Tag: customer

Creating a healthy culture

Introduction

Creating a healthy culture is a key component of success in any organisation. It is particularly important – and challenging – where a company is building a new business operating in a new industry that combines people steeped in an existing cultures. This was the case for TELUS Health in Canada, so we spoke to its then CEO to understand the approach it took.

Three components of ‘Culture’

Whenever we ask our clients what the biggest problem they face is, there’s an excellent chance they will say ‘changing the culture’.

Yet it’s a bit of a coverall statement: what exactly do they mean?

It’s often a bit of a mish-mash of processes, organisation, behaviours and incentives: ‘the way we do things around here’.

Some of this is formalised, through organisation, line-management, how projects are managed and so on. Other aspects are softer – how companies expect people to behave when they are at work: how much autonomy do they have, can they work from home, etc.

To put some structure to this catch-all idea, it can be useful to think about three fundamental components of culture:

  • Shared purpose: what are we all trying to achieve?
  • Common values: what do we believe we need to be like to get there?
  • Processes and behaviours: how do we do things round here?

Looking at these definitions makes it clear why change needs to be led from the top, and why culture change is so challenging.

It needs to be led from the top because you cannot have a credible common purpose that conflicts with what the leadership says it wants, what it values, or how the organisation acts.

Even if you have clear direction from the top, it’s still hard to change because:

  • Most of your organisation will start from a position of ‘this is how we previously learned to be – and now you’re asking us to be different from that?’
  • Culture essentially means a set of behaviours or characteristics that have been socialised, and thereby enmeshed in a complex human web of habits and expectations.

According to Paul Lepage, President of TELUS Health, “culture eats why for breakfast”, paraphrasing the quote “culture eats strategy for breakfast” in a fascinating conversation we had recently.

What Paul meant was that one of the key drivers to creating a great culture is to ensure that your team is truly engaged with your organisation’s meaning or purpose, or ‘why are we doing this?’ beyond making money.

In the case of TELUS Health, this is ‘delivering better healthcare outcomes’, and in Paul’s case at least, this idea comes over very strongly in every interaction I have had with him.

Author’s note: I was talking to Paul because I am fascinated by the role that culture plays in business success. I have known some of the team at TELUS Health for several years, and I am always struck by the quality and consistency of their culture across all the people I have met at TELUS. Andrew Collinson, Partner and Research Director, STL Partners.

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TELUS and TELUS Health: consistent internal and external KPIs

There is a notable consistency between TELUS’ results on internal measures of employee engagement, customer opinion, and commercial performance.

  • Employee engagement: TELUS’ overall employee engagement score consistently ranks within the top quartile and has risen steadily in recent years.  TELUS was also named as one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers and Achiever’s 50 Most Engaged Workplaces in 2017.
  • Customer recommendation: TELUS’ customers have given it improving ‘Likelihood to recommend’ scores since 2011.
  • Market valuation: TELUS’ share price has also grown steadily from 2011.

Figure: TELUS’ share price has also steadily grown

TELUS Annual share price chart
TELUS Annual share price, as at end August 2011-2018

Source: Google Finance, STL Partners

Is this a coincidence, or is there a link between these results? And if it is not a coincidence, how has it achieved this, and what can others learn?

TELUS and TELUS Health

Background

STL Partners has worked closely with TELUS and TELUS Health over the last few years, analysing the healthcare division’s progress in TELUS Health: Innovation leader case study. We’ve participated in its Healthcare Summits in Toronto and come to know several of its executives over the years. The following is a brief introduction to TELUS Health from our 2017 report.

Why TELUS got into healthcare: a viable growth opportunity

Starting in 2005, led by the CEO Darren Entwistle, TELUS executives came to a consensus that just focusing on connectivity would not be enough to sustain long term revenue growth for telecoms companies in Canada, so the telco began a search into adjacent areas where it felt there were strong synergies with its core assets and capabilities. TELUS initially considered options in many sectors with similar business environments to telecoms – i.e. high fixed costs, capex intensive, highly regulated – including financial services, healthcare and energy (mining, oil).

In contrast with other telcos in Canada and globally, TELUS made a conscious decision not to focus on entertainment, anticipating that regulatory moves to democratise access to content would gradually erode the differentiating value of exclusive rights.

By 2007, health had emerged as TELUS’ preferred option for a ‘content play’, supported by four key factors which remain crucial to TELUS’ ongoing commitment to the healthcare sector, nearly a decade later. These are:

  1. Strong correlation with TELUS’ socially responsible brand. TELUS has always prioritised social responsibility as a core company value, consistently being recognised by Canadian, North American and global organisations for its commitment to sustainability and philanthropy. For example, in 2010, the Association for Fundraising Professionals’ named it the most outstanding philanthropic corporation in the world. Thus, investing into the healthcare, with the aim of improving efficiency and health outcomes through digitisation of the sector, closely aligns with TELUS’ core values.
  2. Healthcare’s low digital base. Healthcare was and remains one of the least digitised sectors both in Canada and globally. This is due to a number of factors, including the complexity and fragmented nature of healthcare systems, the difficulty of identifying the right payer model for digital solutions, and cultural resistance among healthcare workers who are already stretched for time and resources.
  3. Personal commitment from Darren Entwistle, TELUS’ CEO since he joined the company in 2000. Based on personal experiences with the flaws in the Canadian healthcare system, Darren Entwistle forged his conviction that there was a business case for TELUS to drive adoption of digital health records and other ehealth solutions that could help minimise such errors, which was crucial in winning and maintaining shareholders’ support for investment into health IT.
  4. Healthcare is a growing sector. An ageing population means that the burden on Canada’s healthcare system has and will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. As people live longer, the demands on the healthcare system are also shifting from acute care to chronic care. For example, data from the OECD and the Canadian Institute for Health Information show that the rate of chronic disease among patients over 65 years old is double that of those aged 45-64. Meanwhile, funding is not increasing at the same rate as demand, convincing TELUS of the need for the type of digital disruption that has occurred in many other sectors.

That all four of TELUS’ reasons for investing in healthcare remain equally relevant in 2017/18 as in 2007 is key to its unwavering commitment to the sector. Darren Entwistle refers to healthcare as a ‘generational investment’, saying that over the long term, TELUS may shift into a healthcare company that offers telecoms services, rather than the other way around.

TELUS Health: On leadership and culture

To get insight for this report, I spoke at length with Paul Lepage, President-TELUS Health and Payment Solutions at TELUS, on the recommendation of his colleagues, who’d told me that ‘culture’ was of deep importance to Paul. He has been instrumental in setting up TELUS Health, and holds joint responsibility for TELUS Health on the international markets with Dave Sharma, President, TELUS Partner Solutions and Senior Vice-president, Business Solutions Sales. Paul runs the operation on the ground in Canada, while Dave spearheads partnerships and international activity.

I also requested additional support material from TELUS Health, which is included in the Appendix of this report.

This report would not have been possible without their kind collaboration and openness. Nonetheless, its contents represent the opinion of STL Partners, and were not sponsored or commissioned by TELUS.

Contents

  • Executive Summary: For telcos and others wanting to change culture
  • Introduction
  • Three components of ‘Culture’
  • Culture eats ‘why’ for breakfast
  • TELUS and TELUS Health: consistent internal and external KPIs
  • Background
  • Why TELUS got into healthcare: a viable growth opportunity
  • TELUS Health: On leadership and culture
  • Culture = Purpose and process
  • Culture creates a yardstick for performance
  • The importance of a compelling ‘why?’
  • Fair Process
  • Diversity and talent
  • Measuring culture and results
  • Communicating, listening and reflecting is at least 50% of the job
  • Recruitment, partnerships and culture
  • The ‘why?’ must be genuine
  • Conclusions: TELUS Health – A consistent and compelling culture
  • Appendix: Prepared by TELUS Health External Communications

Figures

  • TELUS’ share price has increased steadily
  • Why is ‘why?’ important?
  • TELUS’ ‘Fair process’

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Transformation: Are telcos investing enough?

Introduction

Why are we doing non-telco case studies?

Digital transformation is a phenomenon that is not just affecting the telco sector. Many industries have been through a transformation process far more severe than we have seen in telecoms, while others began the process much earlier in time. We believe that there are valuable lessons telcos can learn from these sectors, so we have decided to find and examine the most interesting/useful case studies.

In this report, we look at German publisher Axel Springer, which has successfully transformed itself from a print-based publisher to an online multimedia platform.

While the focus of this report will be on Axel Springer’s transformation, the key takeaways will be the lessons for telcos to help them make their own transformation process run more smoothly.

STL Partners has done extensive research into the challenge of telco transformation and how to implement effective business model change, most recently in our reports Five telcos changing culture: Lessons from neuroscience, Changing Culture: The Great Barrier and Which operator growth strategies will remain viable in 2017 and beyond?

General outline of STL Partners’ case study transformation index

We intend to complete similar case studies in the future from other industry verticals, with the goal of creating a ‘case study transformation index’, illustrating how selected companies have overcome the challenge of digital disruption. In these case studies we will examine five key areas of transformation, identifying which have been the most challenging, which have generated the most innovative solutions, and which can be considered successes or failures. These five areas are:

  • Market
  • Proposition
  • Value Network
  • Technology
  • Finances

For each section, supporting evidence of good or bad practice will be graded as a positive (tick) or a negative (cross). These ticks and crosses will then be evaluated to create a “traffic light” rating for each section, which will then be tallied to provide an overall transformation rating for each case study.

We anticipate that some of these five sections will overlap, and some will be more pertinent to certain case studies than others. But central to the case studies will be analysis of how the transformation process is relevant to the telco industry and the lessons that can be learned to help operators on the path to change.

Axel Springer’s transformation – a success story

German publishing house Axel Springer began to suffer from declining revenues in the mid-2000’s as changes in consumer behaviour and disruption from new digital rivals such as Google and Yahoo! led to falling readership. Axel Springer identified this threat immediately and reacted swiftly, making the bold move to cannibalise its core printed newspaper and magazine business by repositioning most of its existing content onto online and digital platforms. The company has continued this transformation with an aggressive acquisition strategy, enabling it to expand its footprint into new geographies and content areas.

Even though Axel Springer’s transformation required sweeping technological, strategic and cultural change, it has been a success. Since the disposal of several non-core regional publications in 2012, both revenues and EBITDA have grown on average nearly 5% per year, while the percentage of revenues from digital streams grew to 67% in 2016 from just 42% in 2012.

Why is the Axel Springer case study relevant for telcos?

Much of Axel Springer’s transformation has consisted of (and been driven by) the change from traditional (print) to digital (online) publishing. While telcos have grown up in the digital era, with much of their transformation being driven by changes in consumer behaviour, there are many parallels between Axel Springer and the telco sector. We will look at the key lessons that can be learnt in the following areas:

  • Advances in technology
  • Changes in consumption and customer habits
  • The risk of cannibalisation
  • New opportunities in content
  • Working with social media
  • Platform and partnership opportunities
  • Culture change
  • The importance of data

Content:

  • Executive Summary
  • Axel Springer’s transformation success – a summary of key lessons
  • Axel Springer in STL Partners case study transformation index
  • Introduction
  • Why are we doing non-telco case studies?
  • Axel Springer – background to transformation
  • What was Axel Springer’s business model pre-transformation?
  • Drivers of change – how the market developed and Axel Springer’s reaction
  • Conclusions
  • Axel Springer in STL Partners transformation index
  • Appendices
  • Appendix 1: Axel Springer – company timeline
  • Appendix 2: Axel Springer – recent acquisitions
  • Appendix 3: Axel Springer – recent investments

Figures:

  • Figure 1: Total global internet users
  • Figure 2: Traditional publishing company business model
  • Figure 3: Post-digital publishing company business model
  • Figure 4: Axel Springer total revenues 2003-2016
  • Figure 5: Axel Springer total EBITDA and EBITDA margin 2003-2016
  • Figure 6: The development of news and media consumption
  • Figure 7: Axel Springer 2016 revenues by sector (€ million)
  • Figure 8: Axel Springer percentage of revenues from digital streams
  • Figure 9: Axel Springer revenues by sector 2012-2016
  • Figure 9: Axel Springer investment in acquisitions 2012-H1 2016 in comparison to selected telcos

Mobile app latency in Europe: French operators lead; Italian & Spanish lag

Latency as a proxy for customer app experience

Latency is a measure of the time taken for a packet of data to travel from one designated point to another. The complication comes in defining the start and end point. For an operator seeking to measure its network latency, it might measure only the transmission time across its network.

However, to objectively measure customer app experience, it is better to measure the time it takes from the moment the user takes an action, such as pressing a button on a mobile device, to receiving a response – in effect, a packet arriving back and being processed by the application at the device.

This ‘total roundtrip latency’ time is what is measured by our partner, Crittercism, via embedded code within applications themselves on an aggregated and anonymised basis. Put simply, total roundtrip latency is the best measure of customer experience because it encompasses the total ‘wait time’ for a customer, not just a portion of the multi-stage journey

Latency is becoming increasingly important

Broadband speeds tend to attract most attention in the press and in operator advertising, and speed does of course impact downloads and streaming experiences. But total roundtrip latency has a bigger impact on many user digital experiences than speed. This is because of the way that applications are built.

In modern Web applications, the business logic is parcelled-out into independent ‘microservices’ and their responses re-assembled by the client to produce the overall digital user experience. Each HTTP request is often quite small, although an overall onscreen action can be composed of a number of requests of varying sizes so broadband speed is often less of a factor than latency – the time to send and receive each request. See Appendix 2: Why latency is important, for a more detailed explanation of why latency is such an important driver of customer app experience.

The value of using actual application latency data

As we have already explained, STL Partners prefers to use total roundtrip latency as an indicator of customer app experience as it measures the time that a customer waits for a response following an action. STL Partners believes that Crittercism data reflects actual usage in each market because it operates within apps – in hundreds of thousands of apps that people use in the Apple App Store and in Google Play. This is a quite different approach to other players which require users to download a specific app which then ‘pings’ a server and awaits a response. This latter approach has a couple of limitations:

1. Although there have been several million downloads of the OpenSignal and Actual Experience app, this doesn’t get anywhere near the number of people that have downloaded apps containing the Crittercism measurement code.

2. Because the Crittercism code is embedded within apps, it directly measures the latency experienced by users when using those apps1. A dedicated measurement app fails to do this. It could be argued that a dedicated app gives the ‘cleanest’ app reading – it isn’t affected by variations in app design, for example. This is true but STL Partners believes that by aggregating the data for apps such variation is removed and a representative picture of total roundtrip latency revealed. Crittercism data can also show more granular data. For example, although we haven’t shown it in this report, Crittercism data can show latency performance by application type – e.g. Entertainment, Shopping, and so forth – based on the categorisation of apps used by Google and Apple in their app stores.

A key premise of this analysis is that, because operators’ customer bases are similar within and across markets, the profile of app usage (and therefore latency) is similar from one operator to the next. The latency differences between operators are, therefore, down to the performance of the operator.

Why it isn’t enough to measure average latency

It is often said that averages hide disparities in data, and this is particularly true for latency and for customer experience. This is best illustrated with an example. In Figure 2 we show the distribution of latencies for two operators. Operator A has lots of very fast requests and a long tail of requests with high latencies.

Operator B has much fewer fast requests but a much shorter tail of poor-performing latencies. The chart clearly shows that operator B has a much higher percentage of requests with a satisfactory latency even though its average latency performance is lower than operator A (318ms vs 314ms). Essentially operator A is let down by its slowest requests – those that prevent an application from completing a task for a customer.

This is why in this report we focus on average latency AND, critically, on the percentage of requests that are deemed ‘unsatisfactory’ from a customer experience perspective.

Using latency as a measure of performance for customers

500ms as a key performance cut-off

‘Good’ roundtrip latency is somewhat subjective and there is evidence that experience declines in a linear fashion as latency increases – people incrementally drop off the site. However, we have picked 500ms (or half a second) as a measure of unsatisfactory performance as we believe that a delay of more than this is likely to impact mobile users negatively (expectations on the ‘fixed’ internet are higher). User interface research from as far back as 19682 suggests that anything below 100ms is perceived as “instant”, although more recent work3 on gamers suggests that even lower is usually better, and delay starts to become intrusive after 200-300ms. Google experiments from 20094 suggest that a lasting effect – users continued to see the site as “slow” for several weeks – kicked in above 400ms.

Percentage of app requests with total roundtrip latency above 500ms – markets

Five key markets in Europe: France, Germany, Italy, and the UK.

This first report looks at five key markets in Europe: France, Germany, Italy, and the UK. We explore performance overall for Europe by comparing the relative performance of each country and then dive into the performance of operators within each country.

We intend to publish other reports in this series, looking at performance in other regions – North America, the Middle East and Asia, for example. This first report is intended to provider a ‘taster’ to readers, and STL Partners would like feedback on additional insight that readers would welcome, such as latency performance by:

  • Operating system – Android vs Apple
  • Specific device – e.g. Samsung S6 vs iPhone 6
  • App category – e.g. shopping, games, etc.
  • Specific countries
  • Historical trends

Based on this feedback, STL Partners and Crittercism will explore whether it is valuable to provide specific total roundtrip latency measurement products.

Contents

  • Latency as a proxy for customer app experience
  • ‘Total roundtrip latency’ is the best measure for customer ‘app experience’
  • Latency is becoming increasingly important
  • STL Partners’ approach
  • Europe: UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain
  • Quantitative Analysis
  • Key findings
  • UK: EE, O2, Vodafone, 3
  • Quantitative Analysis
  • Key findings
  • Germany: T-Mobile, Vodafone, e-Plus, O2
  • Quantitative Analysis
  • Key findings
  • France: Orange, SFR, Bouygues Télécom, Free
  • Quantitative Analysis
  • Key findings
  • Italy: TIM, Vodafone, Wind, 3
  • Quantitative Analysis
  • Key findings
  • Spain: Movistar, Vodafone, Orange, Yoigo
  • Quantitative Analysis
  • Key findings
  • About STL Partners and Telco 2.0
  • About Crittercism
  • Appendix 1: Defining latency
  • Appendix 2: Why latency is important

 

  • Figure 1: Total roundtrip latency – reflecting a user’s ‘wait time’
  • Figure 2: Why a worse average latency can result in higher customer satisfaction
  • Figure 3: Major European markets – average total roundtrip latency (ms)
  • Figure 4: Major European markets – percentage of requests above 500ms
  • Figure 5: The location of Google and Amazon’s European data centres favours operators in France, UK and Germany
  • Figure 6: European operators – average total roundtrip latency (ms)
  • Figure 7: European operators – percentage of requests with latency over 500ms
  • Figure 8: Customer app experience is likely to be particularly poor at 3 Italy, Movistar (Spain) and Telecom Italia
  • Figure 9: UK Operators – average latency (ms)
  • Figure 10: UK operators – percentage of requests with latency over 500ms
  • Figure 11: German Operators – average latency (ms)
  • Figure 12: German operators – percentage of requests with latency over 500ms
  • Figure 13: French Operators – average latency (ms)
  • Figure 14: French operators – percentage of requests with latency over 500ms
  • Figure 15: Italian Operators – average latency (ms)
  • Figure 16: Italian operators – percentage of requests with latency over 500ms
  • Figure 17: Spanish Operators – average latency (ms)
  • Figure 18: Spanish operators – percentage of requests with latency over 500ms
  • Figure 19: Breakdown of HTTP requests in facebook.com, by type and size

How to be Agile: Agility by Design and Information Intensity

Background: The Telco 2.0 Agility Challenge

Agility is a highly desirable capability for telecoms operators seeking to compete and succeed in their core businesses and the digital economy in general. In our latest industry research, we found that most telco executives that responded rated their organisations as ‘moderately agile’, and identified a number of practical steps that telco management could and should take to improve agility.

The Definition and Value of Agility

In the Telco 2.0 Agility Challenge, STL Partners first researched with 29 senior telecoms operator executives a framework to define agility in the industry’s own terms, and then gathered quantitative input to benchmark the industry’s agility from 74 further executives via an online self-diagnosis tool. The analysis in this report examines the aggregate quantitative input of those executives.

The Telco 2.0 Agility framework comprises the five agility domains illustrated below.

Figure 4: The Telco 2.0 Agility Framework

Source: STL Partners, The ‘Agile Operator’: 5 Key Ways to Meet the Agility Challenge

  • Organisational Agility: Establish a more agile culture and mindset, allowing you to move at faster speeds and to innovate more effectively
  • Network Agility: Embrace new networking technologies/approaches to ensure that you provide the best experience for customers and manage your resources and investment more efficiently
  • Service Agility: Develop the capability to create products and services in a much more iterative manner, resulting in products that are developed faster, with less investment and better serve customer needs
  • Customer Agility: Provide customers with the tools to manage their service and use analytics to gain insight into customer behaviour to develop and refine services
  • Partnering Agility: Become a more effective partner by developing the right skills to understand and assess potential partnerships and ensure that the right processes/technologies are in place to make partnering as easy as possible

A key finding of the first stage was that all of the executives we spoke to considered achieving agility as very important or critical to their organisations’ success, as exemplified by this quote.

“It is fundamental to be agile. For me it is much more important than being lean – it is more than just efficiency.”

European Telco CTO

This research project was kindly sponsored by Ericsson. STL Partners independently created the methodology, questions, findings, analysis and conclusions.

Purpose of this report

This report details:

  • The headline findings of the Telco 2.0 Agility Challenge
  • The category winners
  • What are the lessons revealed about telco agility overall?
  • What do telcos need to address to improve their overall agility?
  • What can others do to help?

Key Findings

The Majority of Operators were ‘Moderately Agile’

Just over two thirds of respondents achieved a total score between 50%-75%. All of the twenty questions had 4 choices, so a score in this range means that for most of the questions these respondents were choosing the second or third option out of four choices increasing from the least to the most agile. The mean score achieved was 63% and the median 61%. This shows that most telcos believe they have some way to go before they would realistically consider themselves truly Agile by the definition set out in the benchmark.

Figure 5: Distribution of Total Agility Scores

Source: STL Partners Telco 2.0 Agility Challenge, n =74

Agility Champions

A further part of the Agility Challenge was to identify Agility Champions, who were recognised through Agility Domain Awards at TM Forum Live! in Nice in June. The winners of these prizes were additionally interviewed by STL Partners to check the evidence of their claims, and the winners were:

  • Telus, which won the Customer Agility Challenge Award. Telus adopted a Customer First initiative across the whole organization; this commitment to customers has led to both a significant increase in the ‘likelihood to recommend’ metric and a substantial reduction in customer complaints.
  • Zain Jordan, which won the Service Agility Challenge. Zain Jordan has achieved the speed and flexibility needed to differentiate itself in the marketplace through deployment of state-of-the-art, real time service enablement platforms and solutions. These are managed and operated by professional, specialized, and qualified teams, and are driving an increase in profitability and customer satisfaction.
  • Telecom Italia Digital Solutions, (TIDS) which won the Partnering Agility Challenge. TIDS have partnered effectively to deliver innovative digital services, including establishing and launching an IoT platform from scratch within 6 months. It is also developing and coordinating all the digital presence at the Expo Milan 2015.

Network Agility is hardest to achieve

Most respondents scored lower on Network Agility than the other domains, and we believe this is partly because the network criteria were harder to achieve (e.g. configuring networks in real time) but also that achieving meaningful agility in a network is as a rule harder than in the other areas.

Figure 6: Average Score by Agility Domain

Note: The maximum score was 4 and the minimum 1, with 4 = Strongly Agile, 3 = Mostly Agile, 2 = Somewhat Agile, and 1 = Not Agile.

Source: STL Partners, n = 74

Next Section: Looking Deeper

 

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction
  • Background: The Telco 2.0 Agility Challenge
  • Purpose of this report
  • Key Findings
  • The Majority of Operators were ‘Moderately Agile’
  • Agility Champions
  • Network Agility is hardest to achieve
  • Looking Deeper
  • Organisational Agility: ‘Mindset’ is not enough
  • Information Agility is an important factor
  • If you had to choose One Metric that Matters (OMTM) it would be…
  • Conclusions

 

  • Figure 1: The Telco 2.0 Agility Framework
  • Figure 2: Respondents can be grouped into 3 types based on the level and nature of their organisational agility
  • Figure 3: Information Agility Sub-Segments
  • Figure 4: The Telco 2.0 Agility Framework
  • Figure 5: Distribution of Total Agility Scores
  • Figure 6: Average Score by Agility Domain
  • Figure 7: We were surprised that Organisational Agility was not a stronger indicator of Total Agility
  • Figure 8: Differences in Responses to Organisational Agility Questions
  • Figure 9: Organisational Agility a priori Segments and Scores
  • Figure 10: ‘Agile by Design’ Organisations Scored higher than others
  • Figure 11: Defining Information Agility Segments
  • Figure 12: The Information Agile Segment scored higher than the others

Self-Disruption: How Sprint Blew It

Introduction

At the beginning of 2013, we issued an Executive Briefing on the proposed take-over of Sprint-Nextel by Softbank, which we believed to be the starting gun for disruption in the US mobile market.

At the time, not only was 68% of revenue in the US market controlled by the top two operators, AT&T and Verizon, it was also an unusually lucrative market in general, being both rich and high-spending (see Figure 1, taken from the The Future Value of Voice & Messaging strategy report). Further, the great majority of net-adds were concentrated among the top two operators, with T-Mobile USA flat-lining and Sprint beginning to lose subscribers. We expected Sprint to initiate a price war, following a plan similar to Softbank’s in Japan, separating the cost of devices from that of service, making sure to offer the hero smartphone of the day, and offering good value on data bundles.

Figure 1: The US, a rich country that spends heavily on telecoms

The US a rich country that spends heavily on telecoms feb 2014

Source: STL Partners

In the event, the fight for control of Sprint turned out to be more drawn out and complex than anyone expected. Add to this the complexity of Sprint’s major network upgrade, Network Vision, as shown in Figure 2, and the fact that the plans changed in order to take advantage of Softbank’s procurement of devices for the 2.5GHz band, and it is perhaps less surprising that we have yet to see a major strategic initiative from Sprint.

Figure 2: The Softbank deal brought with it major changes to Network Vision
The Softbank deal brought with it major changes to Network Vision feb 2014

Source: Sprint Q3 earnings report

Instead, T-Mobile USA implemented a very similar strategy, having completed the grieving process for the AT&T deal and secured investment from DTAG for their LTE roll-out and spectrum enhancements. So far, their “uncarrier” strategy has delivered impressive subscriber growth at the expense of slashing prices. The tale of 2013 in terms of subscribers can be seen in the following chart, updated from the original Sprint/Softbank note. (Note that AT&T, VZW, and T-Mobile have released data for calendar Q3, but Sprint hasn’t yet – the big question, going by the chart, will be whether T-Mobile has overtaken Sprint for cumulative net-adds.)

Figure 3: The duopoly marches on, T-Mobile recovers, Sprint in trouble

The duopoly marches on, T-Mobile recovers, Sprint in trouble Feb 2014

Source: STL Partners

However, Sprint did have a major strategic initiative in the last two years – and one that went badly wrong. We refer, of course, to the shutdown of the Nextel half of Sprint-Nextel.

Closing Nextel: The Optimistic Case

There is much that is good inside Sprint, which explains both why so much effort went into its “turnaround” and why Masayoshi Son was interested. For example, its performance in terms of ARPU is strong, to say the least. The following chart, Figure 4, illustrates the point. Total ARPU in post-paid, which is most of the business, is both high at just under $65/mo and rising steadily. ARPU in pre-paid is essentially flat around $25/mo. The problem was Nextel and specifically, Nextel post-paid – while pre-paid hovered around $35/mo, post-paid trended steadily down from $45/mo to parity with pre-paid by the end.

Figure 4: Sprint-Nextel ARPU

Sprint-Nextel ARPU feb 2014

Source: STL Partners

The difference between the two halves of Sprint that were doing the work here is fairly obvious. Nextel’s unique iDEN network was basically an orphan, without a development path beyond the equivalent of 2005-era WCDMA speeds, and without smartphones. Sprint CDMA, and later LTE, could offer wireless broadband and could offer the iPhone. Clearly, something had to be done. You can see the importance of smartphone adoption from the following graphic, Figure 5, showing that smartphones drove ARPU on Sprint’s CDMA network.

Figure 5: Sprint CDMA has reached 80% smartphone adoption

Sprint CDMA has reached 80% smartphone adoption feb 2014

Source: STL Partners

It is true that smartphones create opportunities to substitute OTT voice and messaging, but this is less of a problem in the US. As the following chart from the Future Value of Voice and Messaging strategy report shows, voice and messaging are both cheap in the US, and people spend heavily on mobile data.

Figure 6: US mobile key indicators

US mobile key indicators feb 2014

Source: STL Partners

So far, the pull effect of better devices on data usage has helped Sprint grow revenues, while it also drew subscribers away from Nextel. Sprint’s strategy in response to this was to transition Nextel subscribers over to the mainline platform, and then shut down the network, while recycling savings and spectrum from the closure of Nextel into their LTE deployment.

 

  • Closing Nextel: The Scoreboard
  • Recapture
  • The Double Dippers
  • The Competition: AT&T Targets the Double Dippers
  • Developers, Developers, Devices
  • Conclusions

 

  • Figure 1: The US, a rich country that spends heavily on telecoms
  • Figure 2: The Softbank deal brought with it major changes to Network Vision
  • Figure 3: The duopoly marches on, T-Mobile recovers, Sprint in trouble
  • Figure 4: Sprint-Nextel ARPU
  • Figure 5: Sprint mainline has reached 80% smartphone adoption
  • Figure 6: US mobile key indicators
  • Figure 7: Tale of the tape – something goes wrong in early 2012
  • Figure 8: Sprint’s “recapture” rate was falling during 3 out of the 4 biggest quarters for Nextel subscriber losses, when it needed to be at its best
  • Figure 9: Nextel post-paid was 72% business customers in 3Q 2011
  • Figure 10: The loss of high-value SMB customers dragged Sprint’s revenues into negative territory
  • Figure 11: The way mobile applications development used to be

Personal Data: how to make it a viable, customer-centred industry

Content:

  • Guiding Principles
  • The Market: evolving use cases
  • Industry Structure: the Personal Data Landscape
  • Legal: creating a bridging framework
  • Technical Stream: creating a universal language
  • Personal Data Rights Language (PDRL)
  • Next Steps

 

  • Figure 1 – A Selection of Other Legal Principles and Guidelines Examined
  • Figure 2 – Updated draft of the WEF Personal Data Principles
  • Figure 3 – The emerging landscape of uses
  • Figure 4 – The Personal Data Landscape
  • Figure 5 – The ‘BLT’ Approach – Business, Legal, Technical Mapping
  • Figure 7- ’System Rules Architecture’ for Legal Frameworks
  • Figure 7 – Rough Example of PDRL ‘Mark Up’ Language
  • Figure 8 – WEF Personal Data Milestone Roadmap