2030 Vision: How the Telco Industry’s Past Successes Will Shape Its Future
Enabled by 5G deployments and increased cloud coverage, we are entering an era of accelerated innovation, collaboration and growth, all taking place in an ever-evolving ecosystem of partners.
This forward march of change can be hard to forecast, and even harder to accurately plan for. With wireless subscribers and enterprises alike expecting more personalized and value-added offerings, telcos have to adapt faster than their customers expect.
While these business model and technical advancements are unpredictable, telcos have been through transformative periods before and thrived every time. As service providers move ahead, it can be helpful to look back and see what lessons can be learned—and how to benefit from them.
First Era—Voice and SMS (1998-2009)
The foundation of the GSMA was a gamechanger. By bringing together the world’s major operators to establish set standards, the industry set its own course forward. This achievement set the stage for explosive growth in the usage of personal and business cellphones, creating massive profits for telcos. Over time, however, new entrants and high mobile subscriber penetration led to the start of B2C saturation. By the end of this era, overall B2C sector growth began to slow .
Takeaway: Collaboration between telcos and other partners can lead to strong revenue growth.
Second Era—Data and Video (2009-2019)
LTE and the proliferation of smartphones paved the way for digital disruption in this era, which prompted CSPs to shift roles to digital service providers. The rollout of 4G also triggered massive increases in investments, which grew to a total of $261 billion , a 43-percent increase from the previous decade. By the end of 2019, nearly two-thirds of CSPs were experiencing commoditization in the B2C market.
Takeaway: Telcos were creative and launched new digital services off the back of a better network. But with mobile data and B2C facing commoditization, telcos need to explore new opportunities.
Third Era—Ecosystems (2019-2029)
Full disclosure—I don’t have access to a crystal ball. But based on the past few decades, I believe that collaboration in a thriving ecosystem will be the key to success in the next decade. Telcos have done it in the past, and they can certainly do it again.
This ecosystem will feature a variety of different players, from telcos and hyperscalers to ISVs and cloud providers. Partnership within the ecosystem will enable telcos to provide additional value with their 5G connections to maximize value. One example is combining new applications with connectivity (e.g., Telstra offering a for farmers leveraging 5G networks).