By Sudeep Gupta
While watching TV last night, my son and I saw the movie preview for Tim Burton’s much-anticipated revival of Alice in Wonderland. It got me thinking about my favorite idea from this classic called the Red Queen’s Race. In Wonderland, running a race doesn’t actually get you anywhere, as the Queen explains to Alice. In Wonderland, “…it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” It occurred to me that wireless operators have been running the Red Queen’s Race for quite some time.
Keeping up with swiftly evolving technology— not to mention the public’s voracious appetite for the next course of mobile capabilities— keeps operators on the run just to stay in the race. Ten years ago it was all about voice communication; today, it’s a data-driven marketplace. Services have increased exponentially and operators continually invest billions in their networks to make sure of that. Yet operators’ ARPU (average revenue per user) has stayed about the same – about $50 to 60 per user. In other words, operators are running as fast as they can to keep in the same place.
At our end of the rabbit hole, the customer may be “queen,” but the reality in the wireless industry is that something’s got to give. And that something is operating costs. Operators are universally taking a second look at their expenses and trying to figure out how to keep up in an increasingly competitive market.
In the story of the wireless industry, I guess Md7 would be the Caterpillar who advises operators how to cope with the difficulties they encounter. Like Alice was instructed how to adapt her size to her changing environment, Md7 is helping wireless operators to do the same.
