Speaking to media in Sydney earlier this week, Boost Mobile co-founder and former CEO of 360fly Peter Adderton said that Australian carriers are failing to learn from the shifts currently underway within America’s telco industry.
He says Australian carriers “have their heads in the sand” and “are so top-heavy.”
“It just takes a little push and these things to fall over – and if you take a look at what’s happening in the US, it’s exactly what’s happening in the US,” he said.
He praises T-Mobile’s approach to the market, saying that “Verizon and AT&T are getting hammered” as a result of not moving to unlimited data sooner.
“We predict that the average consumer is going to require 200GBs over a monthly period going forward”
“20GB of that is going to come from mobile,” he predicted.
Beyond just going unlimited, Peter believes that the carriers are finally waking up to the reality that social networks like Facebook have been using their infrastructure at minimal cost for too long.
Peter argues that “These guys are so focused on beating each other up” they are losing sight of the bigger picture.
“At some point the carriers are going to wake up and say ‘We’re not going to let you ride for free’ [to tech companies],” he said.
He says that a massive convergence is looming between carriers and media companies “because they’ve realised content is king but distribution is the empire.”
Calling Foxtel’s model “a dinosaur”, Peter speculates that Verizon will look to buy Netflix or Disney to shore up their content libraries.
What’s more, he believes that Boost Mobile stands to benefit from such industry-wide shifts.
“It’s absolutely going to happen here in Australia and I think targeted brands like ours are going to become even more valuable in the marketplace,” he said.
