Emerging markets today account for more than half of the world's total telecom connections and this will grow to 69 percent by 2010, said a report released here Monday by the U.S.-based Gartner Inc.

The rate of economic and population growth means developing regions offer major potential for communications expansion, said the report.

"Emerging markets may be under penetrated by communications services, but the hunger for improved connections is strong," said Jouni Forsman, research director at Gartner.

"Compared to disposable income, phone users in developing regions are spending five times more on communications on a 'per-user-basis' than their counterparts in developed countries," he said.

Over the next four years it will be mobile connections that drive the industry. Gartner predicted that worldwide mobile connections will increase by 1.5 billion by 2010.

Emerging markets will account for 87 percent of the increase.

Combined with fixed connections, developing regions will account for 69 percent of the world's total phone connections by 2010, according to the report.

Whilst China and India still represent the largest opportunities, Gartner highlighted Indonesia as a high growth location. In fact, Gartner forecast that Indonesia will have more new telecom connections between 2005 and 2010 than Brazil and Russia.

Worldwide, 50 percent of new communications connections in the next five years will come from the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and Indonesia.

One of the most significant bottlenecks that stand in the way of faster growth in emerging markets is communications infrastructure. Communications infrastructure providers are therefore a crucial part of the puzzle, said the report.

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