To the extent that mobile voice, then mobile broadband have driven global industry revenues for most of the last 20 years, and to the extent those services reach saturation, the question of “what comes next?” must be asked.
That is why edge computing, internet of things, virtual networks, autonomous vehicles and other new products get talked about and examined so much, or why a growing number of telcos are diversifying into additional and different lines of business.
Some trends in the global telecommunications business are obvious, even if local patterns can vary substantially. On a global basis, the fixed network voice business peaked around the turn of the century, and has been declining since then, according to International Telecommunications Union data.
Use of the fixed network has gradually shifted to support for broadband internet access as voice subscriptions have fallen.
source: World Economic Forum, ITU
Mobile service now is the primary way human beings use communications and mobile networks increasingly are the way humans access internet apps and services as well.
But as mobile accounts have exceeded 100 percent (accounts, not persons), and as mobile broadband (internet access) has climbed above 80 percent, the limits to either mobile subscriptions or mobile broadband as the industry revenue driver seem inescapable.
That makes the question of how to discover or create big, scalable revenue sources beyond connectivity services crucially important. An argument can be made that strict reliance on connectivity revenues is a strategy that leads to firm decline and death.
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