The figure is up 80 per cent from 30.8 million 3Q06, with growth led by US operator Verizon Wireless and Japan's KDDI who between them account for 60 per cent of total EV-DO subscribers.

Verizon Wireless’s total EV-DO subscriptions increased nearly three-fold in the year to September 2007, boosted by a wider range of EV-DO-enabled devices. Currently 39 of the operator’s 49 handsets are EV-DO-capable.

KDDI has the highest percentage of CDMA users that are also active users of data via EV-DO (56.4 per cent). Informa says innovative data services, as well as Japanese users’ propensity to regularly upgrade to the latest handset models, are the reasons for the operator’s success.

Informa forecasts that the total number of subscriptions actively using data via EV-DO (including Revision A and B) will exceed 85 million in 2008 and pass 115 million in 2009.

More than 80 million subscriptions are actively using EV-DO-enabled handsets for voice services, showing that there is a sizeable potential market for operators to promote their advanced data services.

Meanwhile, Informa forecasts that data subscriptions using the rival HSPA network technology will reach 50 million in 2008, before jumping to 107 million at the end of 2009 and doubling again to 208 million in 2010.

Growth will be driven by more operators deploying the technology (more than 150 already have), as well as an improved portfolio of HSPA-enabled devices.