Telecom's: Scale v Margin - The Never Ending Story

Everyone

There have been some great Telecoms posts over the last 4 weeks

All have resonated with the main themes of the last 3 months, albeit the speed of the challenges for the industry are ever accelerating and the need to find pragmatic solutions to allow the businesses to move forward and keep their investors and owners happy:

1.        AI remains a massive opportunity and the biggest elephant in the room – it’s obvious how it can help in telecom’s but it isn’t a magic bullet….customers must want a provider’s service before you optimise it, unless your starting from scratch

2.        AI & MSP’s still need highly scalable/resilient connectivity to deliver services reliably at sensible price points – fixed, mobile, satellite or a coherent multi service offer?

3.        Altnet’s & ISP’s need to “Monetise their networks quickly and drive out costs” – the question is how and who will succeed, recognising the need for a balanced B2C/B2B mix  - consumer gives scale, business the margin…it’s been no different for the last 30 years

4.        BT continues to accelerate its operational transformation driven by the revenue and customer numbers erosion as it transitions to full fibre – that said its Exchange Closure and All IP delays highlights how hard it is to move customers who are entrenched in the “old world” even if the products and service models are nearly ready

5.        And…as a growing number of us have been saying for over the last 18 months The All IP/Exchange Clock is ticking – a huge opportunity and threat for all involved who aren’t on the “front foot” from a transformation and business readiness perspective, including the end customers themselves

My previous post “The Innovators Dilemma” started to explore some of the challenges, that new entrants faced during dot.com while broadband and scale data services were in their infancy, however, today, the organisational, systems and cultural challenges are far more complicated than then based on the last 20 years of organisational and operational development – in many ways most of the businesses are “starting again” while at the same time trying to protect the past revenue streams for as long as possible – it’s a complicated “juggling act” that requires a different mindset to managing  long running stable/scale models in a highly governed Agile way – Muscle Memory is hard to influence

Many Retail & Wholesale Telecom’s businesses were built leveraging the Openreach model and are vocally in parallel keen to exploit the opportunities offered by the new Altnet providers in both the B2C/B2B markets

However, the huge operational differences in all the models can be massaged away by clever portals and checkers as Zen/PXC/APFN etc. have done successfully  at “order entry”, but can’t be massaged away easily through the actual delivery and in life processes (rigid sequential workflows/orchestration, complex planning, wayleave, unhappy path etc.) which leads to a sub optimal customer (s) experience unless the differences in the models are well understood/mitigated  and the services positioned correctly at sale

Trying to push high value business connectivity through a simple scaled consumer orientated model  is doomed to fail before it starts, unless the differences are addressed creatively and these challenges currently flows through to CSAT and cost to serve challenges for the partners and limits the opportunities for the wholesalers and the retailers

In parallel, BT continues to be great at the “Long Game”…..invest early and defend the business - SFN/EAD2/Exchange Closure, All IP and AI delivered successfully will make it hard for “new entrants” unless they accelerate all elements of the customer service and its delivery in the next year or 2 – customers expect an e2e service appropriate to the business type not just a big cheap secure network

Theres lots to think through - as ever, sString is happy to help with access to SME’s and partners who concentrate on the “how”

The clock is rapidly ticking

#Exchange Closure & All IP. #acuityinsight.net # Future Fibre