News
Grim predictions for mobile operators’ voice revenue suggest that they are being beaten out by over-the-top (OTT) services
According to a new study by Juniper Research, operator voice revenue is predicted to drop by a worrying 45% by 2024.
In 2019, telcos’ voice revenue was measured at $381 billion, but this new study suggests that this sum could fall to just $208 billion in the next five years.
In many ways, third-party OTTs will be to blame for this loss. The study predicts an 88% increase in the number of OTT mobile voice over IP (mVoIP) services availble by 2024, bringing their total subscriber numbers to a whopping 4.5 billion.
Many of these third-party services are free and could be described as piggybacking on operators’ networks – in a sense, the operators are facilitating growth in an sector which is set to decimate their revenue.
The study was not all doom and gloom, however, as the expected proliferation of 5G will facilitate novel mobile voice and video service opportunities. Video-over-LTE (ViLTE) operator revenue is predicted to exceed $33 billion by 2024, mitigating some of the revenue being lost by traditional voice services.
The report advises operators to accelerate their voice-over-5G (Vo5G) and AI-enabled communications platforms as a way of maximising the value of their 5G networks and offsetting the threat faced by OTT service providers.
Also in the news:
