Developing a successful value-added service business is essential for future revenue growth for wireline operators. Of such services IPTV is currently one of the biggest opportunities, as it not only opens up the broadcast TV market to telecoms operators but also a whole realm of possibilities around...

This report examines residential femtocells, also called cellular home gateways. These are small cellular access points which provide cellular wireless access inside the home and open up new business opportunities for the mobile operator. 3G home gateway solutions are still in their early development...

The growth in mobile broadband during the past 12 months has been staggering and has taken Europe’s mobile operators by surprise. At the end of 2007, Vodafone reported a 58% year-on-year increase in global mobile broadband subscribers and Telekom Austria had 290,000 mobile broadband subscribers. 2008...

Web 2.0 is a loaded term that is currently subject to enormous volumes of hype. Different communities define Web 2.0 in different ways, which can be confusing. However, the very fact that Web 2.0 is touted as being so many things underlines its importance. Web 2.0 encapsulates everything about the next...

Mergers and acquisitions have become an important part of the telecoms industry in recent years. With over a hundred mergers and acquisitions taking place between 2006 and 2007 from the top ten operators only, and an attached value of over €40 billion, there is no doubt that today’s telecoms industry...

In 2004, Mike Cansfield wrote a paper called ‘Beyond managed services: how far can a telco go’, which concluded that the fusion of IT and telecommunications to form ICT (Information and Communications Technology) offered great prospects for telcos. BT was one of the first to realise the potential of...

In the 1990s, the business consultancy practices of the majority of the Big Five accountancy firms (Ernst & Young, PwC Consulting and KPMG) were sold off and snapped up by IT services companies, all eager to add business acumen to their IT portfolios; or in the case of Arthur Andersen spun off to...

3G strategies have changed significantly since the first 3G launches. This report analyses how 3G strategies in Asia-Pacific have evolved since the technology’s launch. It outlines lessons learnt and how future 3G and mobile data strategies should be shaped for current 3G operators and in markets yet...

There is much debate about the use of the word ‘portal’, or ‘carrier deck’ as it is called in the US. One operator we spoke to described the wireless Internet as a honeycomb where the operator’s role is to act as a trusted guide, which is a nice image. The main limitation of the term portal is that...

Ovum has recently published its worldwide forecasts for total connections and ARPU. This report analyses some of the key themes and underlying trends shaping these forecasts. Table of contents Key messages Total connections: emerging markets show strongest growthRegional overview: the China/India...