TELECOM SERVICES GROWS 8.6% ` 253,915 CR

How Long Before 3G is Passé?

It won’t be an exaggeration to say that FY 2014-15 was a ‘Year of 3G’, even though at its commencement many had expected it to unfold as a ‘year of 4G’. As it turned out, a no-show by Reliance Jio literally put 4G on hold. Now, it is set to be in spotlight in 2016— thanks to RJio’s formal announcement of a commercial launch scheduled for December 2015.

Meanwhile, service providers made the most of the 3G opportunity, which helped them to better not only their data average revenue per user (ARPU) but even blended ARPUs in many cases.

As far as V&D100 rankings are concerned, there were no major upsets. However, telecom services—both voice and data—being vulnerable to commoditization and pricing pressures on their own don’t really help telcos in their goals of value creation.

In today’s dynamically convergent world of information, communication and media technologies, it is imperative for telecom operators to break into new territories on an ongoing basis. Even more important is the need for them to convert those into opportunities lest they start eating into telcos’ revenue. Over- the- top ( OTT) communication services example abound showing how this impacts telcos’ businesses. As the era of social, mobility, analytics and cloud (SMAC) sets in more definitely, the pace of disruptive innovation would only accelerate and make the business environment further challenging for telecom service providers.

So, what are some of the emerging areas of focus that could potentially create new growth streams for telecom service providers? Read on for the five points (Page 18-24) that warrant telcos’ attention in their own interest.