The mobile services industry is currently characterized by the clash of three different developments which in combination are vigorously shaking the foundations of established business models:

• Scope, type, and diversity of customer traffic, especially in the data sector, are changing at a rapid rate. Driven by general developments on the Internet, the absolute data volume as well as the absolute time of utilization are rising at almost exponential rates.

• Contrary to this is the structure of rate plans away from a time/volume base and towards all-inclusive packages based on fixed monthly costs with no surprises for the customers.

• The transmission technologies provided by manufacturers are also undergoing accelerated development with respect to their maximum performance and total capacity (e.g., HSPA+ or LTE).

Mobile network operators are responding to these breathless developments with the ongoing evolvement of existing and established business processes in the core sector of business planning and in planning and projection of financial requirements. In spite of their efforts, the gap between declining revenues on the one hand and rising costs for the accelerated further development of the network in its technology and capacity on the other is growing wider. The expansions of offered services and products requiring such an intensive investment of capital are obviously not properly or not adequately appreciated by customers.

New high-quality product groups which would stabilize revenues are not as successful on the market as hoped, and on some of the highly developed markets, the readiness of the clientele to make a change continues to rise steadily. Mobile network operators have obviously not correctly understood their customer base, have not correctly heard what the clientele wants. Slowly, but surely, they have lost their feeling for the customers’ pulse (MISALIGNMENT).

So the question arises: Does it make sense to respond to the new types of challenges with nothing more than established methods and more complex evolvements of the same? Hardly. They are not capable of achieving adequate reconciliation of customer needs and the portfolios of mobile network companies, whether in the present or in the future.