But more work required to recouple revenues to traffic
Mobile data services revenue will total $314.7 billion in 2011, a 22.5 percent increase from 2010 revenue of $257 billion, Gartner Group has forecast. The analyst added that by 2015, data revenue will reach $552 billion. Yet Gartner warned that to profit from this growth carriers will need to introduce flexible and personalised pricing plans.
Jessica Ekholm, principal research analyst at Gartnerr, said, ”Data revenue will continue to grow but at a much slower rate. This is causing a decoupling between revenue and data traffic, and it is also creating an increase in network costs for carriers as they try to sustain growing data traffic.”
Gartner said that a growing number of mobile connections — 5.6 billion in 2011 and 7.4 billion by 2015 — will lead to higher demands on communication service providers’ (CSPs’) data networks. Gartner also expects mobile data usage per connection to increase throughout the forecast period.
Accordingly, the analyst said that carriers would increasingly start moving toward offering more flexible and more personalised data plans, which, it said, should help capture a larger mobile data user base.
“What carriers currently need are innovative ways to increase data revenue while finding smart solutions to manage a growing demand in data,” said Sylvain Fabre, research director at Gartner.
“Ultimately, it will be the consumer who chooses the content he or she wants to use, and carriers need to ensure that the quality of experience is good. A substandard user experience may lead to higher churn.”
Gartner outlined a commonly-held view within the industry – that carriers should investigate the pros and the cons of more customised pricing plans, such as tiered pricing, a la carte and usage-based plans, carefully weighing additional costs and future benefits. Additionally, CSPs should look to offer increased flexibility in pricing and introduce add-on pricing models, in which users are able to add data access when they want to. These add-on pricing models could include paying for additional usage and additional speed, and charging a fee for voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or for gaming.
“Carriers should focus on increasing the level of clarity and the transparency of their mobile data contracts in order to make the majority of customers feel more at ease in using data services. This is particularly important when it comes to data roaming,” Ms. Ekholm said. “Offering clients various ways of being able to track and monitor their data usage would help carriers receive a larger amount of revenue from more profitable lower-usage, medium-pay users.”