Hi Frank - Understood, that you're waiting to assemble the parts of the picture, but here's another piece of the puzzle, in the interim.
As you said upstream, "Other players entering the market free of the aforementioned burdens, however, will naturally have an advantage and may stand to see better margins, initially at least, even if gross revenues --which, for the incumbents, in large part go to paying down their system investments, mentioned above-- are less."
Message 24064411
The following ARCchart article crystallizes other comments on the subject of Vodafone's latest results. Better identified was which revenue components, exactly, are contributing to improved performance.
In contrast to the muddy generalizations made by carriers/operators when pleading their case here, there's more clarity. While there's room for improvement on reporting, and there's no question that voice is experiencing pricing pressure, the results hardly indicate that FMC means ruination.
"Data alone hit £967 million and the importance which this element is now playing for the operator is born out by three simple metrics – while voice revenue increased just 7% year-on-year and messaging revenue grew 9%, data revenue jumped a whopping 49%. Vodafone attributes this almost exclusively to the doubling of 3G devices to over 21 million across the Group. But analysis of the Vodafone figures shows that 3G devices alone are not the driver. It is the culmination of attractive data pricing, improved usability and mobile demand for Web 2.0 services which is brewing to form the prefect data storm. As data pricing erodes along the same path travelled by voice, operators must now identify ways to tap into revenues from web services or else be left exposed when the data hurricane arrives."
arcchart.com
Jim
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