What should telcos do to bridge the gaps between current hype, actual performance, and future promises on 5G? We argue that a data-driven and forensic approach to roll-out and marketing will be the key, particularly in the uncertain economic environment driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, and review the timelines for future applications.
The 4-yearly ITU World Radio Congress (WRC’19) which sets world policy on radio spectrum, most critically 5G this time, has just ended. What agreements were reached, and what do they mean for traditional telcos, new telcos, telco-sector vendors and regulators?
How telcos should be preparing for the seismic shift in the video games market signposted by Google’s new Stadia cloud gaming service.
An introduction to digital twins, an approach to managing assets that is gaining increasing traction across many business sectors, and that will ultimately disrupt many industry business models.
Our predictions for 5G, based on our assessment of the opportunities and barriers it faces, including how and when it will impact different markets. Combined with other technologies and industry trends, 5G will change the shape of the industry, but not in the way that many expect.
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.
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.
The music industry was one of the first sectors to be fundamentally disrupted by the Internet. Facing an epic and almost existential battle with piracy, coupled with expectations that music should be free, the record labels have tested many different business and distribution models. With sales of recorded music finally growing again, telcos and their partners can learn a lot from the music industry’s hits and misses.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Reliance Jio has caught the eye of everyone in the industry, having broken records in terms of mobile subscriber acquisition in the last few months. Since it launched its offer in September 2016, it acquired 50 million subscribers in 83 days, the rate of which surpassed even the likes of Facebook and Whatsapp. But will it be a success in the long run?
Our research focuses on how telcos and their partners can embrace industry disruption.
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