In a recent interview with the BusinessMirror, Ericsson Philippines and Pacific Islands president and country manager Rajendra Pangrekar said the company is bullish on the growth of broadband as there will be higher demands from sports, commerce, entertainment, languages and gaming, among others.
“We still see a 15 million to 20 million increase in broadband subscribers in the next five years in the Philippines. Moreover, Ericsson projects a 2-percent to 3-percent growth in machine-to-machine communications devices starting in 2012 until 2015, and higher growth beyond.”
Pangrekar said the main driver of the broadband uptake will be the affordability of the devices. On a global scale, Ericsson projects a growth of 500 million subscribers in broadband, widely 10 percent of the total subscriber-identification module penetration of the market, according to Pangrekar.
On a regional level, Pangrekar said the Southeast Asian region offers a lot of growth for broadband, and the Philippines, in particular, with less than 5 percent of the population, having access to broadband technology.
Pangrekar said Ericsson believes there is still growth in the short messaging and voice services. At the same time, the country would experience enormous growth in data and the broadband traffic. The competitive environment in the Philippines has increased, highlighted by declining average revenue per user, and cashflow for the operators.
According to Ericsson, operators will encounter challenges to efficiently address the increasing demand for new services alongside the forces of mobility, cloud and machine-to-machine connections. Ericsson envisions the “networked society,” where everything that benefits from a connection will have one. To enable operators to build a networked society, the company said networks need to be more scalable, smarter and deliver superior performance to ensure profitable delivery of attractive services to consumers, enterprises and partners.
“What that means is that the legacy network has been built for text and voice and not for high-volume heavy growth generated by the increase in broadband use. What we see in the Philippines and the rest of the region is a wave of modernization of network infrastructure, from legacy to the modern offerings driven by cost efficiency and capacity,” he said.
Pangrekar said Ericsson has complete turnkey end-to-end solutions to serve the demand for 3G, 4G and long-term evolution technologies.
He said all the developments on broadband will ultimately benefit the consumer. “It’s an exciting time for the telecommunications industry—the developments in broadband, user applications, and the launch of new devices all mean more value for the consumer. What we are seeing is a complete ecosystem that is much more coherent and offers richer functionality to users. Ultimately, we foresee that we will live in a networked society and that telecommunications will enhance quality of life as never before—and this represents exciting opportunities for all operators.”
Pangrekar said Ericsson is capable of bringing the necessary solutions to make network providers more competitive in a more dynamic environment.
“We have end-to-end solutions for network modernization that would reduce operating expenditures and capital expenditures which will provide a cost-efficient mechanism to deliver voice and data,” he said. “We also manage networks for some of the world’s leading operators. We want our customers to be able to focus on differentiation—how can they create more value for their own subscribers?”
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