The surge in global demand for mobile data services is continuing to radically alter the investment priorities and alliance strategies of some of the industry’s leading telcos. Ronan Shields foresees the revision of network capacity needs in 2012 and beyond.
It seems near incredible that BT began advertising ‘superfast’ mobile internet services as far back as 1998, to little acclaim at the time. Today, most decisions by MNOs, be it over pricing models or improvements in network performance, are made against a backdrop of colossal demand for mobile data services.
At the forefront of this revolution have been western Europe and North America. In these markets, MNO strategies for monetising mobile data have historically amounted to little more than acting as a toll gate for the mobile internet, but that game is now changing with a capacity crunch that’s changing all the rules.
Companies such as Google and Apple have been successful in disrupting previous models for the monetising of mobile data, and the subsequent surge in demand is making everyone rethink their investment plans.
Across Europe, MNOs are largely dispensing with ‘unlimited mobile internet’ bundles, due either to...