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Getting industry professionals ready for an industry we will not recognize is the purpose of Industry Transformation Boot Camp,  a week-long program explaining what is coming; why it is coming; what people plan to do about it; and why 5G will play such a prominent role in determining the outcome. We are entering another new era, with unprecedented […]

Most of us are comfortable noting that some important telecom products are past their peak, and now are set for permanent decline. Voice provides the best example. Subscriptions to fixed voice have been falling, globally, since 2006 or so. Decline began in 2000 in the U.S. market. Likewise, text messaging revenues are falling, and usage […]

It is a bit of a truism that telecom companies change pretty slowly. That is a problem in an industry that believes it would be better to move at the tempo most large application providers exhibit. But change has been coming fast, from the outside, whether telecom companies are ready for it, or not. And […]

Not every generation of mobile networks has been as “successful” as the others, measured in terms of accounts, customers or revenue generation. The 2G network arguably has been the most profitable, with the longest life cycle. The 3G network arguably has been less successful than 4G. So one question is where 5G will fit. There […]

The fundamental purpose of the fixed network, historically, has been to enable communications service for retail customers, consumer and business. Over time, the role of the network for backhaul and signal trunking has grown, to serve enterprises and other carriers as well as internal purposes such as support of cell tower sites. The role of […]

Ofcom, the U.K. communications regulator, has decided to auction 190 MHz of spectrum in two frequency bands, increasing mobile capacity by nearly a third. Some 40 MHz of spectrum will be auctioned in the 2.3GHz band, which can be used by mobile operators immediately, given handset availability Another 150 MHz of spectrum will be auctioned […]

By 2025, the global telecom service provider industry is going to shrink from 800 firms to about 105, lead by just five global giants, according to Bell Labs. That is a reduction of 87 percent, by 2025. Will you be working for one of those 105 firms in 2025? And, if so, what do you […]

Among the potential 5G business model challenges is a mismatch between the expected value of use cases and hoped-for revenue opportunities. Put simply, the gigabit speeds 5G will enable for “enhanced mobile broadband” are not generally needed, so value will be low. But operators making investments will be looking for a financial return, so there […]

Chinese operators are on track to launch commercial 5G networks by 2020 and are expected to establish China as the world’s largest 5G market by 2025, according to a new study by GSMA Intelligence and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). Mobile operators in China plan to run a phased testing period […]