A recently released report from Juniper Research on mobile operators provides a mixture of good news as well as bad news. The good news is that projected revenue for operators is set to rise to over $ 1 trillion by the year 2016.
The bad news is that the report also predicts that the costs faced by these mobile network operators are set to increase at an even higher rate, while the revenue will eventually begin to flat-line.
This will occur due to a combination of market saturation in conjunction with a fall in average revenue per user on the one hand and increased costs of handling mobile data traffic on the other hand.
If mobile operators wish to prevent such a catastrophe from occurring they need to start taking preventive and corrective steps right away. Juniper’s report also provides a few suggestions that the operators can implement in the near future. According to the author, Dr Windsor Holden, there is of course no simple or single solution that would be applicable to all operators. Operators need to study their own business model and use whatever steps are most applicable to them on a case by case basis.
Some of the suggestions include, offering integrated rate plans along with a wide range of segmented pre-paid and post-paid tariffs. Operators can also try to enhance their revenues in the cloud, on machine-to-machine and mobile financial services by leveraging their existing assets.
Second tier networks that have a much lower traffic could benefit by maintaining flat-rate plans for data bundles. Integrated mobile broadcasts can also serve to increase the revenue generated through 3G services, by improving capacity.
Another significant suggestion involves the transition from expensive fossil fuels to green networks and base stations. This particular move will not only improve cost efficiency, but will also be applauded by environmentalists.
