Mobile service revenues in Belgium amounted to EUR 1,049 million in the third quarter of 2006, up 1.8% from the previous quarter and up 5.7% from EUR 992 million in the same period last year. These quarterly growth figures look good in comparison with the same quarter last year, and suggest that momentum for revenue development picked up during the quarter under review.
Although mobile service revenues were fairly weak in the first quarter, revenue growth in the second and in particular the third quarter suggest a growth of between 4% and 5% this year. Taking a median of 4.5%, Telecompaper forecasts that the market will grow around EUR 4.1 billion in 2006, up EUR from 3.9 billion in 2005. This is in line with our market outlook published in June 2006. We expect revenue growth in the Belgian market to slow down to between 3.5% and 4.5% in 2007 and to between 3% and 5% in 2008.
The number of mobile customers continues to grow and increased 1.6% to 9.14 million customers at the end of September 2006, up from 9.00 million customers at the end of June 2006. Mobile customer growth in each of the quarters this year has been stronger than the quarterly growth rates throughout 2005.
In other words, the Belgian market is growing much faster in terms of customer growth than last year (2005). As a result of a good first quarter, operator Base increased its market share on number of connections to 19.9% at the end of September 2006 and rival Mobistar was slightly up with a gain of 0.1% to end September 2006 with a share of 33.7%. The market share of incumbent Belgacom continued to fall and stood at 46.4%% at the end of September 2006, down from 47.3% at the end of June 2006
Mobile voice service revenues totalled EUR 868 million in the third quarter of 2006, up 1.0% compared to the previous quarter, when voice service revenues amounted to EUR 859 million. Voice service revenues are up 4.7% from the same quarter last year. Non- voice revenues also grew in the quarter to EUR 181 million, up 5.7% from EUR 171 million in the previous quarter. Revenues for non-voice services were fairly weak during the first and second quarter but picked up in the third quarter, increasing their share of service revenues to 17.3% during the quarter.
