Thanks for your comments. I do not say that the scenario that you have painted is not possible or my scenario is more possible. I think both of us agree that there are pressures on the bottom line of operators and they would need to devise ways of remaining more profitable. The scenarios are just a result of the this underlying assumption.

Regards,

Mohit

I think I have liked most of your articles and generally agreed with most of the points you stated in your previous articles. But this is the one I I think I vehemently disagree with. There will sure be some M&A activities but not to the extent you are talking about.

I strongly feel that this M&A activity will become more prevalent only in the active and passive infrastructure side. Probably not even M&A but some sort of partnerships to develop common infrastructure to keep costs down. These partnerships will in no way stop other operators to come in and start providing services as a MVNO. Infact if some large CSPs were to adop a utility model, then they will support more and more operators to start offering services. This strategy might just result in plethora of operators in a particular region offering very specialised services for a niche market.

Moreover, I believe this could even be because of some laws and regulations in different countries where governments have already started talking about making infrastructure separate from service provision. We have debates going on in South Africa, New Zealand and some other countries. UK also discussed about this once but nothing happened and talks never moved. Imagine what would happen if this were to happen. This might take the shape of road infrastructure where roads are not owned by the transport service providers and there are thousands and thousands of taxi/cab companies which help ppl move from one place to the other.

I might be completely wrong and this may never happen but based on what we have seen in other industries, infrastructure is best supported when there are monopoly or duopoly and thats when maximum value could be generated.