Disruption and competition: A tough alliance to beat
CSPs have seen disruption and competition before, but seldom, if ever, have they faced the two together. To succeed, they need to increase agility substantially.
08 Jul 2020
Disruption and competition: A tough alliance to beat
Disruptive competition remains the top sector challenge for telecom operators. Nearly a third of communications service providers (CSPs) see it this way, according to recent research from Ernst & Young. CSPs have seen disruption and competition before, but seldom, if ever, have they faced the two together.
In the US, for example, divestiture in 1984 was very disruptive to the status quo. Then competition came with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Divestiture proved to be a blessing, at least to AT&T, and the wave of competition from local exchange carriers that came in 1996 was vanquished in short order. But today, disruptive competition is a serious threat and comes from two primary sources: over-the-top (OTT) content providers and hyperscale cloud providers.
Perhaps had telecom not won so easily early on in their battle against competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), they would have pressed harder to improve agility, the key characteristic that would prove most useful dealing with disruptive competition today. Until recently, they’ve only pursued it half-heartedly.
The graphic below shows that CSPs are aware of the need to improve agility – they rank their culture as lacking it.
In the US, for example, divestiture in 1984 was very disruptive to the status quo. Then competition came with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Divestiture proved to be a blessing, at least to AT&T, and the wave of competition from local exchange carriers that came in 1996 was vanquished in short order. But today, disruptive competition is a serious threat and comes from two primary sources: over-the-top (OTT) content providers and hyperscale cloud providers.
Perhaps had telecom not won so easily early on in their battle against competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), they would have pressed harder to improve agility, the key characteristic that would prove most useful dealing with disruptive competition today. Until recently, they’ve only pursued it half-heartedly.
The graphic below shows that CSPs are aware of the need to improve agility – they rank their culture as lacking it.
The pursuit of agility has taken on greater urgency the last couple of years because CSPs need to be able to:
There is something else complicating this competitive landscape. OTT and cloud providers are not merely competitors; they are just as often partners. Partnerships between these companies and CSPs are likely to grow as they all attempt to move toward the network edge to deliver services. This is a positive development for the most part, but to construct equitable partnerships, CSPs need to be operating on the same digital level as OTTs and hyperscalers. In other words, they need to be as agile in every way.
In a TM Forum report published this month called, Attaining agility and beating disruptors at their own game, we show how CSPs and their suppliers increasingly see the Open Digital Architecture (ODA) as a path to achieving the desired agility, as well as automation and open systems.
Oracle, which sponsored the report, joined several new signers to the ODA & Open API Manifesto. “The company’s new Digital Experience for Communications (DX4C) solution is a unique architecture that is aligned with ODA and uses many of its Open APIs to operate in a heterogeneous IT environment that is modular, open and agile and decouples the customer experience from the systems of record,” said Jean Lawrence, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Oracle.
The report shows how ODA and DX4C work together to advance agility and explains why normalizing data across the enterprise using industry standard data models that run on a cloud-native environment is so important.
- Respond to market demand for innovation
- Relate to customers in the myriad ways and channels through which they expect to conduct business
- Provide personalized services on demand
- Apply customer, business and network intelligence to services in near real time
- Support self-service and automated provisioning, activation and assurance
There is something else complicating this competitive landscape. OTT and cloud providers are not merely competitors; they are just as often partners. Partnerships between these companies and CSPs are likely to grow as they all attempt to move toward the network edge to deliver services. This is a positive development for the most part, but to construct equitable partnerships, CSPs need to be operating on the same digital level as OTTs and hyperscalers. In other words, they need to be as agile in every way.
In a TM Forum report published this month called, Attaining agility and beating disruptors at their own game, we show how CSPs and their suppliers increasingly see the Open Digital Architecture (ODA) as a path to achieving the desired agility, as well as automation and open systems.
Oracle, which sponsored the report, joined several new signers to the ODA & Open API Manifesto. “The company’s new Digital Experience for Communications (DX4C) solution is a unique architecture that is aligned with ODA and uses many of its Open APIs to operate in a heterogeneous IT environment that is modular, open and agile and decouples the customer experience from the systems of record,” said Jean Lawrence, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Oracle.
The report shows how ODA and DX4C work together to advance agility and explains why normalizing data across the enterprise using industry standard data models that run on a cloud-native environment is so important.
Download the report
