New-Tech Magazine Europe | Dec 2015 Digital edition

Europe has an Opportunity to Catch Up on the Mobile Front Wassim Chourbaji, Qualcomm

T

he European Union’s Digital Single Market plan offers an

(DSM) that depends on reliable, cutting-edge wireless technology and infrastructure. “More than ever, Europe needs top- class connectivity. This will ultimately determine the success of the Digital Single Market,” Günther H. Oettinger, Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Society, said earlier this year. “We therefore need rules that underpin sustainable, market-based, high- performance fixed and wireless broadband infrastructures for 2020 and beyond. And it is not just about the telecoms sector; every part of our economy and society has a vital stake in these issues.” But the current economic state of mobile technology in Europe could place those ambitions at risk. In Europe, there is simply not enough investment in mobile communication infrastructure to keep up with the rest of the world, let alone deliver top-

class connectivity. The reasons aren’t complicated: While the populations of the EU5 and the United States are roughly the same, and mobile revenue was roughly equal in 2008, over the next six years U.S. mobile revenue grew steadily and European mobile revenue declined. Average mobile revenue per user also decreased in Europe at that time while rising across the Atlantic- at least in part because European Union and national regulators on the Continent made efforts to transfer the economic benefits of mobile to end consumers. And while the evolution of mobile revenue followed the growth of private consumption in Japan and South Korea, and exceeded consumption in the United States, it declined significantly in the EU5. “This indicates that Europe dedicates an ever smaller fraction of private consumption to mobile services, even

opportunity to foster the investment- friendly environment for mobile network operators and technology companies needed to bolster wireless commerce across the region and prevent the EU from falling further behind other regions in the use of wireless tech. That is the conclusion of a new white paper from the French consulting firm IDATE, which examined the level of mobile revenues, investments and mobile usage in the so-called EU5 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K.), the United States, Japan and South Korea. The study was in part funded by Qualcomm and Ericsson. The IDATE report touches on an important set of policy questions for the European Union, which is taking major steps toward creating what it calls a Digital Single Market

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