Telcos need new skills to change their organisations to compete like technology companies. Insights from our Future skills tracker tool show that telcos are behind techcos in the penetration of key skillsets and provides direction on the capabilities required to become more innovative, agile and software-driven overall.
STL Partners’ Research team present their observations from and analysis of the biggest mobile industry event of the year. There was a lot of buzz around AI and API but behind the tech jargon, we saw evidence that our industry continues to morph to become more open and customer-focused.
2023 concluded with 87 telco cloud deployments in our tracker. In this edition, we present the most popular vendor stacks for vRAN/open RAN and the main rationales behind the 11 5G SA launches last year.
Generative AI is expected to create significant value across the telecommunications industry. To capitalise on the opportunity, telcos must build new skills across their organisations. Getting this right is critical given the scale of implementation challenges and the significance of impact on how employees work.
Fixed operators see network disaggregation as a way to reduce deployment and operational costs, remove vendor lock-in, and combine residential, business and other types of access into a single infrastructure. This report examines progress and learnings from early movers.
Based on its deep industry knowledge, STL Partners is sharing its vision on how telcos can reverse the trend of stagnating consumer revenues by focusing on innovation, new ventures and excellent customer experience.
As operators embark on their telco cloud journeys, what should they look out for and what lessons can they learn from others? This report analyses the strategies and progress of four operators leading the way in telco cloud transformation and sheds light on the lessons learned from their initial deployments.
As connectivity becomes ever more integral to enterprises’ operations, network APIs have emerged as a highly anticipated means for telcos to monetise their 5G investments while meeting customer needs. How big is the opportunity, and what commercial models will work?
Industry-leading telcos have captured much of the lower hanging fruit in their progress to net-zero and must now find the incremental gains. This requires integrating sustainability as a priority across all parts of the organisation. What actions and associated KPIs must individual business units within a telco take on to prioritise sustainability day-to-day?
In this update, we present a review of telco cloud deployments for the whole of 2022 and discuss trends that will shape the year ahead. Fewer deployments than expected were completed in 2022. The main reason for this was a delay in previously announced 5G Standalone (SA) core roll-outs, for reasons we have analysed elsewhere. However, we expect these deployments to be largely completed in 2023.
In this update, we present data and analysis on progress with deployments of vRAN and open RAN. It is fair to say that open RAN (virtualised AND disaggregated RAN) deployments have not happened at the pace that STL Partners and many others had forecast. In parallel, some very significant deployments and developments are occurring with vRAN (virtualised NOT disaggregated RAN). Is open RAN a networking ideal that is not yet, or never will be, deployed in its purest form?
Some leading telcos have slowed their roll-outs of 5G Standalone cores. Others have not. What is the delay? And why it is important to speed deployments now while minimising the risks.
In recent years, the web 3.0 movement, which seeks to fundamentally change the economics of the Internet, has gained significant momentum. For many telcos, the disruption caused by a shift to web 3.0 could open up opportunities to rebuild relevance and revenues in the consumer market.
Beyond just connecting it, there are three broad telco strategies for the Metaverse that are being developed and led by Verizon, Telefónica and SKT.
We found subtle but significant shifts at the GSMA’s Mobile World Congress 2022 that show how the market’s need is changing to ‘connecting technologies’ rather than ‘connectivity’. This has deep implications for the industry and telcos in particular.
More telcos are making deals to run their VNFs on the public cloud. Not much is live yet. But cloud hosting of network functions will support telcos in realising the benefits of cloud-native, and we believe telcos can safely go further and faster.
The knowledge and skills required to succeed in the digital environment are ever evolving. Telcos must maintain knowledge flows around the organisation and enhance their capacity to learn in order to keep pace and compete.