The latest news, updates and opinions from the telco industry
What’s coming on telco cloud from STL Partners in 2020? A few weeks back I wrote a piece about telco cloud, at topic we have covered at STL Partners since at least 2011. While specific definitions have shifted over time, we have always seen telco cloud as a core transformative philosophy for telecoms operators: build the right technology infrastructure, and …
This is illustrative and not an exhaustive or comprehensive list of how telcos are helping their customers deal with the Coronavirus pandemic in order that other telcos can review what they can copy or learn from these measures to support their customers. STL Partners is also conducting a rapid survey of telco responses which can be found here. We will be updating and freely sharing what operators tell us …
In the 5G-aliser, we assess the outlook for the 5G market based on 18 key factors that we believe will drive supply and demand, splitting them into primary drivers which have the greatest importance now, secondary drivers which could become more important over time, and wildcards which could have a large impact but are less predictable. The COVID-19 pandemic …
“Who cares about Telco Cloud?” I’ve been asked this twice in two weeks. It’s a valid question. After all, I lead our telco cloud practice – so I should be able to justify my existence! One of my interrogators was a business leader. “Isn’t “telco cloud” just a technical term which covers up a host of boring three-letter acronyms that …
The cancellation of this years MWC is obviously a great shame from the perspective of all the many who have put a lot of effort into its preparation, but also a sensible precaution given the uncertainty surrounding the emergence of the new Coronavirus. The question is: what are we all going to do to minimise the impact on our businesses …
Through our ongoing conversations with telecoms operators and the wider industry about their strategies and progress in implementing automation and AI, we see telcos pursuing a range of different partnerships, depending on their goals and level of ambition (i.e. size of budget) to transform their businesses. On one end of the spectrum, telcos are mainly users of automation and AI …
We’ve been helping telcos work out how best to play in edge computing for a while. Essentially telcos’ choices for network edge / MEC infrastructure are: Build their own edge (with partners and vendors) alongside the same edge site facilities as planned for new-virtualised network infrastructure , e.g. nextgen central offices and mini datacentres Partner with a public cloud provider such as AWS, Google …
STL Partners European Summit Overview On October 28th, STL Partners hosted the 2019 STL Partners European Summit, which included talks and discussions on innovation and growth strategies for the telecom industry. We were joined by 30+ senior telco executives from Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, Orange, Telsta, Tata and Elisa. In the afternoon session, Dalia Adib (Principal Consultant) led an interactive session …
STL Partners has been writing on the topics of blockchain and edge computing, both broadly speaking and from a telecoms industry perspective for a number of years. For more information on our research services, check out our research services or send an email directly to contact@stlpartners.com. Blockchain and edge computing have an interesting interdependent relationship. Edge computing/a distributed compute architecture …
STL Partners’ edge computing practice has been engaging the develop community on edge computing for a number of years. Our recent research paper summarises the key lessons from these discussions. 1.Edge computing does provide an opportunity to solve the key pain points of some developers through improving user experience and increasing their addressable market. Application developers, particularly in key domains …
The 5G path is not straightforward. It’s not just a case of more Gs are better, though some of the hype is based on this idea. There are some intriguing possibilities. The upsides are not yet all clear, but neither are they all garbage. The way forward is nuanced, and we see our job at STL Partners to make it comprehensible and better still, actionable. …
Our recent two part research programme identified thirty six potential blockchain use cases for the telecommunications industry, deep diving on eight of the use cases we felt had the most promise. Despite the breadth of the blockchain opportunity, people are still looking for the killer use case that will either significantly save costs or increase revenue. Part of the challenge …
The introduction of 5G networks will act on global carbon emissions in 4 domains: Energy consumption of telco networks Energy consumption of devices “De-carbonisation” of energy supply Reducing energy demand from enterprises and consumers On the face of it, 5G promises to be a key enabler in our quest for a carbon-neutral future. In simple terms, due to much lower kWh/TB transmitted, 5G should outperform 4G …
Four years ago, we wrote a report on CSPs’ opportunity in sovereign cloud. Essentially, this argues that local operators are well-placed to offer global firms sovereign cloud services. Global concerns should be less exposed to often vaguely defined, discretionary powers of national authorities looking to act against them on the grounds of national security, data sovereignty and privacy. Not only …
This overview explains the essentials about virtualisation, NFV and SDN. Read more specialist research and articles on virtualisation and get in touch with our virtualisation specialists on our virtualisation hub. Network function virtualisation (NFV) is about taking the hardware-based network functions of the past and running them as software. Telecoms operators can replace expensive dedicated networking equipment with common off-the-shelf …
Edge compute is proving attractive to investors. Our chart of the week looks at recent VC investment, highlighting four edge companies that have achieved increased backing. Investment houses want to tap into revenue growth and/or sustained income and believe edge could offer this. Packet alone has more than doubled capital injection in 2 yrs ($9.4m in August 2016 & $25m …
Our research shows operators in the US, China, Korea and Japan chase 5G most enthusiastically and back that enthusiasm with real investment. This is characterised by T-Mobile’s CTO Neville Ray: “We are all in on 5G. Every dollar we spend is a 5G dollar, and our agreement with Nokia underscores the kind of investment we’re making to bring customers a …