440 Cities Might Drive Communications Growth by 2025

Anyone familiar with communications network economics also knows that the “easiest” places to build networks are dense urban areas, where the highest degree of resource sharing is possible.

So it is noteworthy that researchers at McKinsey & Company now predict that four billion people deemed “consumer class” will live in “developing” regions by 2025, up from around one billion in 1990.

According to McKinsey, the new members of the “consumer class” will have incomes high enough to classify them as significant consumers of goods and services, and around 600 million of them will live in 440 cities, largey in “emerging markets.”  

McKinsey suggests just 440 cities, only a few of which will be “megacities,” will account for “close to half of expected global GDP growth between 2010 and 2025.”

Likewise, 600 cities globally will generate nearly 65 percent of global economic growth by 2025.

But observers of the communications business also will know something else. As it will make sense for the largest, best capitalized firms to concentrate on the urban areas with high percentages of consumer class customers, that very concentration will leave some significant opportunities in rural and other areas where business cases are much more difficult.

So where regulators allow competition, and do not create barriers to innovation, smaller firms are sure to spring up to serve unmet needs.