Mobile broadband is the single largest opportunity for operators to grow revenue as other mature streams, such as voice, plateau, a new report notes.
Research company, Ovum says global telecom operator revenues hit more than $2 trillion in 2012, of which 60% went to mobile operators. While overall revenue growth is expected to be minimal, Ovum says some segments will still have above-average growth and significant incremental revenues over the next five years at each level of the value chain.
Its new report, New Revenue Opportunities in Telecoms: 2013-16, shows that mobile broadband is the single largest opportunity for telcos to claw back revenue. Forecasts show mobile broadband growing 19.2% annually and generating $122.9 billion in incremental revenue between 2013 and 2016.
"The recovery from the 2009 recession has been weak, and the ongoing global fiscal crisis continues to present a risk to the telecoms industry," says John Lively, chief forecaster at Ovum.
"Over the next three to four years, both fixed and mobile operators will face the same fundamental challenge: to increase new sources of revenue fast enough to offset the decline in mature services."
Big push
Locally, operators are investing in network infrastructure on the back of growing demand for mobile data due to a lack of fixed infrastructure. Telkom has less than four million active lines throughout a country in which mobile penetration is high.
Richard Hurst, Ovum's emerging markets analyst, says recent results from operators such as MTN and Vodacom show that growth in broadband is way ahead of that of voice.
In November, Vodacom said voice revenue across the group gained 7.3% in the first half of the year compared with 2011, while data revenue grew 13.5% year-on-year and the group saw a 42.5% growth in data traffic.
MTN saw data revenue grow 40.4% in constant currency in the first half of its 2012 year, while airtime and subscriptions only gained 13.1%. Data made up 10% of total revenue, up from 6% in 2011.
Hurst says, while SA has seen a bit of a voice price war, data has yet to drop to more affordable levels. There should be some give in data prices this year, which - coupled with a lack of physical infrastructure - will drive up the use of mobile broadband, he says.
Locally, data as a revenue driver will be even greater than in other countries, where there is fixed infrastructure, Hurst adds.
Other segments with double-digit revenue growth over the next five years include public cloud, enterprise Ethernet, IPTV, and managed/hosted IP voice, notes Ovum.
Share