Amidst the pandemic, telcos are undergoing fundamental shifts that will decide their future and the role they’ll play in the ever-changing digital ecosystem. In the latest research-based whitepaper from DOCOMO, they are looking at how progressive telcos have been diversifying their revenue streams, especially partnering up with popular digital services, and what this all means for the consumer.
For a sector often seen as reluctant to change, telcos have innovated and changed dramatically over the past two decades. And the ongoing pandemic has accelerated these transformations for those that wanted to stay competitive.
Some of the challenges telcos had to tackle were:
- Fragmenting TV and video markets
- Subscriber losses and difficulty growing average revenue per user
- Increased content costs and falling margins
- High levels of capital investment to support new infrastructure, including fiber and 5G
- The proliferation of OTT platforms forcing telcos to significantly reduce the price of data
To overcome them, telcos have been forced to rethink their traditional offerings and diversify their revenue streams. Some powerful ways to do that turned out to be digital service bundling in partnership with OTT services and direct carrier billing as a convenient way to pay for the added subscriptions and in-app payments.
And this directly translates into growing revenues – the telco revenues via direct carrier billing are predicted to reach $66 billion by 2025, constituting a 68% uplift from 2020.
At the same time, SMS revenue in the years 2020-2025 is expected to only contribute $37 billion, declining by 44%. The trend here is clear.
Download this whitepaper from the DOCOMO site to read more about how telcos are meeting the demands of today’s consumers, including:
- How digital payments help grow telco revenues
- How the introduction of 5G will affect this growth
- Expert commentary and predictions in the telco space growing forward
