Leading operators are about to drop more than just a few calls.
An alarming new report from Juniper Research asserts that voice and messaging traffic lost to OTT (Over The Top) players such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Skype will cost network operators $14 billion in revenues globally this year.
That’s a 26% bigger loss than that which operators lost in 2013.
The report – Mobile Operator Business Models: Challenges, Opportunities & Strategies 2014-2019 – found that in a number of markets, including Italy, Spain and the UK, operator mobile voice revenues had fallen to less than 60% of their value five years’ ago.
IM, VoIP and social media substitution is primarily responsible, resulting not only in lost revenues but “in additional costs due to the scale of signalling traffic.”
