Defining the future telco — and what it means for operators and their partners
MEC (Mobile / Multi-Access Edge Computing) puts compute resources at the edge of telco networks. These servers can be used for distributing internal network functions – typically linked with NFV deployments – or made available to third-party developers as part of an “edge cloud” service offering. What are the realistic use cases, and can telcos monetise them?
An excellent customer experience is a critical part of modern business, and one that most telcos really struggle with, achieving poor customer satisfaction ratings compared to almost every other industry. We’ve looked at a sample of leading companies with high customer approval ratings in telecoms and other industries, and found surprising commonalities in their approaches to providing a great customer experience, whether in the digital or physical world. In this, the first of a series of reports, we look at what great customer service means and what it takes to deliver it.
With iPhone sales apparently peaking, Apple is looking to double its revenue from services over the next four years to approximately US$50 billion, taking it deeper into adjacent markets, such as entertainment, financial services and communications. However, Apple trails behind Google in developing artificial intelligence and needs to extend the reach of its services to capture more behavioural data. If Apple decides to decouple more of its key services from its hardware, that would have major ramifications for Google, Amazon, Facebook and many of the world’s leading telcos.
The quality of experience delivered by mobile data networks is a key indicator of current performance, and a foundation of future prospects in digital. Our MobiNEX ranking, updated with data from H2 2016, compares 80 operators across 25 countries. Over the past six months we have seen some big changes, particularly in China and the UK.
To find new revenues, some telcos are competing head-on with the major internet players in the digital communications, content and commerce markets. Although telcos’ track record in digital services is poor, some are gaining traction. AT&T, Axiata, Reliance Jio and Turkcell are each pursuing very different digital services strategies, and we believe these potentially disruptive moves offer valuable lessons for other telcos and their partners.
Our latest adjacent market case study analyses Axel Springer’s successful 10 year digital transformation from print to online publisher, and holds many lessons for telcos, not least of which are the pitfalls of under commitment, and the required level of investment in M&A.
The Consumer Internet of Things (IoT) market could be huge, but hasn’t yet taken off. We look at why, analysing leading telcos’ and others strategies to date (including DTAG, Orange, and Telefonica), and outline a strategy for how telcos could play a major role by solving some of the key problems.
We outline three potential roles for telcos in the IoT, describing twelve potential application areas and forty use cases, as well as the structure and trends driving change. Looking beyond this we ask which market areas are most attractive, and what should telcos do within them?
Some telcos are hoping that mobile data growth will resurge and transform their fortunes, though STL Partners has previously argued that data growth will not be enough. In this report we re-examine this argument looking at global trends and present the insights and lessons from six operator case-studies including DNA Finland, T-Mobile US and Reliance Jio.
VoLTE solves the complex problem of providing voice services over a 4G mobile data network. Although it may allow 2G and 3G networks to be turned off, and their spectrum re-farmed to other networks, declining call revenues (and in some cases declining volumes) are dampening appetite to invest in VoLTE. However, with voice beyond telephony on the rise, for example through AI-powered voice assistants and video calling, can telcos use VoLTE as an opportunity to develop new IP-based voice and messaging communications offerings?
The rapid growth of Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat and other Internet-based services has prompted some commentators to write off telcos in the consumer communications market. But many mobile operators retain surprisingly large voice and messaging businesses and still have several strategic options. Indeed, there is much telcos can learn from the leading Internet players’ evolving communications propositions and their attempts to integrate them into broad commerce and content platforms. In this report we examine what opportunities still exist for telcos in this strategically important sector.
The connected car market is being seen as one of the most promising segments of the Internet of Things. Everyone from telcos to internet giants Google, and specialist service providers Uber are eyeing opportunities in the sector. In this report we analyse 10 potential connected car use-cases to assess which ones could offer the biggest revenue opportunities for operators and outline the business case for investment. Our results are intriguing, and suggest that human use of data could be the largest telco opportunity in the autonomous car market.
Network Slicing is a way to run multiple networks on one infrastructure. In theory, it could mean that telcos could run mobile broadband and IoT networks over the same physical network, and also offer greater agility within those networks. We explore the theory and its challenges, examine use cases, what would be needed to make it happen, and look at five business case scenarios.
Mobile World Congress 2017 seemed busier and more diverse than ever – so congratulations to our partners at the GSMA. In previous years there has been an announcement or keynote that provides a unifying theme, but not so this year, although behind the scenes we identified a fundamental driving force. Our report of this year’s Congress analyses themes of transformation, 5G, IoT, AI and others, and distils the key messages from Barcelona.
Although the B2B market could deliver significant revenue growth, most telcos’ enterprise businesses are not delivering their full potential. In this report we analyse the reasons why and outline how telcos can build a successful B2B strategy.
Many telcos are trying to change, to become more agile and move from infrastructure- to software-led business models. But change is hard, especially because to be successful they need to adapt their culture and employee skill-sets which is a notoriously difficult task. In our latest report we analyse change strategies used by AT&T, Telkom Indonesia, and three other telcos in the context of insights from neuroscience, and show that change is possible with the right strategy and leadership.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is improving rapidly thanks to the growing use of deep neural networks to teach computers how to interpret the real world (deep learning). These networks use vast amounts of detailed data to enable machines to learn. What are the potential benefits for telcos, and what do they need to do to make this happen?
Our research focuses on how telcos and their partners can embrace industry disruption.
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