Mobile Data Revenue Mismatch is Getting Worse

It isn’t news that mobile service providers face bandwidth demands that threaten to outrun revenue while boosting capital spending and operating expense as well.

In Germany, Solon expects a 15-fold increase in data demand over the next five years. The additional network capacity required would almost double network operating expense from 12 percent of revenues in 2011 to 23 percent of revenues in 2016, not to mention the capital investment.

So bandwidth demand is growing much faster than revenue earned from supplying that bandwidth. That's a problem.