Advances in technology can often be a great leveller in industries, and the telecoms industry is no exception. The availability of new technologies in various markets has changed the expectations of consumers and businesses irrevocably.

Steve Barefoot, senior product analyst at Interop Technologies, on NFV and its numerous benefits to MNOs.

As the profit and differentiation available from mobile services such as voice, messaging, and data decreases, operators need to look to what mobile analyst Chetan Sharma has termed the fourth wave^[1.] in order to open up additional lines of business and create additional revenue streams. 

The cloud has fundamentally changed the way organizations, including Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), provide and consume computing resources. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is one of the principle technologies underlying cloud-computing platforms and is often discussed in terms of its technology and features, such as resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and on-demand self-service. 

Infrastructure sharing is not without its technical and competitive challenges but the benefits and potential cost savings are well-documented. Less well-documented is the possibility that new communication technologies will make exclusive ownership of the physical infrastructure even less attractive in the future.