Mobile network operators around the world may soon find their operating expenses exceed earnings unless they find ways to deal with saturating market and falling ARPU.

A new report from Juniper Research says MNO’s core revenues were flattening and even declining in some markets. Declining revenue is partly blamed on spiraling backhaul costs due to the dramatic increase in cellular network data traffic, which more than doubled in 2010 and is expected to increase more than thirteenfold to 25,000 Petabytes per annum by 2015.

Juniper Research (News - Alert), however, says global operator-billed revenues will exceed $1 trillion annually by 2016.

“Mobile network operators (MNOs) face the prospect of a ‘nightmare’ scenario under which operator costs will exceed revenues within four years unless remedial action is taken,” the researcher warned.

However, the report argues that MNOs have the opportunity to redress the balance through a series of adaptive strategies designed to optimize core revenue streams, develop new revenues and significantly reduce operating costs.

The report suggests that MNOs offer integrated rate plans, while also providing a wide range of segmented postpaid and postpaid tariffs. It also emphasizes the potential for double-sided revenue streams in areas such as cloud, M2M and mobile financial services where MNOs can leverage their existing assets.

Integrated Mobile (News - Alert) Broadcast, according to the research firm, represents a potentially cost-effective means of offloading video traffic from the network. As cost of fossil fuels increases, transition to "green" networks and base stations represents both an environmental and economic imperative.

Interestingly, the researcher believes that tier-2 MNOs with lower traffic volumes may gain competitive advantage by retaining flat rate data bundles.

According to report author Dr Windsor Holden, "Clearly, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for MNOs, simply because the circumstances of individual operators differ widely, even within the same market. Instead, we have outlined a series of measures which MNOs can select according to their particular needs."

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