Telecom Lead India: The number of active LTE connections will grow from 114 million in 2013 to 258 million in 2014.
Yankee Group said the OTT threat is eating into operator revenues. In 2011, mobile operators worldwide generated $769 billion in voice and consumer messaging service revenue. By 2016, this will fall to $697 billion.
Operators will look beyond connectivity for sustainable differentiation. There will be more bundling of OTT communications apps with LTE subscriptions as well as operators increasing their portfolio of cloud-based solutions, including offering bundled content storage and backup with premium LTE services.
Vendors will step up in the customer experience realm. New players including Aito Technologies and Neuralitic will play key roles, as will traditional stalwarts such as Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei.
“As consumers and enterprises increasingly expect always-on connectivity anywhere they go, operators around the world face unprecedented challenges,” said lead author and Yankee Group Vice President Declan Lonergan.
“Not only are they tasked with investing in new infrastructure and rolling out next-generation LTE networks at an ever-faster pace (in a decidedly harsh economic climate), but they must also find innovative ways to monetize those new networks, all while fighting increasingly intense competition from OTT vendors intent on stealing away their bread-and-butter voice and messaging revenue,” Lonergan added.
Recently, TelecomLead.com reported that Mobile broadband services revenue in Latin America to grow to $34.41 billion in 2017 from $6.74 billion in 2011. The substantial increase will be driven by increasing demand for mobility, penetration of smart devices, and convergent services and bundles. By the end of 2011, handsets already accounted for 80.5 percent of all mobile broadband connections.