It’s going to be a busy year for telecommunications operators, and they should take all the market trends into account when making investment decisions.
This is according to Analysys Mason, which has released its top 10 2018 headline predictions for telcos:
* Specialist mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) will continue to surprise the IoT market by signing major deals.
* Revenue growth from new enterprise services will offset losses in traditional enterprise revenue.
* Digital transformation will shift from offering new digital services to transforming labour costs in established networks.
* Operators that provide digital methods for customer acquisition and support will win market share from those that lag.
* Service-specific and unlimited data tariffs will win out over volume-based pricing as the foundation for consumer mobile services.
* Growth in consumer spending on OTT video services will outpace traditional pay-TV spending in 2018.
* Operators will deploy Alexa-like AI techniques to engage customers in a more-digital manner.
* A small number of 5G New Radio (NR) trials will start in 2018, but 90% of operators will wait until after 2020.
* The mainstream telecoms market is embracing virtual networks. By 2018, more than USD6 billion in capex will have shifted to virtualised and cloud-based networks; this shift will grow to more than $50-billion in 2022.
* Operators will begin to deploy NGPON-2 as a converged infrastructure to support 5G, FTTP and enterprise services.