Mobile technology is at a transition point even larger than the shift to 2G or 3G, according to SAP AG, and the company has collected perspectives from across the wireless industry looking at how operators, vendors and application developers are coping and thriving in a new era of mobile networks.
“User expectations are skyrocketing with the advancement of smart devices, tablets and high-speed IP-based networks,” said John Sims, president of SAP mobile services. “These changes bring an abundance of opportunities to the providers in the industry that are forward-thinking and adaptive in their strategies and capabilities.”
Diarmuid Mallon, head of global mobile marketing programs for SAP AG, said that the business cases and business models across the wireless ecosystem have changed radically over the past few years, and now operators and vendors have to figure out how to cope with the new business landscape for networks and services.
For instance, the company’s new report on the wireless ecosystem shows that drivers for MetroPCS to become the first North American operator to deploy LTE were not simply increased network speed. The company also received new benefits by tapping into economies of scale associated with LTE as a global standard which were not available to it as a CDMA operator, plus increased network efficiency and improved voice quality for customers.
“Mobile broadband wasn’t the lead business driver,” Mallon added. “The drivers for operators differ from the consumers’ perception.”
MetroPCS was one of the contributors to SAP’s Mobile Operators Guide, from operators and vendors providing insight on operators, trends and best practices in the wireless industry.
Mallon also noted that despite the challenge that over-the-top content and application providers pose for operators, some carriers are meeting that challenge by developing their own rich communications services and playing to their unique strengths as carriers for providing reliability and reach through cross-carrier collaboration, such as services offered by Telefonica across its wireless group, and others in Europe. He said that operators also need to find new ways to get better value out of the legacy services, such as SMS, that they offer to customers.
“We’re at a fork in the road,” Mallon said. “Going to 4G is going to be, fundamentally, a much bigger change than 3G or 2G were. It really is changing the fundamental network under the operators – and at a perfect time, because the business drivers and business models have all changed. You’ve got this new network for a new era of mobile, and it’s really exciting to see where that will take us.”
