Time for shifting from typical planning approach to proactive planning under COVID-19

The lockdowns and self-isolations have changed the way consumers behave, which consequently increased use of various mobile services, and the locations of the users. For operators, this trend has triggered the need for revisiting the capacity investment plans.
Some operators’ networks have seen up to 30% decline in the number of handover actions, which reflects the slowdown in the mobility of users. And as mentioned, the source of the traffic shifted to urban and rural areas. These locations face an enormous pike during working hours and almost none of the capacity expansion plans have been made based on today’s reality.
Now it’s time for operators to shift from typical, long-term planning approach to proactive planning. Some operators have already started to increase their investment budget for 2020. For example, Australian operator Telstra10 is bringing forward $500 million of capital expenditure planned for 2020 into 2021. Same as Telstra, Verizon has also increased 2020 investments by $500 million.