At a time when traditional telcos' voice service revenue continues to decline every quarter, it's not surprising to see them banking on broadband as their new growth engine. And their bet is not all for naught.
According to a new Ovum study, wireline broadband revenues will surpass voice revenues for the first time next year. This year will be the last year where consumer voice revenue will be higher than broadband, with each segment reporting $176 billion and $167 billion, respectively.
In 2012, the two revenue streams will switch places. Broadband access will generate $180.5 billion in worldwide revenues, while voice will see only $158.6 billion in revenues. By 2016, worldwide voice lines will decline from 685 million to 560 million, while broadband lines will increase 7 percent to 776 million.
Charlie Davies, an Ovum analyst said that the increase in broadband subscribers "will be driven by consumers continuing to shun their landline in favour of the mobile phone and the greater need for fixed broadband in the home to meet the demands of increasing video traffic, more applications and content in the cloud and more connected devices."
Davies added that telcos can't rely on broadband revenue alone to completely offset ongoing voice line revenue losses. He said that "telcos to find a role and further revenues from new service lines" including video and cloud-based services.
For more:
- telecoms.com has this article
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