Will 5G Drive Higher Business Customer Revenues?

So who is right: customers who mostly claim they are willing to spend more for 5G than 4G, or suppliers of 5G, who mostly believe a price premium will not be sustainable?

A recent global Gartner survey revealed that 75 percent of respondents at end-user organizations would be willing to pay more for 5G mobile capabilities. Only 24 percent of the survey's respondents would be unwilling to pay more for 5G than for 4G.

The survey also found that respondents from the telecom sector tend to see 5G migration as a matter of gradual and inevitable infrastructural change, rather than as an opportunity to generate new revenue, Gartner notes.

With the important caveat that survey respondents often say one thing and do another, the use cases suggest incremental service provider revenue is possible, but mostly because there are many new use cases related to internet of thing, meaning a new class of connections will be required.

Also, even if most of the end user respondents think their organizations would be prepared to pay more for 5G, few (eight percent) expect 5G to deliver cost savings or increase revenues. That might suggest the respondents are incorrect about the price increases.

End users tend to see 5G as a network evolution (59 percent) and only secondarily as an enabler of digital business (37 percent).

On the other hand, the end user responses also suggest why the belief in incremental revenues has some foundation. The survey found that almost half the respondents intend to use 5G to access videos and fixed wireless capabilities. The former is unlikely to drive incremental spending, but the latter could, in many instances.

The reason is akin to the possible implications of software-defined wide area networks. In principle, fixed wireless could allow new high-bandwidth connections where they are today not economically attractive, as SD-WAN might do the same for business data connections.

Some 57 percent of respondents believe that their organization’s main intention is to use 5G to drive Internet of Things (IoT) communication, and that might well prove to be correct.

Some might argue, with persuasiveness, that 5G will offer new capabilities primarily for very-high bandwidth applications, and conversely for very-low bandwidth connections used by some IoT sensors, or use cases where low latency is a necessity.

source: Gartner

Average Global Fixed Network Internet Access Price Close to $80/Month

On average, global fixed network internet access, adjusted on a purchasing power parity basis, runs between $50 a month to $80 a month, according to Point Topic. That might come as a surprise, since average prices near $80 hold for countries as disparate as India, Turkey and the United States.

As always with internet trends, there is a difference between peak, average and dynamic range of speeds. Some countries with relatively high “average” costs also have high dynamic range. In other words, a relatively small number of high cost connections can occur at the same time as large numbers of low-cost accounts.

In the second quarter of  2017, the average monthly charge for residential broadband services remained at $105, unchanged since the first quarter of 2017.  At the same time, the average download speed provided to residential subscribers continued to climb and was 135 Mbps, compared to 124 Mbps in the first quarter of 2017.

The average cost per megabit-per-second of speed continues to decline, Point Topic notes.  The average global cost-per-Mbps was US$0.78 at the end of the second quarter of 2017, compared to US$0.85 recorded at the end of the first quarter of  2017. As average speeds continue to climb, it would be reasonable to expect the average price “per Mbps” to continue to decline as well. That has been the trend for decades.

source: Point Topic

source: Point Topic

In some markets, such as the United States and Canada, the median price of internet access now has approached that of video subscription service. The difference is that profit margins for video are moderate to low, and declining, while profit margins for internet access are generally higher.

That is but one reason internet access has emerged as the anchor service for a fixed or mobile service provider. Among the other reasons are the high take rates for internet access and growing usage, while usage and average prices for other services decline.

The End of Cloud Computing?

Peter Levine sees another huge swing in computing architectures, away from cloud computing. The oscillation has been between centralized and distributed computing. The mainframe and cloud eras have been centralized; client-server was distributed.

With the coming era of mobile edge computing, Levine sees another historic change, back to distributed.

Competition Versus Investment: U.S. Regulators Might Face Dilemma European Regulators Have Faced

Telecom regulators and policymakers often face trade offs. They desire maximum feasible competition, but also maximum feasible investment in next generation facilities. The two objectives lie in a state of tension. Too much competition dampens investment. But too little competition also dampens investment.

The trick is finding the balance. In the European Community, regulators have fostered competition so well that incentives to invest now are viewed as having suffered. To create incentives for investment, rules on competition might need to be reworked. As it stands, many believe 5G investment in Europe will lag, compared to other developed markets.

Consolidation now seems inevitable in the U.S. telecom and content markets, but the U.S. market will not be alone. India’s mobile market seems to be on pace to reduce the number of national competitors roughly in half.

And Bell Labs predicts a massive consolidation of the world’s telecom service providers by about 2025.

Consolidation within any given segment of the market is designed to build scale, which boosts revenue and reduces costs. Part of the reason revenue gets a boost is that competition is reduced.

From an antitrust or competition review, it therefore matters how an agency defines “the market.” And we may be at one of those points where some amount of consolidation will be needed to create the cross-industry capabilities survivors will need.

That, in turn, means greater market power in one segment might be a necessary building block for survival in a new market that combines industry segments. In other words, less competition in one segment might be necessary to create the bundled or cross-segment capabilities survivors will require.

Consider the asymmetrical U.S. market positions. Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and Charter have fixed network assets expected to provide backhaul advantages when small cells underpin mobile network capabilities. Sprint and T-Mobile US do not have such assets, which arguably puts them at a disadvantage.

Verizon, AT&T and Comcast have content assets. Sprint and T-Mobile US do not have such assets. Dish Network owns spectrum, but no network and no content assets.

If you assume the future requires competitors that combine access assets (mobile and fixed) with “up the stack” revenue sources, then “less competition” in either fixed or mobile segments of the business, and fewer independent suppliers of content and apps, is going to happen.

So much will hinge on how antitrust officials define the relevant “market,” for purposes of determining competitive impact. By definition, consolidation reduces the number of competitors, and therefore has implications for competition.

But competition in telecom markets might also be heading for a period where ownership of several types of assets (fixed and mobile networks, content and application assets) is necessary for survival.

Much depends on how one views the coming market, and what winners will possess, in terms of assets and capabilities. That, in turn, will affect the definition of the “market,” and what consolidation means for competition in that market.

IoT Already is Driving Connection Growth

The attraction of 5G includes its projected importance as a driver of new internet of things connections. That trend (internet of things connections are a driver of new accounts) already has started.

Growth in the total number of mobile subscriptions was driven by a 14.2 percent increase in the number of machine-to-machine (M2M) connections in 2016, to 7.6 million in the U.K. market, says Ofcom.

source: Ofcom

That is crucial if one considers the chances 5G will drive significant additional revenue on the part of human users.

The problem is that consumers or businesses will only spend so much on all communications services. In the United Kingdom, for example, since 2011, household spending on fixed network voice and mobile voice has dropped.

Spending on fixed internet access services has grown, in large part because more consumers are paying incrementally more for faster speed services that cost more. Faster speed networks both are a response to higher usage, and arguably drive higher usage.

But there are limits to how much a human is willing to spend on access, or various communications and entertainment services. Generally speaking, consumers have substituted one product for another, even if there has arguably been growth in the monthly percent of household income spent on communications.

The point is that, even in the 5G, there are tough limits on how much incremental spending consumers are likely to entertain.

source: Ofcom

source: Ofcom

That is why internet of things and machine-to-machine connections are viewed as so significant: such connections represent a way to grow new accounts without pushing up against consumer spending resistance. Most IoT connections will be purchased by enterprises who have many other value drivers, against which the new connection cost is evaluated.

What are Prospects for Higher Mobile Data Spending on 5G Networks?

Here, in a nutshell, is the challenge for 5G networks, where it comes to the amount of incremental access revenue service providers can earn: consumers or businesses will only spend so much on all communications services. In the United Kingdom, for example, since 2011, household spending on fixed network voice and mobile voice has dropped.

Spending on fixed internet access services has grown, in large part because more consumers are paying incrementally more for faster speed services that cost more. Faster speed networks both are a response to higher usage, and arguably drive higher usage.

As a result, average revenue per gigabyte consumed is falling. “While average broadband revenue per connection has been increasing year on year, the average revenue per GB has been falling; from almost £1 per GB in 2011, to £0.15 in 2016 (a negative 5-year CAGR of 31%), Ofcom notes.

That is essentially the pattern seen in the capacity business, where volume increases do not keep linear pace with revenues earned supplying capacity. At the same time, big app providers increasingly build and operate their own networks, removing much of the demand from the potential capacity market.

source: Ofcom

source: Ofcom

Firms Now Must Look for Growth Across the Ecosystem

As it consolidates horizontally, the telecom industry (access service providers of all sorts) also  has no choice but to look elsewhere within the internet ecosystem for growth, as “elsewhere” is where long-term growth is to be found.

That is not to downplay the near-term contributions greater scale will make. In the near term, firms will merge to create greater scale. But consolidation will not be enough, over the long term.

“It is no longer appropriate to develop corporate strategies, or to assess policy situations, with a narrow focus on a single segment of the value chain, A.T. Kearney analysts have argued.

For access providers (telcos, cable TV, satellite access providers and other internet service providers), that means looking beyond access services for growth (“up the stack,” mostly).

The reason is that value within the ecosystem  is shifting, while participants increasingly are moving into adjacent or other parts of the ecosystem, perhaps nowhere as extensively as in the apps space.

“As players such as Apple, Facebook, and Baidu expand into adjacent segments, their rationale is based on leveraging scale and integrating services and features into their core products and platforms to create barriers to entry,” A.T. Kearney analysts note.

By 2020, perhaps 52 percent of value will lie in applications, while just seven percent lies in internet access. In other words, between 2015 and 2020, the value contribution of internet access will drop 50 percent, as a percentage of total, even if gross revenues climb in many developing markets.

Will early deployment of 5G networks produce gains, and if so, for whom? Some argue that “value” ultimately drives results. If so, then it already is clear that about half  of value within the internet ecosystem, as expressed in revenue, lies in applications, about 14 percent in internet access.

source: AT Kearney

source: AT Kearney

So think about 5G. Will early deployment of 5G networks produce gains, and if so, for whom?

Ignoring for the moment broader answers, such as “users, society, the economy were the winners,” and looking only at the “telecom” part of the ecosystem, one might argue 3G was one thing, and 4G another, so 5G might not produce winners where one expects to find them.

The winners might be found disproportionately in the applications or device segments of the  business, and less in the network infrastructure or service provider parts of the business, for example, and for different firms in each era.

Roughly speaking, one can argue that 3G produced the biggest winners in the network infrastructure and handset segments of the business, mixed results in the service provider part of the business, and important new inroads by application providers.

One problem is that it is not clear there has been any single killer app, killer use case or killer capability that clearly defines the 3G and 4G eras.

For example, if you had to name a single “killer app” for 3G, what would that be? Some would say there was no killer app for 3G.

So some would say it was “mobile broadband ” or “mobile internet access” was the key advance beyond 2G. And many hoped-for new applications did not materialize in 3G, and arguably only became common features in the 4G era (think video calling).

In fact, some might say text messaging (first introduced by 2G networks) that became something of a killer capability for 3G, even if the 3G network did not introduce it.

Others might say the best example of a killer app was  mobile email (think BlackBerry). In fact, it arguably was the rise and fall of that killer app in the 4G era that lead to the demise of Research in Motion (BlackBerry) as a lead force in the devices portion of the ecosystem.

That might lead some to argue it was the “easy to use smartphone” (think Apple iPhone) that suggests the killer feature of 4G networks, or social networking, or multimedia social networking.

Likewise, the killer app for 4G is similarly elusive. Some might argue it was tethering (internet access) that was a killer use case. And it might well turn out that it is entertainment video that ultimately becomes the killer app for 4G.

Right now, we can only guess at whether a 5G killer app, feature, use case, capability or business model might actually emerge. There are two areas where supporters currently believe such developments could occur: internet of things and full substitution for fixed network internet access.

And there is the worrisome 3G precedent: the hoped-for innovation in value and revenue really did not happen until 4G. So it is unfortunately possible that 5G will be more like 3G than 2G or 4G: producing less than hoped for innovation in new services or revenue.

Or, perhaps more accurately, might 5G produce less new revenue than older revenue streams are cannibalized? At a very high level, voice revenue is being cannibalized by mobile data revenue because better mobile internet access means substitute products are available.

The safest bets right now are that internet application providers are going to win, as well as some handset suppliers. Some infrastructure suppliers will benefit, for a while. But it is not so clear that all service providers will win, or will win to the same degree. In fact, there always is the precedent of 3G.

Though the problem with 3G in some markets was operator overpaying for spectrum, and though that is not likely to happen in the 5G era, the business model could still emerge as a big issue.