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By 2025, global 5G services could be generating $250 billion in revenue, some project. What that means is not as clear as you might think. Some look at such numbers without subtracting losses in other existing product categories. That always is an issue with new generations of mobile networks. In 2016, global mobile revenue was […]

The conventional wisdom is that 5G is going to create new revenue sources for mobile operators. That undoubtedly will prove true, to an extent; and perhaps to a significant extent. What remains unclear is whether 5G actually will produce a net increase in mobile broadband revenues, even if 5G produces a gross increase in such […]

A good portion of the business model for AT&T’s new first responder network will come from spectrum sharing.  Spectrum sharing fundamentally is important because it can change the business model for existing and new potential providers of communications services, much as increased availability of unlicensed spectrum likewise allows incumbent and new service providers to create […]

One way of understanding why the Internet of Things (and 5G) is important is to view it as the next generation of computing, the long-predicted “era of pervasive computing.” The other insight is that pervasive computing is not built primarily on direct use by humans, but embedded sensors and processing in all manner of devices, […]

Global spending on internet of things (IoT) is forecast by IDC to grow 16.7 percent year over year in 2017, reaching just over $800 billion in revenue. By 2021, global IoT spending is expected to total nearly $1.4 trillion in spending on hardware, software, services, and connectivity, IDC forecasts. The IoT use cases that are […]

A reasonable person could argue that consolidation was necessary in the Indian mobile market, which has been among the most-competitive in the world, in terms of the number of suppliers. In most other markets the policy issue is whether four leading operators or only three are sufficient to produce innovation, consumer benefits, but also sustain […]

It might seem odd to hear Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam say “I can’t tell you 10 years from now what at top line revenue is going to look like for Verizon,” that is a practical observation about what his firm has encountered in the past, and what it can expect for the indefinite future. You […]

AT&T believes that, with a move to pervasive computing (which is one way to describe what “internet of things” is about), there is an inherent ability to embed higher-value operations into the network. “The network itself moves from a connection to an experience that can include the compute,” said John Donovan, AT&T chief strategy officer. […]

Artificial intelligence might prove to be a very-important driver of incremental revenue growth for mobile operators in the 5G era, for reasons partly enabled by the advent of 5G. So here’s the logic: AI enables many new use cases and apps, and changes business models and revenue streams. AI is computational intense. For many use […]