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This article is part of: Executive Briefing Service
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Telecoms is moving into its third age: the Coordination Age. Why was it so hard for telcos to adapt when content shifted from the physical to the virtual world with the growth of the Internet, and how can they learn from past experience to create new value in the next seismic change in telecoms and content?
Introduction: Three ages of telecoms…
In this report, we elaborate on what we outlined in our recent report, The Coordination Age: A third age of telecoms, as a completely new paradigm for the telecoms industry. In the earlier report, we argue that this new age of telecoms – the Coordination Age – follows on from two previous, and still ongoing, paradigms for the telecoms industry: the Communications Age and the Information Age.
Chronologically, the three ages may be represented as follows:
As the above diagram suggests, parts of the industry still exhibit characteristics of the earlier ages; and we are still working through the consequences of the paradigm shift from the Communications Age to the Information Age, even as we stand on the cusp of a further shift to the Coordination Age.
The report revisits our narrative of the three ages of telecoms to explore the different social, economic and cultural drivers and functions of telecoms in each period and the implications for telcos.