Technologies today are developing too fast bringing new opportunities and widening horizons for both businesses and consumers. The extreme tech development is a win-win game: services providers get a chance to stand out from the row of their rivals while clients have an opportunity to enjoy all the benefits of cutting-edge offerings.
All these things can be applied to the global telecommunications industry as well. The major players are pushing the boundaries of development and are interested in establishing sustainable and mutually relations with all the market participants with a special focus on the customers (as it is exactly that very group that is bringing money to the industry and will potentially continue doing it in a long-term perspective).
Today the share of traditional services in the common industry’s revenue is constantly decreasing. When we speak about traditional services, we refer to fixed line, traditional cable television, and mobile communications which are gradually replaced by new technologies.
Yes, traditional mobile communications are also on this list.
At the current moment, traditional operators have a range of serious reasons to worry about their future as such technologies as 5G and M2M are already ready to win the market.
The revenues from traditional mobile voice services are decreasing. And it is predicted that this trend will continue and even gain momentum.
5G and AI as top priorities
Nowadays 5G is probably the most widely discussed technology when it comes to mobile services. While 4G has already moved from the category of “advanced services” to the “must-have” category, 5G has started its way to the mass market. Though some countries still haven’t access to it, experts expect that by 2023 there will be over 370 mln 5G connections globally which will bring $88 billion in operator-billed revenues.
It is also believed that operators will apply AI-powered tools and systems to new kinds of voice services to generate additional revenue.
CPaaS (communications platforms as a service) model
Experts believe that to stay afloat mobile network operators need to introduce new ecosystems that will unite various technologies such as voice, messaging and digital assistants. Realization of such an initiative may be rather feasible for operators as it will provide a new vision on emerging voice services as well as facilitate access to them.
VoLTE is a winner?
If you think that today such apps as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have already reached the top of their development, it’s not true. Their growth will continue. Such a popularity of these apps can be explained by several factors. Low cost and extensive functionality are among of them.
Operators should bear in mind the idea that if they change nothing in their voice services and their pricing, they just won’t be able to survive in this competition. Of course, it’s impossible to believe that operators will just lower their prices on voice services (it is absolutely not sensible).
Nevertheless, the launch of new voice solutions may help to change the situation. It is recommended to introduce new technologies built in accordance with the CPaaS approach as VoLTE (Voice over LTE), for example. It is even forecasted that in 2022 the number of VoLTE users will exceed the number of OTT voice app users though even now in 2019 it sounds rather surprising.
MVNOs to win the world?
Even some years ago it was difficult to suppose that the MVNO model would ever have the second chance. Such operators used to have various challenges starting from their inflexibility and ending up with the complexity of performing service works. But the time has changed and now thanks to cloud technologies the MVNO sector has received a great push.
Cloud-based communication platforms can provide all the back-office systems that are necessary to become an MVNO and to be able to offer fantastic and extremely reliable services. It’s highly possible that this chance will be mostly taken not by operators but by brands that are interested in entering this constantly developing market. As you see we really have what to wait for. The future of mobile telecommunications services really seems to be rather exciting as a great number of innovations will be already here soon.
