According to a new survey by Pioneer Consulting, a significant portion of user generated or handset-stored is bypassing operators' mobile networks and thus the content value chain.

In its new study, ‘Multimedia Mobile Content Distribution', Pioneer Consulting say that that such User Originated Content (UOC) is being increasingly shared with friends, family and contacts on social networks. With handsets starting to have Bluetooth, WiFi and WiMAX capabilities, end users can use alternative networks to share content, effectively bypassing the operator's mobile network and the content value chain.

Pioneer Consulting estimates that as a result of users sharing content and bypassing the existing value chain, $16.4 billion worth of revenue opportunity will be at risk by 2012. It estimates this to be worth more than a quarter of the total revenue opportunity for that year.

However, the study says that all is not lost yet and operators can play a key role in preventing this disruption from happening.

Pioneer Consulting advises mobile operators to re-evaluate the applicability of the traditional client-server content delivery architecture in an environment where a large portion of the content originates from the handset. In addition, it suggests that operators need to realise that there will be a bandwidth bottleneck between the base station and the handset due to an oversubscribed air interface, especially in the case of bandwidth heavy multimedia content.

Commented Robert Hsieh, author of the report, "Mobile operators need to embrace peer to peer (P2P) methodologies within their own networks and focus on the advantages of using both assisted P2P and augmented P2P to mitigate the disruption".

Aditya Kaul, Senior Analyst, Emerging Wireless at Pioneer added, "P2P is generally treated with contempt by operators and has now become the ‘P' word that should never be uttered. It is more of an attitude problem rather than an engineering one, and unless operators wake up to the reality of the situation, we cannot even begin to solve the problem".