Last quarter’s carrier earnings reports show the value of corporate clients in enhancing ARPU in the wireless segment. Those corporate clients are more likely to have data plans to feed their Blackberry habits and are less sensitive to international roaming charges.
No question, kids are buying add-ons like messaging packs, music, ringtones – but watch for incentives on multi-year contracts for corporate wireless plans, prior to the arrival of new competitors in the wake of this month’s AWS auction.
MTS Allstream is likely to emerge as a national wireless carrier when the final gavel comes down. Over the coming days, I will put together some thoughts that emerge from an analyst briefing session that the company hosted yesterday in Toronto. Among other themes, MTS Allstream spoke about their unified communications portfolio that would seem to be screaming for mobile wireless integration.
How well will MTS Allstream be able to leverage its corporate wireline relationships to quickly build a high value wireless customer base? What strategies are most appropriate for the incumbents to retain these high value accounts and what should customers do to benefit from the attention that all of these account managers will bestow upon them?
Update [May 22, 6:20 pm]
Obviously, the collapse of the MTS Allstream bid consortium puts the likelihood of the company emerging as a national wireless carrier in some doubt, however, the concepts in this posting still hold true. Continue to watch for MTS Allstream to leverage its enterprise-centric customer base as part of a national brand emerging from the auction.