Asian telcos thrive

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) report found that Asia – which is the biggest telecom market – leads the world in the number of leads the world in the market penetration of broadband services and mobile phone use.

The report said that Asian governments had been more proactive in promoting the adoption of new generations of telecommunications technology than counterparts in the West.

While many telecom companies in the US and Europe and struggling with market weakness, Asia's regional companies have boasted of continued double-digit growth and on-going interest from consumers in the latest technologies.

Speaking at the ITU-sponsored regional telecommunications show in Hong Kong, China's top Government regulator Wu Jichuan of the Ministry of Information Industry said the development of communications infrastructure that had taken “other nations hundreds of years took us ten years”.

And the ITU secretary-general Yoshio Utsumi said the Asia region had shown that the best way out of recession was to continue to invest in next-generation technology, and to continue to innovate.

As a result, phone service subscriptions in the region had continued to grow at greater than 10 percent, about twice the annual rate of the rest of the world.