>>Now, it's perfectly true that consumers show no interest in mobile
>>multimedia services. ....But they do rather like mobile
>>voice, I think you'd agree. And 3G gives operators the ability to do
>> >>*all* voice by mobile - to completely replace a country's fixed voice
>> >>network.
>
>At this point, I have to say: show me the spreadsheets.
>
>Why is this investment worth what's been spent?
>
>And when do they project that it will be worth that?
Weeelll....
I'm not going to show you *my* spreadsheets, and the operators won't show me
theirs ;)
But Pan-Euro fixed monthly ARPUS (average revenue per user) are about Eu50,
mobile monthly ARPUs are Eu25, and licence fees were just over Eu4 per
current subscriber per month (assuming a 10-year life span). Bear in mind
that with 100m net new subs last year, there are lot of new subscribers who
aren't using their mobiles much yet.
So if you can get the cash together up front to pay for the network, and
achieve a decent market share, then it isn't actually too hard to see how
you might cover your costs. Of course, if you're going into a market in 6th
place with no GSM customers, you're probably stuffed. But you really don't
need to see very much migration from fixed to mobile before you're at first
base.
>By the way, I find it rather unconvincing that one can get
>cheaper mobile than landline in some cases - how do we
>know what's subsidizing what?
In the UK, Orange and Vodafone are mobile only, and you can get a
significant proportion of calls (particularly long-distance) at rates
cheaper than fixed already. Sonera has only a very small fixed business
(c.850k subs), and cut their mobile rates to par with fixed rates several
years ago.
i.e. you don't need cross subsidies fron the fixed business. In any case,
those would be illegal in most countries (certainly in the UK)
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Fri May 18 10:57:47 2001