Do you want to know how to get the most from your unique position? How to avoid fading into the background and becoming a secondary intermediary? In our era of digital transformation, this is an issue that communication operators can’t afford to ignore. Companies across different industries are opening up to the possibility of leveraging innovative technologies. This includes things like mobile applications, cloud storage, and large data analysis to develop new methods and mechanisms of interacting with users.
Table of contents
Digital Transformation: What it Makes so Important?
Telecom operators are the heart of the digital value chain. Different organizations across different industries are reliant upon communication networks and computers. This is because they help those organizations to achieve their aims and deliver their services. It’s up to telecom operators to be able to compete effective with the latest fully digital companies in order to avoid being destroyed with the traditional market. This is why it is necessary for every telecoms operator to learn how to best take advantage of digitization. It’s already become part of the customer service package and their revenue stream.
It’s all too common for the IT infrastructure at a telecom operator to not keep pace with the development of other technologies. In order to be able to serve corporate customers effectively, a provider has to keep pace with digital transformation. This is why it is inevitable that transitioning to digital and virtualized architecture will become necessary. Not only do technologies change with time, but so do economies and the dynamics of the industry as a whole. The very nature of competition itself can even change over time.
Large network equipment manufacturers would offer disconnected vertically integrated solutions. It was up to the telecom operator to combine them together to make individual systems. Today, the virtualization of network functions opens the market up to new players. It affords operators more flexibility when choosing partners depending on their specific situation. By getting rid of the rigid connection between hardware and software, the door is opened for solutions with an open API. These solutions bring with them the chance for more collaboration between IT software developers and providers and telecoms operators with big open projects.
Open Ecosystems
The modern world is on the verge of a new era of open telecom companies with open ecosystems. It’s been shown by other industries how this kind of transition will help operators to innovate faster and make changes. It also reduces costs and allows for operators to respond more dynamically to any competitive challenges that come their way. In order to really take advantage of the benefits of these open source products, an operator has to be able to effectively navigate the new ecosystem. They have to know the difference between projects developed by the community and the corporate class solutions built on those projects. It’s important to understand how certification of technologies that connect to other hardware and software solutions is performed. It’s also important to realise the risks of dependency (lock-in) and the incompatibility that can come from using proprietary (forked) versions of open source software. There are some companies that have managed to advance further than others when it comes to these new market opportunities.
Scalability, Flexibility, and Dynamism
Some advanced cloud products used by telecom operators already have technology solutions for integrating with existing applications as well as custom software systems. For example, Vodafone, offers cloud services that help with embedding in client solutions. Perhaps the earliest we will see these services come into effect is with the Internet of Things. For example, with logistics, they can be used to monitor vehicle conditions using sensor data from the IoT.
Retail is another good example, with marketing mails sent to phones near sales points and analytics of customer data during a visit. It’s obvious that in order for a telecom operator to succeed in the digital age they must have a dynamic, flexible, and scalable ICT ecosystem. This is what software-defined networks (SDNs) and network virtualization (NFV) promise to deliver.
The leaders of the telecom industry must modernize their offerings. They have to work now to avoid the negative impacts of digitalization on their network performance and business efficiency. They should do more than just innovate. They must innovate at “internet speeds”, discarding legacy models and adopting new technology. They should also react dynamically to how customers use technologies and interact with one another. This mixture of innovation, change, and competition will pave the way for a fully open and cooperative approach that will forever change how telecom providers grow and expand their operations.