Edge computing is a strategic opportunity for telcos. We examine the driving needs and applications for telco edge computing, describe the market and the options for telcos, discuss their partnerships with hyperscalers and recommend key actions.
Alongside the roll-out of 5G cores and radios, the Radio Access Network (RAN) is evolving to a more open, virtualised and distributed architecture. What are the opportunities and risks for telcos?
Telcos are well placed to enable the healthcare sector to meet the rising demand for secure and reliable in-home monitoring and treatment for the elderly and infirm.
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.
A successful smart city strategy is crucial in enabling cities to manage rising populations and compete for investment and talent at a national and global level. The challenge is getting the complex ecosystem of players and partners to work well. How can telcos position themselves as strategic partners in this transition, and help enable successful collaborative innovation?
Telcos must adapt to virtualisation and changing customer needs in the Coordination Age. Our three new telecoms business models offer a realistic agenda for telcos to build up the stack into the IT layer – either by themselves or through partnerships.
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.
‘Network as a Service’ (NaaS) and ‘enterprise virtual CPE’ (vCPE) are the leading customer-facing applications in which NFV and SDN approaches are being applied. This report looks at 13 leading operators in North America, Europe and Asia, what they are doing, and what strategies are emerging.
Dialog Axiata in Sri Lanka has developed a fast growing API platform that engages developers significantly more than plays by big telcos like AT&T, Orange and Vodafone relative to its scale. How has it achieved this and driven monetisation, innovation and efficiency within the company? And what is next?
STL Partners explores in detail how thirteen leading operators are addressing NFV and SDN. By exploring each management team’s vision for the technology and the current implementation activities, we have been able to identify six segments – from dynamic ‘NFV Business Model Transformation Pioneers’ to more prosaic ‘Utilitarian Adopters’. The report also outlines three major ‘best-practice’ recommendations for other players.
Our latest analysis identifies seven key barriers that have slowed NFV roll out across six operators (Deutsche Telekom, NTT, Verizon, Vodafone, Swisscom and Comcast), and the approaches being used to overcome them.
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.)
We outline our ‘proxy model’ for valuing Digital Services Businesses, based on current best practice, which has significant advantages over traditional approaches. This report, our second of two on valuation, gives a worked example of a telco’s digital business in Asia that is already worth $1bn, and includes an analysis of approaches being taken by some leading telcos today.
A high-level analysis of the M2M market, including the strategies of Vodafone, AT&T and Telefonica, and the impact that the Internet of Things and new entrants such as Google and others will have with new business models. What are the implications for operators, and where is it all leading?
The latest results for Telefonica are grim, showing a 12% y-o-y revenue decline, following Orange and Deutsche Telekom’s 4% drops. This signals unequivocally that transformation is now a necessity not a luxury for European operators – and the rest of the world is not far behind. Longer term recovery is possible but not a certainty – what are the key steps? (May 2014, Foundation 2.0, Executive Briefing Service, Telco 2.0 Transformation Stream.)
Enterprise Mobility Framework December 2013