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.
Recent pressure on telecoms spending from larger enterprises has led telcos to put more focus on the fast-growing and dynamic small and medium business segment, but telcos need to properly understand how best to service this segment if their efforts are to bear fruit.
Consumers and employees are beginning to adopt wearable devices that can live stream video to image recognition systems and expert advisors. Over time, these devices will place new demands on cellular networks.
New players, technologies and business models are raising the prospect of valuable, new satellite connectivity services. But how credible are the new opportunities and what do operators need to do?
In this update, we present granular data on the 5G core, tracking the progress of deployments of both Non-standalone (NSA) and Standalone (SA) network cores. We recorded 49 5G core deployments so far in 2022, 24 of which are SA launches.
Why did AT&T buy, and then sell, DirecTV and Time Warner after only six years? This report looks at AT&T’s decisions, actions and their consequences, and the lessons for others attempting adjacent market moves and M&A.
As public transport systems try to recover from the pandemic, 5G could help them to become more versatile, cost-effective and appealing. By providing reliable and flexible connectivity to transport operators and their customers, telcos could create considerable value for both individuals and society.
This is part 2 of a 3-part series taking an in-depth look at how 5G pioneers have evolved their approaches to commercialisation since launch, navigating a maze of factors such as handset availability, technology immaturity and more. What should others take from their experience to date?
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.
New NFV/SDN deployments in North America are increasingly driven by 5G, with a striking role for open source and telco self-builds. Globally, our tracker includes details of nearly 500 NFV/SDN deployments between 2011 and May 2019.
After considerable hype and uncertainty, the near term developments for 5G are now much more apparent, including which nations will go first, chip and handset availability, and the use of different spectrum bands.
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.
The quality of experience delivered by operators’ mobile data networks is a key indicator of their current performance, and a foundation of their future prospects in digital. Our MobiNEX ranking, updated this week for H1 2016, shows how 80 operators in 25 countries compare. How does your telco stack up?
We see early-warning signs of new changes afoot in the influential US mobile market in both growth and competitive market dynamics. Verizon Wireless was the biggest winner from the market’s recent growth. But now things are slowing and challenger T-Mobile is breaking into the premium segment. What are the lessons?
For the first time, STL Partners quantifies the customer ‘app experience’ on twenty-seven mobile networks in seven countries. MobiNEX – The Mobile Network Experience Index – benchmarks mobile operators’ network speed and reliability by measuring download speed; average latency; error rate and latency consistency. It’s based on billions of real customer data points provided by our partners Apteligent. Congratulations to the top three performers – Bouygues, Free and Orange (all in France).
The last few years have seen attempts by many leading telecoms operators to refresh their business model and generate new sources of growth and value. Now many digital initiatives are being scaled back. Telefonica and Telenor, two companies in the vanguard of the ‘drive to digital’ have both disbanded their digital organisations. In the first of two reports, STL Partners explores why efforts to yoke platform and product innovation businesses to a traditional infrastructure business have proved so difficult. The financial and operational constraints associated with traditional telecoms – particularly the need for long investment cycles in ‘one-function’ infrastructure – have made achieving the switch to ‘agile digital innovation’ all but impossible. But all that may be about to change and the future could be a little brighter.
Our latest analysis shows staggering differences in ‘app-lag’ (the time it takes for an app to get a response over the Internet) across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, and twenty mobile operators. This has significant consequences for customer data experiences, and potentially operator market performance too. Operators in France, particularly Bouygues and Free, are delivering a superior customer app experience while 3 in Italy and Movistar in Spain are European laggards. (October 2015, Foundation 2.0, Executive Briefing Service.)