Having been forced to adopt an innovative approach to the mobile market by its lack of size, the CEO of 3UK, Kevin Russell, claims that data now accounted for 94 per cent of all traffic across its network, compared with three or four years ago when it was around 15-20 per cent.
Being the No. 5 operator in the UK, 3 has taken a radically different route to gaining subscribers by actively promoting data services, such as mobile VoIP, that have been shunned or blocked by the other much larger incumbents. According to Russell, the rapid increase in data traffic has been due to the growth in internet services such as Skype and MSN. "For example, the number of Skype minutes being used has increased by 6,600 per cent since 2006, from 90,000 to 600 million minutes."
Despite the upheavals that have already occurred within the industry, Russell believes that there will be ‘more changes in the next five years than we have seen in the previous 15'. "There will be a tsunami like wave of change coming, which the whole industry will have to adapt to."
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Mobile Today
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