fp Turks and Caicos

Telecommunications companies should look to gain revenues from cloud services and mobile advertising to help cover the cost of their new high speed 4G/LTE networks, Digicel Turks and Caicos CEO E. Jay Saunders told the LTE World Summit 2012 in Barcelona, Spain, on May 23.

In his presentation — “Business Opportunities that ‘scream’ out for LTE: How operators can utilize LTE to become relevant again” — Saunders pointed out that combined global revenues from cloud services and mobile advertising was approximately $44 billion dollars in 2011 and that total revenues from the same are expected to grow to $121 billion dollars in 2015.

“What percentage of those revenues are you going to capture?” Saunders asked European telecoms representatives.

Currently telecommunication companies globally are not well positioned to capture any of those revenues, and it would be remiss of them after having financed the huge capital expenditures requirements to rollout LTE — the most advanced wireless telecommunications standard to date — which by its very design will cannibalize traditional voice and SMS revenues, to not attempt to capture some of the revenues coming from the new areas that their investments in LTE is making possible such as cloud services, video streaming, and mobile advertising, Saunders said.

LTE stands for Long Term Evolution, the new standard for high-speed wireless data communications. In the U.S., LTE smart phones only became available in 2011, and the service is still limited.

While at the summit, Saunders shared the stage with Mark Harrop, (Director of Devices, Mobility and Innovation, BT Wholesale, U.K.) for a panel discussion on “Accelerating Broadband Access in Rural Areas,” and he participated in a television interview for Telecoms.com to be aired in June.

Also speaking at the summit was Micaela Giuhat, vice president of product marketing at GENBAND. That company expects to play a major role in assisting mobile operators in meeting subscribers’ future expectations for innovative, empowering and personalized services through a unique portfolio of LTE and IMS-enabled security, control and application layer products, such as Mobile Life and Office.

“GENBAND considers LTE to be the catalyst of a new and dramatic advance in the evolution of the communications industry, and one of the highlights of the LTE World Summit was the presentation from Digicel’s E. Jay Saunders,” Giuhat said. “It was by far one of the most positive and well thought out presentations, with concrete examples on how to really take advantage of LTE.

“Amongst long discussions on what makes an LTE business case, E. Jay’s speech was not only reaffirming that there is a business case for LTE, but also a huge upside that service providers can easily capitalize on.”

Some of the other speakers at the conference were Luis Angel Sanchez, Head of Innovation 2.0, Telefonica, Spain; Carlos Domingo, President & CEO, Telefónica R&D. Director of Product Development and Innovation, Telefónica Digital; Takehiro Nakamura, Director & 3GPP Chairman, NTT DoCoMo; Karim Lesina, Executive Director of International External Affairs, AT&T; and Daniel Lönnblad, Director, Sony Ericsson.

Photo: Digicel TCI CEO E. Jay Saunders