G20: The mobile industry claims to be recession breaker

In a letter to the G20 leaders, the telecommunications companies which are members of the GSM Association pledged US$550 billion of investment in mobile broadband networks globally, claiming it could create 25 million jobs and help pull the world out of recession.

The letter follows similar pronouncements at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February.

But the telcos are asking for something in return.

They want governments to commit to "allocate the radio spectrum needed over time to build these new networks, and delivery of a stable, predictable and minimally intrusive regulatory environment".

The association said that the signatories to the letter include the CEOs of AT&T, Bharti, Deutsche Telekom, MTN, Orascom, Telefonica, Telecom Italia, Vodafone, Nokia and Ericsson.

Analyst group Ovum said the industry has done reasonably well despite economic challenges.

Its forthcoming report Mobile operators in a recession: lessons and coping strategies shows how the industry has managed to avoid a calamitous impact from the recession and how it has adapted relatively well to its environment.

The industry is debating how the economic downturn will affect the timescales for the rollout of the next generation of mobile phone services, known in the industry as "long-term evolution" or LTE.

Ovum said the industry was badly hurt by the excesses of the 3G licensing regime and should governments adopt a similar approach it is fair to assume that new network rollouts will not occur on a grand scale, it said. The industry has dealt with regulation covering roaming, termination rates and  mobile number portability. In France, a tax is levied on telcos to pay for changes in broadcasting.

An SMS tax such as that proposed in the Philippines is also mooted for Ireland and the EU. And in the US, there are suggestions for the government to impose a retrospective tax on spectrum.

Ovum said some mobile operators have slashed their capital spending in the face of the recession, impacting mobile network deployments.