Statistics of the Ministry of Digital Development
By law, telecom operators are required to transfer 1.2% of their taiwan phone number library revenue each year to the Universal Service Fund, which provides internet and mobile communications to small towns, villages and towns. If a town has a population of more than 100 people, it should have a telephone and mobile communications support, and if there are 500 or more people, it should have a public internet access point. These charges can also be used to track the state of the telecommunications industry.
According to analytics collected by RBC, 5,300 telecom operators contributed to the Fund in 2021, while in 2020, 5,600 operators contributed. Thus, the market dropped by 300 operators.
According to the Ministry of Digital Development, 9,200 operators submitted information about themselves (but not deductions) to the Fund in 2021. In 2020, there were 9,400 telecommunications companies, that is, 200 companies less.
Roskomnadzor data
Telecom operators are required to have a license to provide services, and all registered licenses are tracked by Roskomnadzor. According to its data, in 2021 the number of licenses was 9,500. In 2020, there were 10,393, thus their number decreased by 893 over the year.
These statistics cannot fully reflect the market changes, since many operators have several legal entities and, accordingly, licenses to provide fixed and mobile services. However, it is obvious that the market is shrinking.
Opinion of industry and government representatives
According to industry experts, the market is gradually moving towards large players due to their constant development in the field of digital technologies and mergers. Because of this, users in 2021 hardly felt the change in the industry: 80% of communication services are already provided by the largest companies.
As stated by the Ministry of Digital Development, according to statistics, the decrease in the number of operators did not have a significant impact on the total amount of deductions to the Universal Service Fund (which means that their share of profit was small compared to the profit and deductions of large operators). The number of players is decreasing, but the overall market size is growing, and has grown by 3.2% over the past year.
