By Cyber Era NG Special Correspondent
September 14, 2021, GSMA opened its Mobile 360 Eurasia event in Moscow. The event will bring together Eurasia’s brightest thinkers to explore the region’s most pressing mobile challenges and opportunities, including fintech, value creation, and digital resilience.
At the opening, GSMA revealed that mobile technologies and services contributed US$143 billion to economies in the CIS region in 2020. That number is forecast to reach US$160 billion by 2025, a 12 per cent increase in the industry’s 2020 contribution. The findings, taken from the GSMA’s report, ‘The Mobile Economy Russia & CIS 2021’, highlight that the growth will be driven by productivity and efficiency gains delivered by the increased adoption of mobile services.
Adding social and economic value in a pandemic
The pandemic underlined the importance of access to fast, reliable internet and a range of digital services for both individuals and businesses. Throughout, the mobile industry kept citizens connected across the region by offering call and data tariff discounts, providing free access to entertainment and healthcare services, and donating to national COVID-19 relief funds. By the end of 2020, the number of unique mobile subscribers in the region had increased to 238 million and 1.3 million connected to mobile for the first time.
The changing face of mobile
The outlook for 5G rollout in the region remains conservative; field trials are ongoing but, deployments are slow. Only Uzbekistan has reached the commercialisation stage thus far. Mobile operators across the region will invest more than US$26 billion in their networks in the next five years and, an increasing proportion of this investment will be in 5G. By 2025 the region is forecast to achieve 33 million 5G connections.
“Until recently, deploying 4G across the Russia and CIS region has been the industry’s main priority. Now with smartphone adoption rapidly increasing, we expect an imminent pivot to 5G in some – more advanced – markets,” said GSMA Director-General Mats Granryd. “To accelerate this, we need policies that drive take-up and attract investments in infrastructure.”
The shift from 4G to 5G aside, intense price competition across the region also drives mobile operators to diversify their portfolios to generate new income streams beyond core connectivity. These include a range of consumer- and business-focused services such as pay-TV, media and advertising, cloud, security and financial services, along with solutions for vertical industries.
Getting there together
The success of 5G services is heavily reliant on national governments and regulators. The speed, reach, and quality of these services depend on governments and regulators supporting timely access to the right amount and type of affordable spectrum under the right conditions.
