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31-12-2019, 16:12
South Korean pay-TV market growth set to stall to 2024 DetailsJoseph O'Halloran | 30 December 2019 Research from GlobalData has found that despite a boom in the uptake of 5G services, telecom and pay-TV services revenue in South Korea is expected to decline at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 0.3% between 2019 and 2024.The South Korea Telecom Operators Country Intelligence report also noted that growth in mobile data, fixed broadband and pay-TV segments’ revenues will however fail to offset steady decline in revenues from mobile voice, messaging and fixed voice segments.The study also predicts that mobile broadband services will increase at the fastest CAGR of 3.1% during 2019-2024, led by fast growing machine-to-machine (M2M) connections, projected rise in adoption of 5G services and subsequent increase in mobile data average revenue per user (ARPU).With all the three major operators - SK Telecom, KT and LGU+ - having launched their 5G services in April 2019 and expanding network coverage, 5G’s share in total subscriptions is set to reach 40.1% by the end of 2024. Mobile data, which accounted for an estimated 36.9% share of the total telecom service revenue in 2019, is forecast to grow to 43.6% in 2024.Fixed broadband revenue is set to increase at a CAGR of 0.9% over 2019-2024, supported by continued rise in adoption of fibre-to-the-home (FTTx) services and government’s efforts to increase fibre networks penetration in the country. Pay-TV revenues will increase at a CAGR of 0.7% over 2019-2024 to reach US$7.8bn by 2024, supported by the steady growth in IPTV subscriptions.“Operators are heavily investing in the expansion of their 5G networks and services to compete in the mobile broadband market,” said Deepa Dhingra, telecom analyst at GlobalData commenting on the findings in the South Korea Telecom Operators Country Intelligence report. “KT has pledged an investment of KRW16.3 trillion in 5G infrastructure and ICT convergence by 2021 while SK Telecom is aggressively deploying 5G network in all populated public areas such as highways, trains, major cities and parks.”