"You Can Only Do Pipe So Long"

Some of the language used by speakers at CommunicaAsia 2017 was instructive, especially since, in much of South Asia and Southeast Asia, mobile still is growing pretty fast. But telecom products are products like any other. At some point, given enough time, every potential customer has become a customer, and markets become saturated, ending growth.

“You can only do pipe so long,” said YTL Communications CEO Wing Lee, talking about his firm’s strategy, which does emphasize being the fastest 4G provider in Malaysia but also has created an ecosystem around 4G connectivity, as well as creating its own “Altitude” smartphone that retails for less than US$90, he said.

That sentiment was echoed by Eiichi Sato, NTT East Japan division general manager, talking about the state of fiber to the home in Japan. “It is difficult to further stimulate demand in the saturated broadband market by simply offering high bandwidth,” he said.

The consumer market is “stagnated,” he said. As a result, “new value creation is needed,” said Sato. “Consumer internet seems saturated.”

Johnny Zhang, Huawei Southern Pacific director of fixed broadband business strategy and network, commented that “growth is slowing” in the markets Huawei addresses.

That, in a nutshell, is the reason 5G matters, particularly as a platform for internet of things use cases. In many developed markets, we simply are running out of things to sell customers on high-capacity fixed or mobile networks.