An interesting post on the Telco 2.0 Research site: The future’s not bright, it’s brutal.

STL Partners predicts 19%-20% drop in revenues from core mobile services — SMS and voice — for UK and Germany until 2020. The drop for France is predicted at 34%, 47% for Italy and whopping 61% for Spain. Of course those are just predictions, and it’s easiest to predict the past, not the future. Nevertheless it looks like the mobile telcos need some serious cost cutting — as well as ideas for new revenue. And they need it now.