During my 25 years in the telecom industry, most service providers have earned the bulk of their revenues and placed their focus on their consumer business, delivering relatively straightforward connectivity-based services. But 5G represents the dawn of a new age characterized by the rising importance of B2B and B2B2X, with service providers increasingly partnering across industries to co-create multi-party solutions. Our industry’s continued growth depends on it.
Defining B2B2X
By B2B2X, I mean relationships whereby service providers partner with third parties to co-create solutions for their consumer or enterprise customers. Historically service providers have partnered with each other in roaming and interconnect agreements to guarantee subscriber coverage. In recent years, they have made forays into partnering outside the core comms industry, for example with digital service providers like Netflix and Spotify to bundle digital services with communications services. Continued expansion of this B2B2X model is a win-win for CSPs and their partners. CSPs have the opportunity to provide more relevant services to end users, increase revenue and reduce churn. Their partners can reduce the barrier to conversion by gaining access to the CSPs’ large customer base while taking advantage of billing and other processes the CSPs have already set up.
Expanding partner ecosystems
Despite the aggressive global rollout of 5G, most service providers are still seeking the business models that will generate a return on their significant network and spectrum investment. Experimentation and agility are the name of the game. Service providers want to leverage their 5G capabilities to expand their B2B revenues and understand that they need to appeal to their enterprise customers by providing solutions that are applicable to the challenges of their industry. But developing industry-specific insights and quickly launching relevant new services for those industries is not realistic for CSPs to accomplish singlehandedly.
Here is where the partner ecosystem comes into play. Rather than focusing R&D efforts on creating new services for niche customer segments or building out propositions in a new industry vertical, partners can step in to provide industry expertise and solutions that leverage the unique capabilities of the service providers’ 5G network. The more partners in an ecosystem — including application developers, hyperscalers and other contributors — and the more diverse they are, the more opportunities they will collectively have to meet customers’ distinct needs.
As the value of pure connectivity becomes commoditized and service providers must move up the value chain, partnerships and ecosystems are critical to value creation. The business case for 5G rests on B2B and B2B2X, which requires a shift from the traditional B2C go-it-alone mindset and into thinking about how service providers can co-create with partners to deliver innovative solutions for enterprises.
Fostering co-creation
Co-creation is critical to unlocking the potential of B2B and B2B2X. Industry players should actively explore co-creation with leading service providers and others who are driving innovation, whether through co-creation in their labs or meaningful ways with a wide variety of partners.
Ideally, labs can offer a hands-on simulated space for industries to come together and co-create solutions using emerging technologies like IoT, AR, VR, and ML. For example, labs can be used as an incubator so CSPs can explore new 5G-enabled revenue streams and engage with potential ecosystem partners across the many industries. In these environments, participants can test early prototypes, evaluate solutions and make decisions on whether they have commercial viability.
Co-creation and collaboration will underpin value creation in the 5G economy. By enabling collaboration, CSPs and partners can explore and accelerate new revenue opportunities based on emerging technologies across verticals like manufacturing, utilities, government, hospitality and many more.
Charging and billing are vital
One of my favorite adages is: “If you can’t bill for it, it’s just a hobby.” In the case of co-creation and B2B2X, it’s essential to have the systems in place to charge for any type of metric or pricing model to avoid constraining innovation. 5G offers many new attributes like latency and security that can be factored into pricing plans. For example, if a CSP partners with a cloud gaming company, they can offer different network slices with varied QoS parameters and charge more for a slice with very low latency that will deliver a superior gaming experience.
Similarly, a CSP create an ecosystem of connected vehicle services with a variety of partners and different 5G network slices. One slice may offer high bandwidth for in-car passenger entertainment; another slice may handle dozens of IoT-enabled sensors that track vehicle health; while a third slice may offer ultra-low latency to support responsive autonomous driving, all of which are charged using different metrics and can be scaled to support massive numbers of gamers, sensors or vehicles.
In addition to flexible and robust charging, service providers must have the tools to settle revenue across multi-sided partnerships in accordance with commercial agreements. Bottom line: Monetization at scale is a critical success factor for enabling B2B2X and partner ecosystems.
Embrace the co-creation age
B2B2X business models driven by 5G’s capabilities will continue to unleash new partner ecosystems for service providers, application developers, hyperscalers and other contributors. We are still in the early days, and as an industry we will continue to experiment with our role in emerging ecosystems. However, the message is loud and clear that B2B2X is key to monetizing 5G and growing our industry. None of us can do it alone. Instead, we must all embrace this new era of co-creation and collectively drive progress forward in 2022 and beyond.
