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2023 telecommunications industry Part 2
Telcos have become tech-cos
We believe that 2023 will mark an acceleration in the transformation of telecommunications companies to become “tech-cos”. It will be marked by two changes: first, telecommunications companies must innovate and bring new services that help in the relationship with customers more than a connectivity provider. For example, Swisscom, outside Switzerland, is expanding the value it offers customers by training technical and commercial employees to also advise and consult their customers about their own cloud travel. Y Telia, based in Sweden, is training and enabling 10% of its workforce to build and operate cloud-native AI and ML applications.
Second, telcos must experiment with running their network as a platform. This will provide a new way to monetize your network builds and get a new, rentable MVNO up and running in a couple of days with just 10,000 subscribers. While we typically operate with legacy applications, traditional labor and big data development processes, we are seeing more and more telcos that have a clear vision and a desire to drive innovation and improve the customer experience. Telecom companies that seize the transformation opportunity will be better positioned to unlock new growth.
Adolfo Hernandez, Vice President of Global Telco Business Unit at AWS
Operators’ ability to dictate policy will be weakened
2023 is going to be a year of shifting emphasis and influence for telecoms regulators and policymakers. The ability of “mainstream” telcos, especially mobile operators, to dictate the policy agenda will be significantly weakened as many other stakeholder groups articulate alternative messages while the 5G audience does not live up to their expectations. Industry, Businesses, municipalities and branches of government like the military want to build their own 5G and fiber networks. The continued more exclusive mobile spectrum demands for national mobile operators in the run-up to WRC23 will face pressure from advocates of shared/private 5G, local wireless access, satellite networks, Wi-Fi and others.
The ability of “mainstream” telcos, especially mobile operators, to dictate the policy agenda will be significantly weakened as many other stakeholder groups articulate alternative messages while the 5G audience does not live up to their expectations.
The flawed metrics that many old-school cables (and their docile consultants) use to persuade regulators to fall under closer scrutiny: overseas-only coverage percentages, aggregated data traffic volumes, homes passed. Policy makers will raise their eyebrows at spurious claims that, in reality, are just downtime for operators who really seek to maintain oligopolistic incumbency, or put other CSPs and cloud/content companies to the disadvantage. In addition to continued (and mostly laughable) intentions to force Internet companies to pay for telecom companies’ infrastructure, we can expect a backlash against shared and unlicensed spectrum. We can expect more informed regulators to ask for more detail and look for good valuations, not just easy but also flawed holder figures.
Dean Bubley, Director, Disruptive Analysis
A call to action on net neutrality
Following the example of Ofcom in the United Kingdom, which proposes to modernize its regulations, the telecommunication regulators in Europe and Latin America will issue a call for evidence on the performance of the regulation of net neutrality. Invariably we will find that politics is falling to consumers, innovators and investors. These countries want to move forward with 5G smart grids, but they have a policy designed to maintain full tuberosity. This cannot be resolved even with the cutting techniques offered. Most importantly, consumers are deprived of their freedom of choice rather than forced to value all data uniformly and equitably when their preferences show that they assign different values to different data. Policymakers will see that they are exchanging million dollar miles in.
By A W Moghul
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