- Healthy competition among Internet Service Providers can increase consumer choice, reduce prices, and foster innovation, efficiency, and Internet quality.
- Iraq, Myanmar, and Venezuela have seen significant increases in their market competition since 2023.
- Changes in market competition can result from players entering, merging, or exiting the market, or due to users’ preferences in response to the current political climate.
Last month, I traveled to Bucharest to present at the Internet Society Romania Chapter event “May the Romanian Telecom market trend be reversed?”.
The event sought to bring together Romania’s public and private Internet decision-makers to discuss the country’s ‘Very Poor’ Internet market competition, per the Pulse Country Reports, including possible solutions and lessons from other countries.
Recently, I discussed the importance of market competition on Internet resilience and how we track it for 237 countries via our Pulse Country Reports — read the post. In this post, I want to highlight some examples I shared during my presentation of where we have seen the most significant changes in market competition since 2023.
Often, we don’t see significant changes in such a short time, but in some of the cases below, we have seen countries go from Poor to Good or Fair to Very Good ratings. Such a change in such a short time is worth highlighting to show that markets can be as malleable as the Internet itself.
I would be grateful to hear from readers about the context of these changes and measures, that is, whether some of the mentioned companies merged with or acquired others, left the market, or are one and the same.
How Fluid is Market Competition
As a reminder, Pulse uses the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) (via IIJ’s Internet Health Report) to indicate market competition. A low HHI score—countries with many Internet Service Providers (ISPs)— indicates a healthy level of market competition.
| HHI score (per IIJ) | Pulse Market competition rating |
| Less than 500 | Excellent |
| 501—1000 | Very Good |
| 1001—1500 | Good |
| 1501—2000 | Fair |
| 2001—3500 | Poor |
| More than 3500 | Very Poor |
Between April 2023 and April 2025, 25 countries jumped to a higher market competition rating, while 10 countries slipped from a higher to a lower competition rating.
Iraq, Myanmar, and Venezuela See Biggest Jumps
If we use APNIC Labs’ Visible ASNs: Customer Population measurement tool to examine the market share of the biggest rising countries, we can see a mix of new players entering the market, incumbents succumbing to smaller players, and the impact of conflict on Internet users’ preferences.
First, in Iraq (see interactive version of the graph below), we can see how the incumbent, Earthlink, has lost more than half its market share to a newcomer in Hulumtele. We can also see that smaller providers have maintained or increased their market share, culminating in them jumping from ‘Poor’ to ‘Good’ per the Pulse Country Report.
Similarly, in Venezuela (see interactive version of the graph below), the incumbent has forgo its significant market share to a host of smaller players. It’s interesting to note that the second and third largest ISPs also saw near 50% drops in their market share.
Finally, Myanmar’s historiography (see interactive version of the graph below) isn’t as easy to decipher as the other two. But it provides some insight into how the market landscape has been impacted since the 2021 military coup d’état.
If, like me, your eyes are drawn to Cloudflare’s rise to be the number one service provider in 2024, this lasted for about six months. Sources have suggested that the rise and subsequent fall could be attributed to the use and then blocking of Cloudflare’s WARP service, which is built on top of Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS service and encrypts and routes your traffic through Cloudflare’s network.
As mentioned, I would be grateful for any context surrounding these changes and measures, and for the other 32 countries, we have seen an increase or decrease in market competition.
Stay tuned to the Pulse Blog, as I’ll be digging into the reasons for these changes to provide more examples for other countries like Romania, which seek to improve their market competition and subsequent Internet resilience.
Photo by Bagzhan Sadvakassov on Unsplash