disruptive

Left a comment on Dean Bubley's post on 3G traffic. Root cause of the industry focus on data revenues lies in its history. Telecom revenues were driven by ARPU/AMPU considerations. Generating extra ARPU from existing customers through adding value can be a strategy. Investing in high AMPU customers is another. Either way, those strategies conflict with technical developments. Therefore, the focus on minutes and SMS is justified on the short and mid run. Current real competition is on voice rather than data.

However, new and exiting services are inspired by the online communities' inventions. This extra value on an NON traffic basis changes operators' core business in the longer term. Trying to sell 3G does not alleviate this. Instead, focusing on wireless broadband to enable added services is a decision for change in the future.

While currently all IP networks enable scores of new and exiting services, old fashioned price per minute does a freefall. Oparators can see all this, but are locked into the dilemma: upgrading to All IP enables them to compete with colleagues in the short run but forces them to change fundamentally in the long run.

Can operators survive that change?