and to buy other telecommunications operators and Internet companies. One significant reason for the enormously high prices paid for the 3G licences in Europe was the willingness of the lender banks to provide the capital necessary (some EUR 100 billion) and their encouragement of the leading players, in whom they often held equity, to acquire a 3G licence. Thus the health of the lending markets (securities and banking) is crucial to telecommunications infrastructure expansion. However, the dependence of the past on massive capital spend (e.g. USD 1-2 billion per year for a large 3G mobile INFRASTRUCTURE TO 2030: TELECOM, LAND TRANSPORT, WATER AND ELECTRICITY - ISBN 92-64-02398-4 © OECD 2006 2. TELECOMS INFRASTRUCTURE TO 2030 rollout over one or two years) may be likely to change. Certain new technologies demand far lower infrastructure investment and are more aligned with the local finances and inward foreign investment levels of the developing economies. However, some form of failure of the banking system is still possible in the situation of another global bubble in telecommunications. Demography As in all mass technology plays, population growth and changing age composition are crucial to industry behaviour going forward. Two main factors will drive infrastructure - the overall expansion in population numbers and the aging rate of these populations. Sustainable support for an aging population inside the OECD group (and increasingly in China and India) will demand new uses of telecommunications in elder care and medical health care. Urbanisation will also be a market driver. Moves to the city, especially in the countries with large demographic expansion and industrialisation, that is the developing nations, will drive demands for a new telecommunications infrastructure to serve the rising numbers of citizens. International migration from developing to developed countries will drive up population in the OECD community and SO power its telecommunications infrastructure expansion. The numbers are significant - th