A major new study by GSMA Intelligence highlights how mobile operators were able to squeeze capital expenditure (capex) during the economic downturn in order to protect cash flows and maintain profits – but warns that network investments must increase if the industry is to fully exploit the potential of new technologies such as LTE.

Mobile operators in the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - are accounting for a rapidly growing share of global mobile revenue, and are on track to overtake the US in market size (revenue) by 2012.