Network competition and reducing equipment costs may help -- but it doesn't resolve the retail service challenge of how to monetise bandwidth growth. Charging users more for bandwidth will be unpalatable -- there is already huge pressure on current data caps and charges.

Charging the content and video owners sounds good in theory -- but their business case is fragmenting and, as one TelCon 11 broadcast delegate did point out, advertising revenues can only go so far. Telco service providers may seek to deliver new types high value services -- but telcos track records on rapid services innovation (and collaboration) doesn't give great grounds for confidence.

There is no easy resolution to these issues. It points industry consolidation and reinvention; a clash of business models and industries that only time (and pressure) may resolve.

It suggests an outlook where the economies of scale required for core network investment are explicitly recognised (which we believe would lead to consolidation) and telcos reposition themselves as enablers and platforms in a more complex wholesale/retail ecosystem, with a role for niche regional and specialist providers. It requires more than a strategy of adaptation: it requires fundamental reinvention.

The status quo is not sustainable.