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Strategy for digital world is required, not digital strategy
Operators need to stop crying about the telecoms revolution and live with it, Du’s chief new business and innovation officer advised on Wednesday.
Addressing the 200-strong audience at Total Telecom Congress in London, Carlos Domingo described the revolution as unstoppable and urged telcos to see the positives.
"The typical reaction to the revolution is crisis but we need to stop crying – it has happened, it is a revolution, it is unstoppable, so live with it," he said. "Instead, we need to think about what we can do with it."
Domingo went on to explain how the Japanese word for crisis has two meanings – danger and opportunity – adding "essentially there is an opportunity because all of the things that have facilitated the big OTT players to disrupt the industry are also tools for us."
The way for operators to do this, Domingo continued, is to focus on efficiency and growth, with business-to-business (B2B) services providing a huge market for this.
"Helping enterprise customers deal with the digital revolution has huge potential for growth for operators," said Domingo. "This includes things like world class infrastructure, cloud services, IoT offerings and big data solutions, and a leading managed services and security team."
Domingo listed examples of this sort of growth, highlighting how Du has already taken steps to grow in this way, including winning a deal to become strategic partner to build a smart city platform in Dubai, being selected to produce electronic health records using blockchain technology, and being the first company in the Middle East to deploy a LoRa network for IoT services.
Domingo also discussed how operators can differentiate themselves in the business-to-consumer markets, picking out end-to-end customer experience as one area they could win in.
Citing American retailer Target, which has incorporated unboxing videos – which are popular with children – on its website, Domingo concluded: "It is not about creating a digital strategy but a strategy in a digital world."
