Top 5 NA operators

NA is certainly the only region in the world where GSM is not the dominant technology. With about 252m mobile users at the end of 2006, NA is the least mobile-equiped region, overtaken by MEA (Middle East +Africa), CALA, CEI, EU and APAC. The home-grown technology is CDMA that accounts for 48% of the market. It added 13m new subscribers (+12%) in 2006, but GSM is growing twice faster at 24% (+19m new subscribers in 2006) to a total of 98m (or 39% market share). IDEN is slightly decreasing and TDMA only accounts for 2% market share now. The market is dominated by three major operators: AT&T (mainly GSM), Verizon and Sprint Nextel (both CDMA) with respectively 61m , 59m and 53m mobile users. T-Mobile (GSM) is a distant fourth with about 25m, followed by Alltel with just below 12m subscribers. After there were Rogers (7m); Bell Mobile (6m), US Cellular with 5.5m and Telus with 5m. So almost 75% of the market is dominated by three mammoths.