Go out mobile! Why not? But...

In the past few years, we increasingly heard mobile operators speaking offering fixed broadband services. Such offerings have emerged in the past months, even from large multinational operators, such as Vodafone or Orange. Why? They are facing with declining voice revenues (voice ARPU is down for years) due to fierce competition, high pricing, and simultaneously mobile data and non-voice revenues are not significantly taking off. It is clear now that 3G (UMTS or CDMA2000) will not be the expected mass market vector for offsetting voice markets decline. It is why mobile operators turn themselves towards the only fast-growing, mature market in the short and mid term: fixed broadband. That means mobile operators have to go outside their core business, sometimes in “fair competition” with their parent (fixed incumbent) company, that simultaneously try to sell quadruple play packages (including mobile). As an example, SFR is offering DSL-based access and Neuf Cegetel is entering the mobile market in France. It cannot be a long-term strategy, unless consolidation. The goal of going out mobile is to retain customers waiting for broadband mobile services. Well, but costs of implementing and running this strategy should be recoup in a 3 to 4 years time, the delay necessary to introduce a new wireless broadband technology (LTE, WiMAX, or 4G.). That means that time to market is essential, but that they must carefully choice the technology (DSL, WiMAX, LLU, ..) and choice the appropriate way to provide it: buy a fixed operator (O2 with Be in the UK), resell existing packages (Vodafone in the UK) , enter the local loop unbundling (LLU) or bitstream access. An error can be fatal.