Foreword; Table of Contents; Main points; Cellular Mobile Pricing Structures and Trends; Mobile Penetration Rates; Changing Market Structure; Pricing Trends; Convergence with Fixed Network Pricing; Calling Party and Receiver Party Pays; The Price of Calls from Fixed Networks to Mobile Networks; Tromboning; Pre-paidCards; Short Message Service; IMT-2000 Licensing Update; Notes; Statistical Annex
Summary
Mobile communications is one of the tremendous success stories of the telecommunications industry. By June 1999, there were 293 million mobile subscribers in the OECD area, or around one mobile phone for every four inhabitants. Current growth continues to exceed most past projections. The benefits wrought by mobility in communications are increasingly evident in terms of both economic and social development. If there is a caveat, amidst such a tremendous success story, it is that the very rapid growth of mobile communications has tended to conceal large performance differences across the OECD