Smart Mobile Broadband (MBB) Operation Realize Value Growth

Smartphones and mobile broadband (MBB) have been driving up mobile Internet and data usage for years which results in significant traffic increase, even doubling in areas of North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. This traffic increase leads to an increase in CAPEX/OPEX but worse yet, MBB traffic increases do not produce corresponding revenue growth. In fact, many carriers only see a slight increase or even flat revenue. In the meantime, carriers are finding that their traditional voice and

messaging businesses are declining.

Their businesses face continuous erosion by OTT players such as WhatsApp, Google, MSN, etc.. For example, China CMCC Guangdong have seen SMS revenue decline by 30% in past two years. In Europe, some analysts even predict another 50% drop of SMS revenue by 2015.

The rise of data traffic and the fall in the traditional voice and messaging business leave few options to carriers and MBB data business is the only viable option without doubt.

GROWTH FOCUS SHIFT FROM VOICE TO DATA

There are major differences between the voice and data businesses. For example, voice customer needs are pretty much the same for everyone - point to point connection. The voice business model is more like scale of economies - the more network coverage, the more people subscribe. On the other hand, for data, customers usually have different needs of content, services, or data volume And the data business model is more about scope of economies – carriers need to develop personalized packages to accommodate different customer needs. Because of that, voice operation focuses on networks or resource management but data business is customer centric–meeting customer demands and delivering user experience.

Recently, Vodafone has made the choice of ”mobile data” as its most important growth strategy. China Mobile also indicated that it would shift business focus from “voice” to “voice + data + application” as a key strategy.

PERSONALIZED PACKAGES AND SERVICES

The telecom services business is evolving from plain voice service to integrated communications include information services, content services, entertainment, and so on. This revolution of telecom requires carriers to transform from being dumb pipes to a smart pipes and to monetize their data business. The challenge for carriers is how to create a MBB oriented operations platform to develop personalized package design and to support differentiated traffic, pricing and user experience.

Source : GSMA, MWC, 2013