Veon, whose largest subsidiary is in Russia, is to shut down its digital applications and content platform – the latest in a long line of operators to try, and fail, to take on the over-the-top giants. Very few mobile operators can point to any significant success in digital services, yet it is a commonly held belief that they will be unable to justify their 5G investments without extending their business models well beyond connectivity. There are various ways forward, but all come with significant risk. One is to make the connectivity model work by adding layers of added value, enabled by 5G, such as high end security and device management services; while also reducing costs drastically through automation and virtualization.…