Telecom Lead India: Top 10 global telecom operators’ revenue increased 2.8 percent to $240.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Interestingly, top 10 mobile carriers generated $202 billion in gross profit, up 4.2 percent in 2012.
ABI Research says mobile operators in Western Europe and Africa posted decline of 8.2 percent and 6.9 percent, respectively, in service revenue.
Top 10 telecom operators’ service revenue in Middle East, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific grew 7 percent to 11 percent.
Eastern Europe and North America, however, are barely keeping their service revenue growth in positive territory.
“As the underlying lift from accumulating subscribers has matured, carriers are starting to cast around for additional revenue streams that don’t just boost revenues but also profitability,” said Jake Saunders, VP for core forecasting at ABI Research.
For operators such as China Mobile, MTN, China Telecom, etc. subscriber growth is still a major contribution. ABI Research says these carriers may rely on expanding subscriber bases to drive overall profit for another 3 to 5 years.
For the other carriers in the Top 10, securing a significant market share in their domestic/regional markets, combined with pooling infrastructure resources such as data centers, as well as group-level handset and equipment purchasing, has led to economies of scale.
Telecom operators such as Verizon Wireless, Vodafone Group, AT&T and NTT Docomo have hopped onto IP-based value-added services.
OTT players can potentially sap the revenue opportunities for incumbent mobile telecom players but carriers, such as Verizon and AT&T, are showing that it is possible to put ARPU back on an upwards trajectory through the introduction of, for example, multi-device tariffs and M2M services, according to ABI Research.
