ORLANDO, Fla. – Cricket Communications CEO Doug Hutcheson says his company has traditionally served the younger, lower income mobile subscribers, but even among these 6 million customers demand is growing for smartphones and the heavy data use that goes with them. Cricket is already offering several Android smartphones as well as the BlackBerry Curve, and says that smartphones accounted for 60% of its handset sales in the fourth quarter. (This number of course does not include the numerous iPhone users who are willing to jailbreak their phones in order to take advantage of Cricket’s pay-as-you-go pricing.)
As one of the newest members of the Rural Cellular Association, Hutcheson delivered a keynote at this week’s RCA Spring Expo. He says that rapidly expanding demand for data is the number one challenge the industry currently faces. Hutcheson says that by 2015, he expects Cricket customers to be using 6 terabytes of data per month. Hutcheson says that one way for carriers to address the issue is by sharing network assets. “Shared network assets allow carriers to cooperate on spectrum and network usage,” says Hutcheson. “It’s a better use of spectrum resources – a big pipe is more efficient than many small pipes. Multiple carriers can support a greater number of cell sites than any single carrier. Shared network assets can deliver lower capital expenditures with shared antennas, radio heads and backhaul.”
Hutcheson pointed out that operators in Europe already share network assets. In the United States, he says reciprocal roaming agreements between carriers are the first step in this direction. Hutcheson admitted that negotiating network sharing agreements will not be easy, but that demand for data and spectrum scarcity, combined with the intensive capital investment required to operate and enhance networks, will make network sharing a necessity.
