire for 2003, regard is also taken to PTS’s need of information for conducting market analyses and making decisions concerning whether any operator has significant market power. The information can to a large extent still be compared with previous reports despite these changes.
As regards the sub-market ‘Internet services’, it is common to mix up expressions such as fixed connection, broadband connection, wireless connection, mobile connection, broadband and others since there is no common definition. However, in ‘The Swedish Telecommunications Market’ the terms are defined as illustrated in Table A. [11]
Table A Types of Internet connection
In numerous
cases statistics are reported broken down into private customers and business
customers respectively. The definitions of ‘private customer’ and ‘business
customer’ are based on who pays for the service, not who the user is. The
criterion for the paying party to be designated as a business customer
(including those organisations that are not businesses) is that it has a
company/organisation identity (ID) number. The others are designated as private
customers, which means that businesses and
organisations registered with personal identity (ID) numbers are included in
the category ‘private customers’.
Owing to rounding, the information contained in this report is expressed as per cent, and consequently the total of the parts does not always amount to 100 per cent.
[1] SIKA is the authority (reporting to the Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications) that is responsible for the official statistics on telecommunications operations (see www.sika-institute.se).
[2] The web questionnaire was prepared in collaboration with Unified Dialogs AB, and the information gathering was conducted by Unifed Dialogs AB.
[3] Chapter 8, Section 6 of the Secrecy Act.
[4] www.svensktelemarknad.se
[5] The Electronic Communications Act (2003:389) (LEK), Chapter 8, Sections 5 to 7.
[6] The Electronic Communications Act (2003:389) (LEK), Chapter 5.
[7] The material may only be used for these purposes after PTS has informed the operators concerned.
[8] Does not include revenues from dial-up Internet and directory enquiry services.
[9] However, the answers that have been received about the number of customers are considered to correspond to more that 97 per cent of the market value. In other words, some operators have answered the question about the number of customers but not the question about sales. The estimates that have been made have to a large extent been based on previous answers and on answers about the number of customers. PTS considers that the sales for the Internet stated in this report lie at a credible level. PTS is also waiting for supplementary answers regarding the operators’ sales.
[10] However, PTS does not exclude the possibility of variables in the retail market for television services being in the future published in a similar way as the variables for the other retail markets.
[11] PTS may, however, define the terms differently in other contexts.