E. Jay Saunders, CEO of Digicel TCI who just last month was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil informing Latin American and Caribbean telecommunications companies on why they are better positioned to financially benefit from their 4G investments – specifically their Long Term Evolution (LTE) investments – than North American telecommunications companies, was in Barcelona, Spain on the 23rd May speaking at the LTE World Summit 2012 on the topic “Business Opportunities that ‘scream’ out for LTE: How operators can utilize LTE to become relevant again”. While at the summit, E. Jay also shared the stage with Mark Harrop, (Director of Devices, Mobility and Innovation, BT Wholesale, UK) for a panel discussion on “Accelerating Broadband Access in Rural Areas”; and he participated in a TV interview for Telecoms.com (to be aired in June).
During his presentation, E. Jay pointed out that combined global revenues from Cloud services and mobile advertising was approximately US$44 billion dollars in 2011 and that total revenues from the same are expected to grow to US$121 billion dollars in 2015. Turning to the telecommunication companies in the audience, E. Jay asked “What percentage of those revenues are you going to capture?” Currently telecommunication companies globally are not well positioned to capture any of those revenues, and it would be remiss of them after having financed the huge CAPEX requirements to rollout LTE – the most advanced wireless telecommunications standard to date – which by its very design will cannibalize traditional voice and SMS revenues, to not attempt to capture some of the revenues coming from the new areas that their investments in LTE is making possible such as Cloud services, video streaming, and mobile advertising, stated E. Jay.
Micaela Giuhat, vice president of product marketing at GENBAND, a company who is poised to play a major role in assisting mobile operators in meeting subscribers’ future expectations for innovative, empowering and personalized services through a unique portfolio of LTE and IMS-enabled security, control and application layer products, such as Mobile Life and Office, stated that “GENBAND considers LTE to be the catalyst of a new and dramatic advance in the evolution of the communications industry, and one of the highlights of the LTE World Summit was the presentation from Digicel’s E. Jay Saunders. It was by far one of the most positive and well thought out presentations, with concrete examples on how to really take advantage of LTE. Amongst long discussions on what makes an LTE business case, E. Jay’s speech was not only reaffirming that there is a business case for LTE, but also a huge upside that service providers can easily capitalize on.”
Some of the other speakers at the conference were:
Micaela Giuhat, Vice President Product Marketing, GENBAND;
Mark Harrop, Director, Devices, Mobility and Innovation, BT Wholesale, UK;
Luis Angel Sanchez, Head of Innovation 2.0, Telefonica, Spain;
Carlos Domingo, President & CEO, Telefónica R&D. Director of Product Development and Innovation, Telefónica Digital;
Takehiro Nakamura, Director & 3GPP Chairman, NTT DoCoMo;
Karim Lesina, Executive Director of International External Affairs, AT&T;
Daniel Lönnblad, Director, Sony Ericsson;
