To accommodate unique cost needs and power requirements, off-grid base stations that don’t rely on diesel generators are coming to market. Roughly 13,000 have been deployed so far, and Navigant Research (formerly Pike Research) predicts that nearly 400,000 so-called “green base stations” will be in use by 2020. Research director Kerry-Ann Adamson commented, “The new technology offerings in remote base stations could become the industry norm within 10 years.”

Once the cell site is established — and it could just be a small cell on a pole — the only way to go with the signal, literally, is up. Satellite backhaul is generally perceived to be unreasonably expensive, but sizable advances in satellite technology over the past few years have lowered the cost, equipment size and latency of satellite-based communications, dramatically improving throughput.

A macro station in the US costs around $125,000 in capital expenditures (CAPEX), but by choosing an optimized solution for rural environments, CSPs can reduce their network expenses by 65 percent. Altobridge, a vendor company that helps CSPs lower the costs of mobile backhaul, reports that “for the many innovative operators ... who have already embraced the strategic imperative to extend their coverage footprint to the edge of their networks” in Asian and African countries, for example, by “using outdoor, pole-mountable and passively-cooled base stations, fuelled by solar-powered technology, the total site-build cost — including base station, solar, VSAT equipment, site installation and commissioning — is less than US$50,000.”

As you can see in Figure 1 below, it is possible to serve a small subscriber group that generates low ARPU and still turn a profit. It’s important to note, however, that the early bird gets the worm — these small markets won’t support multiple operators.

2. Subsidize mobile data

Without incurring additional costs for themselves, operators can enable customers to use their mobile devices for longer periods of time by partnering with third parties to subsidize mobile data.

“A lot of operators would like to allow someone else to subsidize access,” said Akil Chomoko, head of product marketing at Volubill, during a recent conversation with Pipeline. Leaders at AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have all indicated that subsidized data is coming; Deutsche Telekom and KPN have already signed such deals with Spotify in Europe. In developed markets mobile data used by a specific application or service is subsidized by the developer to attain improved quality of service (QoS), while in emerging markets, where mobile data is a precious commodity, CSPs can compel uptake by pursuing innovative subsidy models. Developer-supported, brand-supported and ad-supported models all merit exploration.

Another strategy is to offer unlimited use of popular services like Facebook or Twitter for a nominal monthly charge. In this manner the best-loved applications are subsidized, and customers have access to them even if they run out of voice minutes or raw mobile data. This strategy is already being carried out in Zimbabwe and a few other countries, while companies such as Gemalto are supplying SIM cards with an embedded Facebook app, enabling use on older phones.