The Australian telecommunication industry is mainly dominated by Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. According to the 2013 Australian market report, Telstra has about 60% of the market share. The industry revenues were about $42.5 billion in 2013, which was a slight decrease from the revenues of 2012 (Paul & Henry 2013b). The decline was mainly attributed to price wars among operators and the uncertain economic times. The 2015 appropriations indicate the revenues are likely to decline further by a margin of between one and two percent. Most mobile voice and fixed line services have reached market saturation. Therefore, opportunities to increase revenues are limited to mobile data services including cloud data housing, fiber and long-term evolution (LTE) or 4G technologies. As the fixed line telephony declines, the broadband market is rapidly expanding and is set to become a major revenue contributor to the telecom operators (Paul & Henry 2013a). The introduction of 4G network has accelerated the growth of the broadband market as it eliminates traffic challenges that existed in 3G networks. .
Various virtual mobile operators operating in Australia including Amaysim, Virgin Mobile, Dodo, etc., override on Vodafone and Optus network (Paul & Henry 2014). Even though companies have experienced some growth, the growth rate is limited as both Optus and Vodafone are not experiencing any significant growth. The slow upgrade of infrastructure to accommodate 4G network has seen many customers migrate to Telstra, thus further limiting the growth of the virtual telecom operators. .
Telstra and Its Competitive Position.
Telstra offers a range of basic telecom access services to businesses and homes, internet and mobile services and local and international calls. The company has approximately 15 million subscribers, and the number is expected to grow further with the introduction of 4G network. Optus is the second largest telecom based on customer subscription (9 million subscribers) while Vodafone has about three million subscribers (Paul & Henry 2013a).