Two years is long enough for Sprint and Clearwire to make a decisive turn to embrace LTE in place of WiMax, Apple to launch two versions of its iPhone, Samsung to emerge as the world's second most important smart phone supplier (by sales volume and profit), long enough for Research in Motion and Nokia to wobble badly and for Microsoft to prepare for what some believe will be its last effort to become relevant in smart phones, and others believe will be its move into the top ranks of mobile operating system market share.
Two years is long enough for "network neutrality" rules to become law, but not long enough for all the practical ramifications to become clear.
Two years is long enough for Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility to make a fundamental shift in pricing of mobile services, where domestic voice and messaging essentially are unlimited use, flat fee services and broadband Internet access is the variable element in the revenue model.
What has not been substantially accomplished is the fundamental strategic challenges, among them the transformation from revenue models based on minutes of voice usage to bytes consumed. What has not changed is the degree of certitude service provider executives have about future business models.
It remains very much a work in progress for service providers to figure out how to create new, widely-adopted services network users want to use and pay for, which presupposes clear understanding of the value proposition an access provider delivers in an "application and device driven" era.
Some of that sense of underlying challenges is as relevant in 2012 as in 2010, when Metaswitch Networks conducted a survey of 165 service provider executives.
In that survey, service provider executives said uncertainty about new services and revenues, plus competition, remain the top concerns over the next decade. That has been true for most of the past decade, and the survey results confirm that the search for new revenue sources and the pressure of competition remain dominant facts of life in competitive and changing marketplaces.
The significant new difference is that telecom regulators—and what they might do—appeared among the top three concerns.
Asked to rank the level of threat, with a "1" being the "greatest" threat, and a "7" being the "least threatening," about 34 percent of survey respondents indicated regulators were the single biggest threat they face, but competition from other cable companies or telcos also are top concerns.
And in a sign of where new threats are perceived, Google is seen as a challenge as big as competition from “other telcos,” the 165-company survey found.
About 27 percent of respondents indicated cable companies were the single biggest threat. Some 20 percent of respondents indicated “other telcos” were the second-biggest threat.
But Google was not far behind cable or telco competition as a perceived threat for all contestants, the Metaswitch survey of service provider executives found. Some 17 percent of respondents said Google posed the single greatest threat to business success over the next decade.
Apple and Microsoft were viewed as the least threatening of seven potential sources of competition, while Skype and other telcos are seen as mid-level threats.
The sobering findings indicate that executives now correctly understand that regulatory risk must be added to the list of top commercial risks for the next decade, even though the search for new revenues, the business models that underlie new services, and staying abreast of competitors remain top issues.
New service creation, especially uncertainty about potential demand, was cited as a huge issue. Some 45 percent of respondents indicated such uncertainty was the greatest of five challenges they face, vastly greater than ability to innovate, regulatory impact, risk of technology failure or brand exposure.
