The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Just 2 percent of Bahamians do not own a smartphone or tablet, communications regulators have revealed, with total mobile connections exceeding the size of the country’s population.

The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA), unveiling the results of its mobile market assessment, said smartphone data usage had increased by 8.5 percent during the period between 2017 and 2020. In contrast, subscirbers using mobile data only had risen by 46.7 percent over the same period.

“In terms of take-up, smartphone data usage stood at 359,719 subscribers in 2017 compared to 390,142 subscribers at year-end 2020. By contrast, mobile data-only usage was 18,983 subscribers in 2017 compared to 27,850 at year-end 2020, or 7 percent of total mobile connections in 2020. This suggests that mobile data usage in The Bahamas is dominated by smartphone data usage,” URCA said.

“Eighty-two percent of persons surveyed said they currently use mobile data as part of a smartphone bundle compared to 25 percent that use mobile data only service (no allowance for calls, messaging) for Internet purposes. Clearly the vast majority of them consume mobile data as part of a smartphone bundle with calls, messaging and data.

“Mobile data users also rely on other technologies to access the Internet. Sixty-five percent of mobile data-only users said they have more than one way of accessing the Internet, with 57 percent acknowledging that they also use mobile data service on their smartphone,” the regulator added.

“Additionally, 98 percent of the respondents said they hold a smartphone or tablet with the ability to access the Internet and/or send e-mails, with more than 50 percent of these respondents stating that they own more than one smartphone and/or tablet with Internet capability. This means that only a tiny share (2 percent) of respondents did not hold a smartphone or tablet.”

As for mobile penetration, URCA said: “Cellular mobile technology and services remain an important and prevalent mode of communications in The Bahamas. Total mobile connections (including mobile data-only service) increased by 14.26 percent between 2016 and 2020, from 365,840 to 417,992 connections.

“Mobile penetration rates reached 98 per 100 population around the time of Aliv’s entry, and between 2016 and 2020 the mobile penetration rate further increased by 10 percent from 98 to 107 per 100 of total population. Underpinning the upward trends in mobile take-up levels has been a 2.3 percent and 32 percent increase penetration for mobile voice and messaging and/or data and mobile data only connections. However, the growth in mobile penetration appears to be slowing.

“In particular, after a decline during the period 2014-2017, average mobile calling per user increased from 77 minutes per month to 133 minutes per month between 2017 and 2020. This is likely to be the result of an elasticity effect - driven by underlying price reductions, as set out under the ‘price trends’ analysis below - and large or unlimited allowances of domestic calling minutes within retail mobile bundles,” URCA added.

“The volume of SMS traffic per mobile user declined from 28 messages per month in 2016 to eight messages per month in 2020, despite the mobile operators offering generous allowances of domestic SMS within their retail mobile bundles.... In URCA’s opinion the increased mobile data usage correlates with growing demand for data-based services including Over-the-Top (OTT’ call and messaging services (WhatsApp, Facebook) and content streaming by Bahamian consumers.”