Flat revenues for mobile service providers in developed nations continue to put pressure on infrastructure costs. Faced with ever-growing expectations from subscribers that require costly network upgrades, and without the pay back of higher ARPUs, two trends are emerging: firstly, the rise of tower providers who have been increasingly acquiring sites and structures from MNOs and broadcasters; secondly the virtualisation and cloudification of the mobile network so that network can be run in third party data centres. Both of these trends mean that the industry is moving towards acquiring access to network infrastructure and assets ‘on demand’.
This track will explore this transition towards ‘on demand’ shared mobile infrastructure, its potential to reduce overprovisioning of equipment and clutter on our streetscapes, and other sustainability silver linings.
