Brunei Darussalam Telecom MNO Market Size & Share Analysis - Growth Trends And Forecast (2025 - 2030)

Brunei Darussalam Telecom MNO Market Trends and Insights

Rapid 5G roll-out driven by AITI spectrum roadmap

AITI has allocated contiguous mid-band and millimeter-wave spectrum while mandating open-access wholesale sharing to accelerate 5G readiness. As a result, 90% of base stations now support 5G NR radios, making Brunei one of the most 5G-prepared economies in Southeast Asia.^{[1]Authority for Info-Communications Technology Industry, “AITI – Home,” aiti.gov.bn}Multi-gigabit trials in Bandar Seri Begawan confirm stable 300 Mbps-1 Gbps down-links, enabling industrial automation, remote surgery pilots and cloud gaming for consumers. The regulator chairs a 5G working group with UNN, DST and Progresif to align rollout, ensuring that initial premium tariffs gain enterprise uptake before consumer mass-market packages follow. With coverage slated for nationwide completion by 2027, operators are bundling 5G FWA as an alternative to fixed broadband in underserved districts, creating incremental ARPU pockets without heavy last-mile civil works.

Nationwide FTTH expansion by Imagine and UNN

UNN has installed more than 5,000 km of fiber and passed 220,000 premises, replacing legacy copper to deliver symmetric 100 Mbps baseline speeds. Imagine and Progresif rebrand these wholesale lines into tiered retail bundles that top out at 1 Gbps and include Wi-Fi 6 mesh kits, targeting gamers and work-from-home professionals.^{[2]Progresif, “Home WiFi Plan,” progresif.com} Fixed-broadband penetration climbed to 18% by end-2024, yet meaningful headroom remains as rural Bruneians gain access and as enterprises migrate MPLS circuits onto cheaper GPON. The unified passive-infrastructure model cuts duplication, allowing retail brands to divert capital toward apps, OTT partnerships and smart-home devices rather than trenching costs. 

Government push for Smart Nation services

Under the Digital Economy Masterplan 2025, Brunei aims to lift ICT’s GDP contribution from 2% to 6% by digitizing public administration, health records and education platforms. BruHealth, the national health-app backbone, already hosts millions of vaccination and clinical entries, demanding secure, low-latency links between data centers and hospitals. EGNC’s centralized procurement opens large managed-service contracts for telcos able to deliver elastic cloud connections and zero-trust security frameworks. The TADSEED grant program disburses up to BND 200,000 (USD 149,000) to local start-ups, sparking new SaaS and IoT projects that lean on carrier APIs for payments and identity management. 

Enterprise demand for managed cloud connectivity & SD-WAN

Corporate customers are upgrading from best-effort VPNs to SLA-backed SD-WAN overlays that prioritize mission-critical traffic while steering routine loads to public internet paths. UNN markets 99.99%-uptime IPLC and 100 Gbps point-to-point Ethernet for banks, oil-and-gas majors and government datasets. Converged offerings bundle DDoS scrubbing, vulnerability assessments and SOC-as-a-service to address escalating cyber-threats. Meanwhile, ANIAN’s tie-up with Parcus Group introduces verticalized IoT kits for utilities and campus surveillance that rely on telco SIMs for back-haul. Enterprise annual spend is growing at 2.65%, meaningfully above the broader Brunei Darussalam telecom market CAGR, and supports premium-priced connectivity even as consumer ARPU plateaus.

Limited population size capping addressable subscriber base

With only 465,000 residents, Brunei reached 620,000 active SIMs in 2025 – a 133% penetration ceiling that leaves scant room for net-new subscriber gains. Operators thus rely on ARPU uplift from high-speed tiers, content bundles and fintech add-ons rather than volume growth. The small labor pool also curtails large-scale enterprise uptake, as most multinational oil-and-gas players and major banks already hold long-term connectivity contracts. Rural build-out remains a public-service obligation rather than a lucrative expansion frontier, requiring universal-service levies and cross-subsidy frameworks to stay financially viable.

High reliance on international bandwidth via single subsea route

Although Brunei lands four submarine systems – AAG, SJC, SMW3 and LBC – the majority of international traffic still funnels through a single branching unit before fanning out to Singapore and Hong Kong. This single-point exposure raises the specter of outages affecting cloud back-ups, regional gaming latency and video-streaming QoS. While the 10 Tbps installed capacity is adequate today, hyperscale-cloud ingress and ASEAN data-center interconnection will double bandwidth demand by 2028. The ASEAN-wide Cable Initiative unveiled in February 2025 aims to diversify landing points, but civil-marine surveys and financing mean operational readiness will not arrive until the latter half of the forecast period.

Segment Analysis

By Service Type: Data services lead digital transformation

Data services accounted for 44.40% of 2024 revenue, driven by FDTH uptake, streaming and cloud connectivity. The segment benefits from 1 Gbps fixed tiers, 5G FWA pilots and wholesale transit sold to neighboring Sabah and Sarawak carriers. Voice still holds 37.09%, having stabilized through unlimited-minutes bundles tethered to generous data packs. IoT and M2M generates 5.51% but is forecast to outpace the overall Brunei Darussalam telecom market size with smart-meter rollouts and municipal surveillance grids. OTT and Pay-TV represent 7.81% as Netflix and Disney+ drive carriers to co-market time-based data passes. Ancillary messaging, VAS and roaming capture the remaining 5.19%, buoyed by tourist SIMs and cross-border commuters.  

The Brunei Darussalam telecom market share for data services is set to expand further as 5G core slicing and cloud gaming drive higher-tier adoption. Meanwhile, voice ARPU erosion continues, but bundling keeps churn low. IoT’s share will rise once ministries mandate connected street lighting and asset-tracking, leveraging operators’ NB-IoT channels. Messaging faces cannibalization from OTT chat, but enterprise A2P SMS for banking OTPs cushions decline. Wholesale service revenue holds steady under UNN’s fixed per-Mbps tariff, providing predictable cash flows to fund future optical upgrades.

Note: Segment shares of all individual segments available upon report purchase

By End User: Enterprise segment drives premium growth

Enterprises contributed 18.41% of 2024 revenue yet posted the fastest 2.65% CAGR through 2030 as banks, oil companies and government agencies deploy managed SD-WAN, DRaaS and cybersecurity bundles. The Brunei Darussalam telecom market size for enterprise cloud connectivity will reach USD 0.23 billion by 2030, reflecting higher bandwidth commitments and SLA premiums. Consumer services still dominate with 81.59% share, but growth slows to 1.98% as penetration plateaus.  

Corporate digitization benefits from grants and procurement-aggregation under EGNC, pushing SMEs to adopt SaaS payroll and e-commerce modules that ride on telco-managed connectivity. Public-sector modernization – from e-court filings to smart-port logistics – further widens the addressable enterprise pie. On the consumer side, bundled OTT, device-financing and prepaid family plans shore up ARPU. The enterprise-first strategy also cushions cash flows because business contracts often span 36-60 months, providing revenue visibility absent in prepaid consumer segments.

Geography Analysis

Urban Bandar Seri Begawan anchors demand, accounting for nearly 70% of the Brunei Darussalam telecom market size in 2024 thanks to dense fiber coverage, affluent households and cluster of corporates along the riverfront CBD. 5G small-cell densification around Gadong and Kianggeh malls supports mixed-reality retail trials, while the Government Technology Centre hosts a new edge-data hub interlinked via 100 Gbps ring to the primary data center at Tungku.  

The Belait district, home to oil-and-gas complexes, represents the second-largest pocket. Multi-tenant enterprise parks in Seria consume dedicated wavelength services and satellite back-ups. UNN’s 2024 expansion to inland Kampong Bang Taong and Kukub increased rural broadband availability, aligning with universal-service goals and boosting take-rates among school networks.  

Tutong and Temburong together form under 10% of revenue, yet 2025 plans to link Temburong Smart Eco-Park with NB-IoT environmental sensors will lift data-traffic growth to the highest district CAGR. Cross-border bridges to Sarawak create roaming spill-over, particularly for weekend shoppers. Overall, the Brunei Darussalam telecom market share by district remains heavily skewed to the coastline, but government co-funding of microwave hops and satellite back-haul aims to narrow the digital divide by 2030.