Saturday, February 24, 2024

How Much Opex, Capex Could Mobile Operators Cut?

Most connectivity service providers have programs in place to reduce capital expenditures and operating costs, where feasible. Mobile operators face continuing need to invest in spectrum resources as well as network platforms about every decade, so capex requirements will remain elevated.


Fixed network service providers will, in some cases, be able to better control network capex if they are far down the path of converting their access networks to optical fiber or other high-bandwidth access methods. 


Vodafone plans to cut €1 billion in costs by 2026 through various initiatives. For its part, América Móvil achieved $2.1 billion in cost savings in 2022.


The TM Forum predicts that telcos will achieve 20-percent to 30-percent cost savings by 2025 through intelligent automation and cloud adoption.


Arthur D. Little estimates that network sharing can generate cost reductions of up to 20 percent for the participating operators.


Company

Year

Opex/Rev (%)

Capex/Rev (%)

Verizon

2019

76.5

14.0


2020

75.2

15.6


2021

74.1

14.6


2022

73.5

14.2


2023 (est.)

72.8

13.8

AT&T

2019

74.8

15.6


2020

78.0

14.9


2021

75.4

15.2


2022

74.0

14.4


2023 (est.)

73.2

13.9

NTT

2019

78.2

10.3


2020

77.8

10.8


2021

77.0

11.2


2022

76.5

10.9


2023 (est.)

76.0

10.7

Vodafone

2019

72.3

14.7


2020

73.2

13.8


2021

72.8

14.2


2022

72.0

13.5


2023 (est.)

71.5

13.0


Many have significant hopes that artificial intelligence will help by supporting automated fault detection, self-healing networks, and dynamic power management, for example.


Migrating to cloud infrastructure and virtualization processes reduces some amount of physical infrastructure. Verizon, for instance, aims to have over 20,000 virtual RAN cell sites by 2025.


Infrastructure sharing likewise has been an effective tool for reducing radio access costs for mobile operators, in some markets. 


But opex remains the big potential cost target, as a percentage of revenue. 


Provider

2020 Opex/Rev

2021 Opex/Rev

2022 Opex/Rev

2023 YTD Opex/Rev





Verizon

71.8%

71.1%

70.0%

68.9%





AT&T

70.9%

70.3%

70.4%

69.0%





NTT

50.4%

49.6%

48.9%

48.6%





Vodafone

66.4%

65.2%

64.4%

63.5%






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