Capacity or Coverage? Capacity is the Main Driver

There is a bit of a contradiction in the access business. Service providers generally differentiate on price and speed. You will recall that was how personal computer suppliers once competed, and rarely do any longer.

As much as service providers might prefer to compete on some basis other than price or speed, that seems to be the most-relevant way consumers evaluate offers.

"Mobile subscribers now consider average data speeds to be among the most important factors in assessing the quality of the service offered to them by different operators," says Mark Colville, Analysys Mason principal.

For example, Analysys Mason’s Connected Consumer Survey 2016 found that 18 percent of respondents considering churning to another provider were doing so because of experiencing poor data speeds with their current provider.

While both capacity and coverage are the key requirements for mobile spectrum, the next wave of investments arguably will focus on capacity, rather than coverage, given the growth of demand for Internet access capacity.

“Mobile subscribers now consider average data speeds to be among the most important factors in assessing the quality of the service offered to them by different operators,” Colville says.

                                    

  Global Mobile Data Consumption

source: Cisco