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As senior vice-president, telecom research, Chris Lewis is responsible for Ovum's global research on telecom activities. In an interview with tele.net he offers his perspective on global trends in telecom. Excerpts...

What are the likely growth drivers in the future –­ for the developed markets as well as for the emerging markets?

The growth drivers in mature markets will be from incremental services being added to the broadband and mobile connections that the vast majority will have. Mobile penetration will continue to increase. Today we have a penetration of 170 per cent in some countries like Italy. People will continue to expand the number of mobile devices across their daily usage patterns. In developing markets, service providers are still managing the explosion in demand for mobiles from the masses. Broadband will also grow, but the growth in capacity down to the home and to the business will not generate significant incremental income. As mobile and fixed networks settle down, value-added services will play an increasing role, though the margin on many of these will be slim compared to older telecom services. The question that all telecom companies need to examine is whether the dilution of margin is justified on the basis of growth or on a market protection basis.

What, according to you, will be the competitive landscape in the global telecom sector over the next five years?

First, a "global telecom market" doesn't really exist. Some players have a global brand and/or presence, but no global telecom company exists. We will certainly see more consolidation. This will happen both at the national and, perhaps more importantly, at the regional level. Many smaller countries do not have the necessary amplitude for telecom development, so clustering of telecom companies is inevitable. On the other hand, the telecom equipment market is global, and we will see some more trends being driven by telecom equipment manufacturers. Consolidation will also take place among the GAMEYs (Google, AOL, MSN, eBay and Yahoo!). These are not telecom companies as such, but they will increasingly play a significant role in the telco ecosystem. Pure mobile players will acquire fixed services/assets; pure fixed players will acquire mobile services; and the ownership of physical network resource will present a very confusing picture.

What will be the pace and location of broadband adoption in the near future?

This is a country-by-country issue. As with the rest, governmental and regulatory intervention will once again play a role, as will the competitive landscape in a particular country. The thought of wireless killing broadband is redundant. We will use broadband for our domestic connections and it will build services out into the media world to compete with traditional broadcasters and content players. There will be a ceiling to this growth, depending on the economic situation of households and the availability of suitable connections. But demand is strong, and the consumer electronics industry is ready with multiple devices to sit on the end of these connections and drive capacity usage.

How do you perceive the Indian telecom industry in terms of growth opportunities? Which are the segments that will to do well?

India represents a massive opportunity for growth. The demand for mobile and broadband services is strong and Indians have a propensity to use technology and services for both business and individual consumer life.

In the consumer market, the bundling and packaging of services to better meet the needs of different end-user groups will be an interesting segment to watch. The same is true for the small and medium enterprise segment in the business market. The telecom companies' community has been accustomed to delivering almost a "one size fits all" service to its customers. The challenge now is to get the required degree of customisation into the services that go to the masses.

What, according to you, are the concerns that need to be tackled?

Regulatory issues, and allowing the right physical and service competition to develop in the fixed and mobile segments are very important. Technology is not an issue; there is plenty of technology around to address the telecom needs. Telecom companies themselves need to take a position on which role they want to play in the emerging media and business services markets. The trouble with the expanding communications market is that the barriers are down. Players will come in from the media and the information technology services side, and take opportunities away from traditional telecom companies.

What is the future after 3G?

After 3G comes the phase when we stop thinking about fixed and wireless, and really start thinking about services that match our individual or business needs. It includes the mapping of all communications services into a device or devices that truly allow us to improve communications, our personal lives and our business activities. Is 4G the issue or is Wi-Max? Not really. Access is vital, so are the devices as well as the applications that we run across all these devices. A new access technology will give us services of a higher quality and capacity, but mobile will then fall into the trap that fixed line technology finds itself in today –­ how to monetise the capacity.