The Explosive Growth Of Mobile Broadband And The Obstacles To Come

By Author: james jacobsson
Total Articles: 2
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The mobile broadband industry has experienced a staggering growth in the demand for its services. This has been fueled in part by the availability of a plethora of web-enabled devices like smart phones and USB flash drives (dongles) that allow high speed internet access from arbitrary locations. Consumers are becoming accustomed to streaming movies and music and making video calls from wherever they might be located.
The other factor contributing to mobile broadband growth is the fact that operators are continuously competing with fixed broadband, and have to lower prices encouraging consumers to use wireless internet with a complete disregard to the overwhelming flow of data traffic. This leaves the operators struggling to come up with new broadband business models as they try to generate enough revenue to deploy broadband infrastructure that is necessary to support the overload of data.
Mobile broadband used to be the sole domain of corporate executives and professionals who travel a lot. But that is no longer true. Students are becoming increasingly dependent on wireless services as they allow easy access to researching ...
... study materials or social networking sites from just about anywhere. Even parents are finding web-enabled portable devices extremely efficient as they go about their busy schedules.
There is an estimated 1.1 billion mobile broadband users across the world today, with a growth rate of 45% for the last four years. The number of subscriptions is expected to quadruple in the next five years, with the growth rate increasing to around 60%. The ceaseless introduction of both new and improved devices that need a wireless, high speed internet access signal huge potential for the mobile broadband industry’s growth in the near future.
The horizon is not entirely empty of dark clouds though. Such tremendous current and expected growth brings its own hurdles with it, leaving the mobile broadband industry a potential victim to its own success. Rising network investment costs and a growing spectrum shortage for Commercial Mobile Radio Services (CMRS) are the two fundamental problems facing operators.
The rapid advancement in broadband technology, with the introduction of 4G in 2006, has led to increased consumer demand for faster, more reliable and wireless internet access. Data traffic per subscription continues to grow, emphasizing the spectrum shortage. This shortage drives up the cost of deploying effective, competitive 4G networks, trapping operators in a vicious circle.
To ensure that the mobile broadband industry maintains its current growth rates, or even increase them as predicted, operators need to come up with new ideas and be prepared to make deals. New broadband business models must be created to find innovative ways of generating revenue that facilitate the deployment of the networks required. Tapping niche markets and exploiting peer-to-peer recruiting by enforcing brand loyalty through incentives, while sharing infrastructure enabling the reduction of cell sizes which increases total broadband capacity leading to spectrum sharing among CMRS providers might prove to be successful strategies easing the mobile broadband industry’s transition into the future at expected growth rates.

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