Even if “voice” is a vital feature of a mobile phone service, it is driving less revenue and profit for mobile and fixed network operators in the U.S. market. Still, despite declining demand, service providers are using bundling to sustain some amount of demand for a product that, as a standalone product, would arguably have far less demand.
Recent studies by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control have found households buying fixed network voice service represent about half of U.S. homes in 2014. By 2017, the percentage of mobile-only households had climbed to 51 percent, while homes buying fixed network voice represented about 46 percent of locations.
The government’s survey found that more than 70 percent of adults between 25 and 34 were mobile only, suggesting that in some demographics, fewer than 30 percent of households buy a fixed network telephone service.
Without triple play bundling, generally purchased by perhaps 30 percent to 37 percent of U.S. cable TV households, voice take rates would be even lower than they presently are.
Voice, for example, represented in 2015 something on the order of eight percent or so of Comcast’s service provider revenue. In the second quarter of 2017, voice represented about 6.5 percent of Comcast cable communications segment revenue. About 37 percent of Comcast consumer accounts bought a triple play, in the second quarter of 2017.
It is a reasonable bet that nearly all the voice accounts come from triple-play accounts.
Consider current pricing of mobile “voice and messaging” by some leading U.S. mobile operators, which tends to price unlimited domestic usage for voice and messaging at about $20 a month. By some estimates, fixed network voice represented $22 to $30 a month in revenue per line, half a decade ago.
The value of fixed voice arguably is less than that in 2017, but an attribution of $15 a month might be reasonable, in a fixed network context, if $20 is the retail value of a mobile voice-plus text-messaging capability, per line.
Though the value of triple play bundles long has been that it reduces account churn, in the current environment, the triple play also sustains demand for voice services that--absent the bundle--would be significantly lower.
Triple play bundles also increases profits, some studies find. In the U.S. market, single play accounts tend to run between 30 percent and 37 percent, as a rule. Bundles (dual play or triple play) represent up to 70 percent of accounts.
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