Tag Archives: ICT

Aug 19 2013
3 Comments
Telecoms Future

Plotting the telecoms future

We are entering a major annual planning cycle for many players in the ICT industry. The challenge for the telecoms sector is that there are so many moving parts, some positive, some negative and all interacting with each other. And with the increasing digitisation of everything, factors from outside the telecoms market will seriously impact the future shape of telecoms. Indeed, one thought for the backburner is whether we will even think of telecoms services as a market in the future – but that’s for another day!

The basic equation for the telecoms market looks something like:

  • Demand from individuals, households and businesses and now ,‘Things’ (M2M) continues to grow as communications expands its horizons both in numerical and volume terms.
  • Total Revenues from traditional and new connectivity services are either in decline or about to go into decline – it is still a very big number overall, something like $1.4 trillion worldwide. The mix of legacy and new revenues varies by country but few doubt the gap left once the legacy services have washed through the system
  • New revenue streams such as TV/media, IT services, security, cloud, M2m all have attractive connectivity dependent components but they are also being addressed by other parts of the ICT industry and generally have lower margins than the connectivity services
  • Applications and content leveraging the telecoms networks are increasingly disconnected from the telecoms world and increasingly linked to the apps and links on our multiple screens through which we consume and execute
  • Maintaining a network infrastructure that can handle the explosion in traffic across all access methods and across the core, including in and out of data centres, needs major investment along with a rationalisation of the internal ICT infrastructure for most operators if margins are to be maintained, let alone grown

We need to recalibrate the expectations of the industry and its investors. Perhaps considering how many connections per household, individual, business and ‘thing’ require  and a fixed rate of revenue for each. This would define the worst case scenario, but still potentially very profitable. Add to this a percentage of the adjacent markets from ICT and Media and two-sided business models from pretty much every industry sector, and we have the potential future addressable market. However, remember that this new digital world means that the adjacent market incumbents can equally enter the telecoms space!.

There is fundamentally a lot of ‘spend’ at stake from all on the demand side. As everything digitises the demand side is increasingly likely to dictate through which channel the service (including connectivity) is consumed. So, a multi-channel strategy is needed along with major network and ICT rationalisation to bring the telco of the future into the new digital era.

Don’t get me wrong, Telecoms does have an underpinning role in the future scenario.  It may not necessarily be as the deliverer of the final service function or feature but there is a fundamental role at the heart of the new digital era for a trusted, reliable provider of the digital glue.

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Jul 15 2013
1 Comment
Starting up

A blank canvas or a really complicated puzzle to unravel?

After almost 30 years of working for the telecoms & networking research community in the shape of many of the leading research and advisory houses I am now venturing out on my own. Although, is anyone truly on their own any more  if you consider the network of people from both the vendor side and the analyst community hovering in cyber space and on every social platform as well as the pseudo old school reunions at the main vendor events?  Many thanks to all of my colleagues across the industry for their kind words and positive reaction to this new venture for me. Doubtless we will have many interactions, debates, disagreements as we all try to navigate through this fascinating next phase of the telecoms industry’s development.

Having covered all aspects of the telecoms and many related industries during my various tenures, the challenge is now not around what I have covered but where to focus the effort. This is certainly the issue for the research industry and indeed the telecoms industry itself. The tendency is to want to look to the new sexy stuff – mobility, cloud, security & M2M/Big Data. However, the health and prosperity of the telecoms industry needs to be built upon a recalibrated basis of high quality pervasive connectivity.  Removing the legacy networks and services from the marketplace needs to be surpassed by a new flexibility in both network build and service roll out, as well as a radical improvement in the customer interaction at all levels. That good old trusted telco brand has been tarnished by poor customer service and a lack of appropriate partnering with fellow hopefuls from the broader ICT and media communities.

No doubt the whole supply, value chain (and dare I say it, the Eco system) is shifting to reflect the new reality for telecoms:

  • Sourcing the right mix of services and technology to build the new telco platform is resetting the relationship between the telco community and its suppliers of network equipment, software and indeed underlying IT infrastructure
  • Organising the telco into an appropriate structure for the delivery of competitive services across telecoms and adjacent markets such as IT services and media
  • Aligning the services portfolio offered to address the convergence of connectivity, processing, storage and applications/content needed for today’s customers
  • Understanding the role that telco plays in the emerging consumption model of today’s and tomorrow’s consumers of individual, household and business services to support new life styles
  • Embracing the ‘Omni channel’ approach to retailing services to customers.

As an analyst industry, we need to continue to build market models to provide the basis of decision making and we need to maintain our view of emerging technologies and services. Perhaps most importantly, we need to interpret the interplay between:

  • the technology and services on the networking side
  • the overlap with adjacent IT and media industries
  • and, most importantly,  the different vertical markets through which much of the technology is delivered.

How can I help? By drawing on my long experience of interaction with all players in the ICT spectrum both to help people outside of telecoms to understand the telco angle and simultaneously to help the telco community strengthen its position in the emerging digital landscape. I will, of course, leverage the social platforms but prefer, perhaps because of my lack of eye sight, my particular strength in interaction on a personal level (don’t write off voice!) with industry executives, workshops of strategy developers, sales teams and product development people to build a brighter and more prosperous future for the industry.

In summary, my aim is to leverage my network of contacts in the industry and work with many of my former colleagues across the globe to build the right mix of skills to address clients’ needs at whichever link of the emerging value chain.

Let the conversations begin!  +44 7824 360747  chris@lewisinsight.com @chr1slew1s 

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