LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE ASIA EXPO 2013: Mobile operators China Mobile, KT & Telstra gave a realistic assessment of the industry in the face of informed consumers, savvy rivals and rapid technological change.

“We have a service issue. Because of such demand, we are not providing a great service to consumers. That’s across the world,” admitted David Thodey, Telstra’s CEO, speaking about network quality during the Q&A session of the opening keynote. He argued that the industry needed to solve the issue or consumers “will go somewhere else”.

Xi Guohua, chairman of China Mobile, struck a similar tone when describing how operators must build new services and revenues through partnerships.

“To create new businesses, we must be open-minded with other industries. We have been close-minded in the past. We need to learn from other industries. This is important,” he said.

The third speaker, Lee Suk-chae, KT’s chairman CEO, outlined the loss of legacy revenues and explained the Korean operator’s ambition to become a regional, even global, distributor for content.

“There is no future in telecoms services only,” he said, highlighting how KT’s voice revenue – mobile and fixed – has declined from $8.1 billion in 2008 to $5.8 billion last year.

As activity moves from offline to online, there is a massive opportunity in virtual goods, including apps, services and digital versions of physical goods. “We must be a producer of virtual goods or be an enabler of them,” he said.

“We must learn from the failure of WAC,” he said, while embracing the concept behind it.

The key was network investment, he argued.

For Telstra’s Thodey, the key is the network rather than services. “I hear people telling me there is no differentiation in networks. But networks do make a difference. We need to invest and be at the forefront of innovation. The network is fundamental.”

That was one of three key themes to Thodey’s presentation, along with an acknowledgement that the consumer has changed in recent years, who are “more informed and more demanding.”

Thodey also said operators need to define value for subscribers. “We need to re-educate our customers”. The industry needs to find ways to jointly create value with OTT players.