ervices. Thus, whatever the absolute annual spend, the trend, derived from the latest figures available from the ITU, is generally to ever cheaper telecommunications networks per subscriber added as the subscriber base expands, as illustrated in Figure 2.19. This is the natural result of falling equipment prices and new technologies for mobile radio. But what of the future? In the short term, level spending with rapid rollout is likely, followed by a decline in spending as the total number of subscribers expands, up to around 2025. The cost per subscriber should fall INFRASTRUCTURE TO 2030: TELECOM, LAND TRANSPORT, WATER AND ELECTRICITY - ISBN 92-64-02398-4 © OECD 2006 2. TELECOMS INFRASTRUCTURE TO 2030 Figure 2.19. The key trend is to cheaper infrastructures - Capex per new subscriber ¹ in kUSD 1992-2003 4 000 3 500 3 000 2 000 1 000 1. Calculated as capex spend in previous year to create new subscribers in current year. Source: derived from ITU world telecommunications indicators database 2002. rapidly from, say, 2015 as the new lightweight infrastructure assures a continued rollout, now into the unsaturated poorer sectors of the developing regions. Taking the figures used previously of numbers of subscribers and spend per subscriber required for take-up by using the Dupuit curves and the perception of freeness points, a simple model of infrastructure costs per subscriber emerges (see Table 2.15). Of this infrastructure spend, on first approximate estimates, we would expect that the OECD accounts for around 60% of total spend up to 2010 as their next generation networks are rolled out, spend which then diminishes while the NICs rapidly become the areas of the major spend thereafter with over 50% of investments in the major investment period after 2015, when OECD is saturated. Within the portion spent in the NICs, the major tranche of spend would be expected in China and India to 2025, with just these two economies accounting for around 50% of the developing world's portion of infrastructure spend after 2010 but