Key players in the mobile industry have appealed to the leaders of the G20 countries, meeting in London this week, to facilitate their demands for additional mobile spectrum and a less intrusive regulatory regime.
The GSM Association on Thursday published a letter sent to the G20 leaders late last month and signed by 25 global telecoms executives, including Vodafone head Vittorio Colao, NTT DoCoMo CEO Ryuji Yamada, Bharti's Sunil Mittal, Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo, and Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.
The letter urges the G20 governments to allocate to the mobile industry the spectrum it requires to build out new infrastructure to extend the reach of mobile broadband services.
In addition, the executives request that the governments "deliver a stable, predictable and minimally intrusive regulatory environment," noting that the industry has witnessed "a trend of increasing regulatory intervention, often where this is not appropriate."
The signatories, whose companies boast combined annual revenues in excess of $900 billion, played on the economic benefits of mobile broadband, explaining that their initiative to replicate the success of GSM with next-generation mobile technology could deliver a global GDP boost of 3%-4%.
Citing statistics from A.T. Kearney, the letter says the mobile industry is forecast to invest $800 billion over the next five years, $550 billion of which will be spent on mobile broadband, with the aim of connecting 2.4 billion people to the Internet.
The initiative will also provide new jobs and help combat climate change, it added.
"We are not asking the G20 governments to make a short-term decision," said Rob Conway, GSMA chief executive officer, in a statement. "This represents the broad-reaching opportunity to truly connect the world's population to the Internet, and to the economic and social benefits that delivers," he added.
The list of signatories is reproduced in full below.
Alcatel Lucent CEO, Ben Verwaayen
America Movil CEO, Daniel Hajj Aboumrad
AT&T Mobile president & CEO, Ralph de la Vega
Bharti Enterprises chairman & group CEO, Sunil Bharti Mittal
Deutsche Telekom chairman & CEO, René Obermann
Ericsson CEO & president, Carl-Henric Svanberg
GSMA CEO, Robert Conway
MTN Group CEO & president, Phuthuma Nhleko
NTT DoCoMo president & CEO, Ryuji Yamada
Nokia president & CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo
Nokia Siemens Networks CEO, Simon Beresford-Wylie
Orange Group CEO & chairman, Olaf Swantee
Orascom chairman & CEO, Naguib Sawiris
Softbank Mobile chairman & CEO, Masayoshi Son
SKT Group president & CEO, Man Won Jung
Telstra CEO, Solomon Trujillo
Telecom Italia Group CEO, Franco Bernabe
Telefónica Group CEO & executive chairman, Mr. Cesar Alierta
Telekom Austria chairman & CEO, Boris Nemsic
Telenor Group president & CEO, Mr. Jon Fredrik Baksaas
TeliaSonera president & CEO, Lars Nyberg
TMI president & CEO, Mr. Jamal Ibrahim
Vimpelcom CEO, Alexander Izosimov
Vodafone Group CEO, Vittorio Colao
Zain Group CEO, Saad Al Barrak
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