The Mobile World Congress which starting from today is moving towards its third day seen a common debate which is rounding up among all the carriers saying that they don’t want to be the bad guys – but instead they’re telling customers, governments and Internet companies – it’s time for a change – it’s time to pay up for their network services.
Indian carrier Airtel’s CEO Sunil Bharti Mittal said in a speech: “We’ve become the bad gatekeepers. When somebody watches YouTube on a mobile phone and ends up [with a] big bill, he curses under his breath at the telecom operators. But YouTube is consuming a massive amount of resources on our network. Somebody’s got to pay for that.”
Telefonica CEO Santiago Fernandez Valbuena agreed that his industry has “spoiled” customers, suggesting that it’s been too generous making it possible to upgrade phones rapidly. “It may not make sense nurture the huge turnover,” he said. “Spectrum is very much like a future tax,” Valbuena said. “It’s very hard to have a business model that pays you back in 3 or 4 years. Very few businesses are like that.”
This forms a part of what the carriers are facing over the time to remain relevant in both the fronts, they do sympathize with consumers but on the other end they do are looking out for the answer asking who is going to pay for the data usage – it is a tough call but I feel that carriers chosen the MWC platform as the right path to ask this question.
(Image Credit: CNET)
