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Being an operator today is like being a parent picking through the aftermath of a raucous teenager’s birthday party, apparently.
"It was pretty messed up out there," said Graham Wilde, CEO of consultancy BWCS, and chair of day one of Total Telecom Congress in London this week.
Wilde was describing the devastation caused when he agreed, somewhat naively, to host his teenage son’s birthday party in a barn at the bottom of his garden; a barn that had taken years to renovate.
He had expected approximately 80 guests, but word of the party spread on social media, and as a result, around 200 people showed up, "including waiters from the local Indian restaurant."
There are parallels with telecoms industry, Wilde insisted.
"Like the barn, telcos have been investing and investing in their networks," he said. "Then, one day, you go down to the bottom of the garden and discover there is a very large party going on.
"Some of the kids you have known since they were in short trousers, but now they are 6 foot two," he said. Like Amazon, for example, which evolved from a bookseller into a device maker, cloud services provider, and content producer. Or Google, which 18 years ago was just a search engine, and now is into everything.
"There are the kids you don’t know who turn up to the party," Wilde continued, citing Cisco-owned IoT platform provider Jasper, which underpins IoT services used by some of the world’s biggest companies.
"Then there are the kids who mess the place up – like Skype and WhatsApp," he said.
Despite the chaos, Wilde said his son declared the party an unbridled success, and suggested the venue be expanded to accommodate even larger parties in future.
The same is true of broadband: users want more capacity, "a bigger building to play in," he said.
"They don’t know why, but they want it," he said.
Wilde’s anecdote set the tone for Total Telecom Congress, which became like a parental support group. World-weary operators took stock of the disruption wrought on their lives by upstart OTTs and ever more demanding customers, and outlined various coping strategies.
Carlos Domingo, chief new business and innovation officer at U.A.E-based Du, succinctly summarised the situation during his presentation, with a slide that highlighted the following:
- Uber is the world’s biggest taxi firm but owns no taxis
- Airbnb is the world’s biggest accommodation provider but owns no real estate
- Alibaba is the world’s biggest e-commerce company but owns no inventory
- Facebook is the world’s biggest content hub but produces no content
- Netflix is the world’s biggest movie house but owns no cinemas
- Google and Apple are two of the world’s biggest software sellers but they don’t write the vast majority of their apps
And finally, the bullet point that is particularly relevant to telecoms:
- Skype and WhatsApp are the world’s biggest voice and messaging platforms respectively, but they don’t own physical networks
Domingo’s first bit of ‘parental advice’ was a dose of tough love: stop crying about it.
"Once you’ve recovered from the trauma, you need to start thinking about what you’re going to do about it," he said.
In a nutshell, Domingo said a telco must first digitise its core business, making it run more efficiently, and transforming it into something more akin to an OTT experience, enabling customers to tailor services to their liking through applications and self-care portals.
At the same time, telcos should have a "new business" division tasked with capitalising on emerging opportunities, primarily in the enterprise market, he said, adding that there should be a "capabilities exchange" between the two sides of the organisation.
It’s as simple as that, apparently.
Du was just one of several telcos from around the world, dispensing advice at Total Telecom Congress.
KPN CEO Eelco Blok discussed how the Dutch incumbent is simplifying its networks and back office systems so it can cater to an increasingly complicated set of customer demands, while VimpelCom suggested telcos think like OTTs when rolling out new digital services, questioning the accepted logic of targeting only those customers who reside in the same country in which they operate.
There was also plenty of discussion around 5G – what it is, what it isn’t, and what it should be.
Deutsche Telekom said 5G is unlikely to replace fibre; 3UK cast doubt over the requirement for 5G networks to support latency as low as 1 millisecond; and Orange served up a much-needed reality check by saying that the industry still doesn’t have a clue what 5G is.
Manx Telecom touched on virtualisation standards, while Vodafone and Orange made elevator pitches for their IoT standard of choice, namely NB-IoT and LoRa respectively.
Finally, this wouldn’t be a telecoms conference without some discussion of regulation.
Nokia touched on the subject when it called on Europe to do whatever it takes to regain the digital initiative; and some of Europe’s biggest operators shared varying opinions about the current state of EU regulation, including its recently-unveiled reform package.
An eventful show, and one that will return in 2017.
Total Telecom will be back much sooner than that, of course. See you on Monday; and if you are heading to party this weekend, please, on behalf of all the operators out there, respect the venue!
