Potential Obstacles, page-26

From my perspective the main threats have already been mentioned here: competition and churn. An economic downturn impacts in virtually every business, so I wouldn't consider that to be a threat specific to BIG. I'd prefer BIG to maintain its focus on its core business rather than become distracted by exploring further business opportunities unless these are closely linked to the current business plan. Other opportunities can always come into play further down the track when BIG has bedded the business down across three pillars in most or all of its targeted markets/countries. At some point BIG may need to make the decision to bail out of countries where they have been unable to gain sufficient traction to enable the company to focus its resources on areas where it is viable. A falling ARPU could be seen as a threat, but is reasonably offset by increasing the customer base significantly. I will be interesting to see what the optimum ARPU will be - I presume the company will have established a benchmark for this. Overall I think the opportunities far outweigh the threats, but management needs to be cognisant of threats so they can be addressed at the earliest opportunity. I'm with Chakay on the likelihood of a take over and expect that to happen within three years. I'd like it to be delayed for as long as possible so that we can maximise the SP and as a consequence the buy out premium before it happens. At the moment I expect to be here till the end providing competition doesn't come in to squash us first.