Viewpoint
Situation – The UK lags W.Europe on coverage of ultrafast pure fibre optic (“full fibre“) networks
New business models, government support and supportive regulatory frameworks have enabled W.European countries to leapfrog UK in ultra-fast connectivity to stimulate economic growth.
Complication – While existing infrastructure capabilities and some fibre are in place, lack of alignment around long term connectivity goals and market inefficiencies imped speedy deployment
> Development of ultra-fast network infrastructure has received insufficient attention from Government.
> Since the innovative creation of Openreach in 2005, little has been done to incentivise or enforce evolution to digital infrastructure.
> Connectivity providers have focused on short term competitive advantage rather than game changing alignment around ultra-fast network deployment and a digital services led economy.
> Organisations haven’t identified revenue models for existing ultra-fast infrastructure capabilities.
Key Question – How do traditional connectivity players regain the lead in ultrafast connectivity?
Insight – Key focus areas that can ensure success in delivering ultrafast networks facing and leading against disruption
Clarify the strategic intent and ensure its integrity
– Create the right strategic context that will foster investment and competition oriented to the key goal of overall ultra-fast nationwide coverage while avoiding duplication.
– Through stakeholder management, achieve alignment of all participants by fulfilling both their business objectives and the overall infrastructure connectivity goals.
– Ensure that the customer is not misled by the wrong advertising by introducing accountability of advertisers
Enable capability based collaboration
– Identify and audit existing infrastructure assets (e.g. ducts, tunnels, sewers, railways, traffic signalling, highways etc.) that can be monetised.
– Embrace capability based collaboration in order to minimise civil engineering related capital expenditure and enable a business model to shift to more predictable demand driven expenditure.
– Foster collaboration between consumer/business focused connectivity providers and infrastructure providers to enhance delivery speed.
Embrace innovative business models and delivery methods
– In a digital world, technologies will continuously evolve; hence the architectural design for the ultrafast infrastructure needs to be rapidly scalable and software oriented.
– New business models that better address the evolving market while reducing civil engineering costs are required from telecom companies. Underestimating this will make them vulnerable to emerging competitors.
– Guarantee that existing and new customers and their needs are kept at the core of the infrastructure development roadmap
– Develop operating models that eliminate silos, lower costs and leverage cross-functional talent from strategists, marketers, engineers, designers and sales
– A lot of data already exists; hence it is critical to ensure that the right strategic context is framed to appropriately use that data for infrastructure development and societal benefit. For this it’s imperative to understand the drivers of value across geographic regions and their core elements (industries, users etc.) that contribute to those goals. Data can then be used within this framework to develop prioritised deployment actions
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