By 2016, two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video.
Between 2011 and 2016, machine-to-machine (M2M) traffic will grow at a compound
annual growth rate (CAGR) of 86 percent and mobile cloud traffic at a CAGR of
95 percent. This escalating growth in third-party applications and services is
radically transforming the competitive telecommunications landscape. Communication
service providers (CSPs) once dominated the end-to-end service experience. Now,
over-the-top (OTT), cloud and M2M providers are gaining commercial acceptance
and upending traditional business models. They are already siphoning off more
than 50 percent of the annual mobile data applications revenues.3
To succeed in this intensely competitive market, CSPs have to move up the
mobile data value chain. They have to explore new service models by forging
value-added business relationships with OTT application providers. Furthermore,
CSPs have to rethink the way they view their network, optimizing it as a
platform for innovation and applications as well as connectivity.
