As such, operators across the globe, including Nigeria have been told to brace up for the possible impact of the ARPU pressure as they face tricky times next year. ARPU measures the earnings generated per user or unit.
It noted that elected officials have largely left pricing issues up to regulators for the past decade. According to it, operators and regulators will be under pressure to moderate price increases, especially on consumer services. Operators will also be pushed to introduce, and publicise, ‘social’ tariffs for consumers in financial hardship, especially for fixed broadband services.
Further, Analysys Mason said with telecoms sucking up a much smaller portion of a household budget than food, energy and so forth, the impact will be mitigated to an extent, but ARPU reduction is never good news for telecoms operators, most of whom are working hard to maintain these types of metric in the face of growing investment requirements.
Nonetheless, the analyst firm believes that 5G investments will not be impacted by the downturn, despite the fact that the prospects for a short-term term return are not good. Essentially, they need to tap into revenue-growth opportunities, and this means having the ability to support higher-volume and low-latency services like cloud gaming, AR/VR and the metaverse, and digital businesses. As such they need to carry on investing in 5G and fibre.