Upon entering the second decade of the 21
st century, we find an almost unrecognizable digital landscape before us. The technology explosion of the last two decades has changed our everyday lives; needless to say, it is a challenging time for CSPs, who have relied heavily on the technological foundations of yesteryear to grow over the last 50 years. Twenty years ago, Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer were the search engines of choice, people listened to CDs and the most ‘digital’ way to get a takeout was to call the local Pizza Hut on your Nokia 8210 and place your order (provided you had a signal) – before passing by Blockbuster on your way home to rent a movie for the evening. These days, you can stream music on Spotify, order your favourite meal through Deliveroo, and download the latest movies on your smartphone, 22 meters below sea level on the London Underground.
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GSMA predicts that mobile internet will add 1.75 billion new users over the next eight years, reaching a milestone of 5 billion mobile internet users in 2025, and mobile operators will invest USD 0.5 trillion in mobile capex worldwide between 2018 and 2020.
[1] This investment is vital to ensuring that operators remain fit for purpose in the digital age, are able to provide the bandwidth needed for the services that it will bring, and are able to compete with new entrants to the market. The risk of simply becoming a ‘conduit pipe’ for OTT players and digital natives is real, and operators cannot afford to rely on what worked yesterday.
This report suggests that operators know this. In fact, 90% of respondents said that they see the importance of bundling partner services in order to add value for their customers through third-party collaboration. To meet their KPIs of adding new customers and maximizing revenue per customer, operators must collaborate and evolve constantly. Such is the competitiveness of the market that CSPs must be able to add value to their offering using partners to provide services that they are unable to deliver on their own, such as security, billing and parental controls, to name a few. Bundling these services and offering them to end-users for a small fee enables CSPs to add revenue per user – however small – and, more importantly, remain relevant and attuned to their customers’ needs.
This benefits CSPs by enhancing their offering, as well as profiting the niche providers of these services, enabling them to get their products to a much wider market than they would otherwise have been capable of. The benefit customers is that they receive a contract or service with the integrated functionality they want, without expending the valuable time and resources to shop around in order to add these features individually.
William Pollard once said: “The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow”. The future is unclear for CSPs and we do not know what the next 20 years will look like – or what ‘G’ we will be on by then. However, judging by the last 20 years, the need to collaborate efficiently, evolve flexibly and – ultimately – remain fit for purpose, will be of paramount importance. CSPs must start now or face the fate of Blockbuster. In a digital world, survival of the fittest will be the most resonant theme for years to come.
