However, she noted that with the increase in popularity of both IPTV services and mobile operators looking to offload traffic through WLAN or femtocell solutions, fiber and mobile broadband will predominately be complementary.
"The bigger threat to pure fixed network providers is not customers cutting the cord, but high-value services moving to mobile, leaving the low-value high-bandwidth services for fixed networks."
Again, consistent with last year's results 84% of telco executives think non-operator content will drive traffic growth (83% last year, 76% in 2009).
When asked about the future of LTE, it was not forecast to be a top priority by the majority of respondents in the next year. Just a quarter of those surveyed said LTE was a very high priority in 2011.
This makes sense as Asia Pacific is still in the nascent stages of LTE rollouts. Early FD-LTE rollouts will be dominated by developed markets, such as Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, where operators are looking to not only reduce their per bit costs but maintain their competitive edge.
As such, it is understandable that 48% of respondents see LTE as being only a medium-term priority over the course of the next year. More than a quarter see it as a low priority or not priority. LTE deployments are tipped to start to pick up steam, however, in 2012, including in China.
Backhaul constraint
A challenge for some mobile operators, and particularly those that are not part of an integrated fixed and mobile operator, is providing sufficient backhaul capacity to sustain the base-station upgrades and increasing traffic volumes.
This year's survey found that 43% expect backhaul to be a restraint on mobile services in the next 12 months compared to 34% in the last survey. Another 31% believe that backhaul is currently a constraint on mobile services vs 32.5% last year. Just 15% don't think it will be a problem for the foreseeable future.
McCormick pointed out that mobile operators that have not already done so will be looking at the opportunity to move their backhaul to packet technologies (typically Ethernet) in conjunction with capacity upgrades.
Radio access network capacity is currently a constraint on operators, according to 39% of respondents ?up from 36% last year. Another 36% say it will be problem for mobile operators in the next 12 months. Some 17% indicate it won't be a restraint going forward.