The telecom industry is undergoing a major transformation, as consumers and businesses seek faster, better and more specialized service levels from their CSP’s. This poses new challenges and opportunities for telecom operators, forcing them to redefine and digitize their core business.
The telecom industry is undergoing a major transformation, as consumers and businesses seek faster, better and more specialized service levels from their CSP’s. This poses new challenges and opportunities for telecom operators, forcing them to redefine and digitize their core business.
Expanding bandwidth
The surging growth of data traffic, coupled with myriad mobile apps, have accelerated the use of cloud computing, resulting in a pressing need for increased connectivity through better broadband networks.
IoT and M2M are merging the physical and online worlds
During 2016, over 500 million sensors and devices are projected to be added to the rapidly expanding IoT/M2M market, a technology that is emerging as the world’s next mega-trend. This dramatic development will affect every consumer and business, with the following tech hubs identified as the first to be impacted by IoT: cities, vehicles, healthcare, homes, retail spaces and personal technology. Each of these industries will need to adopt new strategies to accommodate the influx of connected devices.
High-granularity billing
This rapidly evolving business arena has prompted a pressing need for innovative flexible billing solutions. The new billing systems must measure revenues across versatile new business models by incorporating and displaying highly granular dynamic parameters.
Look who’s piggybacking on telecom companies
Global operator revenues are stagnating due to the increase of opex and capex, while “over-the-top” (OTT) providers of video, audio, photos, and music, which are growing in numbers and popularity, are piggybacking on telecom systems at no cost. This blocks traditional operators from generating profits.
Digitizing your core business
Some telecom operators have adopted aggressive digitization strategies and have begun to generate more revenues than their conservative rivals. But the transition to a digitized system is not always smooth. In some cases, telecom providers have realized that adopting random isolated digital initiatives is unlikely to remedy the situation. Instead, they must use a more focused approach, determining which digital products and services to offer if they are to capture real opportunities in adjacent markets and broader digital ecosystems.
Many operators are well aware of the potential benefits of providing compelling online digital experience and automated straight-through processing (STP) of financial transactions, which would enhance consumer satisfaction while increasing revenues and reducing costs.
Complete paradigm shift needed in customer relations
Many companies have complex legacy systems that prevent them from advancing significantly in the digital space. Understandably, smaller telecom companies are more agile, and are therefore more inclined to pivot away from older systems if it means enhancing customer service.
Before transitioning to a flexible billing software program, operators need to shift and redefine their relationship with their customers. Operators must prove that they can offer high-quality, state-of-the-art, reliable communication services; popular and fresh content on mobile and desktop platforms; and consumer-friendly websites with online billing, troubleshooting, scheduling, and account support. Additionally, they must demonstrate their expertise in security, identity authentication, and billing to their business customers. Lastly, they should work toward monetizing the mountains of data that flow through their networks by shifting to experience-based pricing, phasing out unlimited and free data plans, and promoting the consumption of data-heavy content.