Reading the Tea Leaves with Five Telecom CEOs at Mobile Asia Congress

The Mobile Asia Expo in Shanghai is Asia's largest annual mobile industry gathering, with 70,000 people expected to attend this year's event, including many of the Who's Who of Asian telecoms.  I just returned from it, where my team also released their latest work on connected living, the "Next Five Years in Asia".

But the most enjoyable part of the MAE, as always, is listening to the CEOs.  Here are some of the important points from the keynotes of five of the main speakers. Indian telecom CEOs would do well to go through these too:

I. Franco Bernabe, Chairman GSMA and CEO, Telecom Italia

• Three key themes for the industry today - Privacy and Security; Regulation; Adjacent Industries
• Network operators should converge on “One API”
• Operators must drive Near field communications
• Mobile Money for the unbanked remains critical

 II. Anne Bouverot, Director General GSMA

• Asia will be home to 1.9 billion individual mobile subscribers in 5 years
• Mobile contributes $1 trillion to Asia-Pacific GDP and provides 16 million jobs
• Thus, Asia will continue to play a key role in global telecom

III. Chairman Guohoa, China Mobile thinks the smart network is key

• The Smart Network is key
• China Mobile expects 12x mobile data growth in the next 5 years
• By the end of 2013 China Mobile will cover 100 cities and 200,000 base stations with 4G LTE
• The key to the future is "Smart" everything in the network...offloading, sensing, control and delivery
• Super-segmentation and micro-marketing from big data
• TD-SCDMA devices: expect to sell 120 million this year

IV. Suk-Chee Lee, CEO Korea Telecom

• The industry must act together now
• KT’s fixed and mobile revenue declined from $8.1 billion in 2008 to $5.8 billion in to 2012
• KT’s SMS volume declined from 3.5 billion in 2008 to 1 billion in 2012
• KT’s IP-based revenue rose from $3.3 billion in 2008 to $5.2 billion in 2012
• Telcos must aggregate customer bases to create a global market for virtual goods

5. David Thodey, CEO Telstra

• Recognise the power of the consumer
• Primacy of the network: Smarter networks, RAN architecture, Spectrum management, Smarter devices, Smart pricing, Managing top 1%, New businesses, WiFi offload
• Value-based pricing to link price to quality: Quality of service, Shared data plans, Experience-based offers, Customer vs Network perspective

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.