Defining the future telco — and what it means for operators and their partners
Retail banks are threatened by a new breed of focused and fast digital firms – fintech – that offer cheaper and more tailored financial services. BBVA management saw this threat early and acted decisively to ensure it remained competitive. Telcos have much to learn from this.
IoT, 5G, edge computing and AI showed they were maturing as technologies at MWC 2018, but it’s harder to see yet how the first three make much money for telcos. AI has a different problem: the field is developing so fast that best practice is changing all the time. In this report we outline what we found, and a pragmatic approach for telcos to successfully harness these technologies and create value beyond connectivity.
Indoor wireless coverage is essential to many IoT and 5G use-cases, but it’s also horribly difficult to achieve. With new entrants and changing user demands the power dynamics are shifting, and operators need to make strategic decisions now to avoid losing their stake in this market.
Achieving greater customer loyalty is important for telecoms operators, but often difficult to realise. We look at operators that have proved successful in achieving low levels of customer churn including O2, Telstra and TELUS, and identify practices that have played a key part in their success.
There’s no doubt that AI is a transformative technology, and chatbots are a focus for many telcos looking to benefit from it. We look at case studies from Telenor, Deutsche Telekom and AT&T to find telcos’ best path toward employing AI. Despite the hype, chatbots may not be the best first step.
Virtual reality and augmented reality have the potential to generate vast amounts of telecoms traffic, together with demand for edge computing, network slicing and other 5G capabilities. But when will these technologies come of age?
This update to our ‘NFV Deployment Tracker’ series focuses on North America, alongside additional European data. 2016/7 has seen the rise of SD-WAN, enabling smaller operators to compete in the WAN market with NFV leaders AT&T, Verizon, Masergy, CenturyLink, etc. By contrast, fewer consumer use cases for NFV have yet been established.
NFV/SDN is one factor driving radical change in telco business models. This report explores the three archetypal telco NFV/SDN implementation strategies that we’ve found in the market, and the different telco business models each will result in.
Multinational operators have not been effectively harnessing their size and cross-country footprint. To create attractive economies of scale, they need to adopt a Telco Cloud model. Through a more common infrastructure and an innovation model which is sensibly calibrated across OpCos, large telcos will become more efficient and innovative.
There is a lot of market speculation about blockchain and its use-cases, especially in the area of IoT. This report outlines five use-cases for blockchain in IoT security and interoperability, and identifies how blockchain can enable new IoT business models for telcos.
The LPWA market is highly fragmented, and telcos need to decide now which LPWA technologies to provide as part of their IoT portfolio. This report examines different LPWA technologies and use-cases, providing analysis to help telcos choose which ones are right for them.
Most telcos have now accepted that they need to offer more than connectivity if they want to move up the IoT value chain. This report presents a four-step framework to help telcos define a successful IoT strategy.
Telcos and the major Internet platforms increasingly rely on each other. What kinds of agreements should operators enter into with Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google and what should they avoid? And what are the strategic implications of supporting players who habitually use their powerful brands and software expertise to disrupt entire industries?
With Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC), telcos can move workloads and applications closer to customers, potentially enhancing experiences and enabling a plethora of new use cases. But with competition looming from other players, telcos need to start commercialising MEC. We have identified and modelled five viable telco business models.
Telcos can draw ten lessons around organisational structure, strategy and staying relevant with customers from AccorHotels’ rapid digital transformation. This is the second in our series of transformation case studies from outside the telecoms sector.
Veon (rebranded VimpelCom) has embarked upon a bold strategy, shedding its network to move from being a traditional telco business to an agile consumer IP communications platform. We analyse its new strategy, its risks, and what it will need to do to succeed.
Big data analytics could help telcos improve performance, rebuild revenues and regain relevance with consumers, but it is not a quick fix. This report looks at what telcos have done in this area so far and what they need to do next.
Our research focuses on how telcos and their partners can embrace industry disruption.
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