Identifying new stakeholders and new opportunities
A rising tide raises all boats, or so the saying goes. No operator can do this on their own — 5G requires a full ecosystem to reach its ultimately potential. 5G is creating a burgeoning ecosystem of app makers, service integrators, platform developers and others who are rushing to fill the voids they recognize. 5G’s potential has no limit and the telecom industry must seize this opportunity to redefine its business model to monetize 5G.
Communication Service Providers (CSPs) are shifting their own commercial and operational principles to align with 5G transformation. The new 5G technologies which will drive telecom industry growth for the next decade requires a rethink of stakeholder partnerships, especially in an era where some stakeholders are also competitors. Navigating this sometimes challenging landscape was the focus of a industry panel at RCR Wireless News’ Telco Cloud Forum 2022 led by Grant Lenahan, Partner and Principal Analyst at Appledore.
Lenahan framed the conversation with Appledore’s analysis of the 5G state of play for telcos. According to their research, incremental revenue growths for telcos is dependent on integration and service partners who can provide value for customers by simplifying and securing that process.
“So we believe these are going to be composable or building block-type services. They’re going to be multi-party and they’re going to be dynamically changing,” he said.
Joining Lenahan was Sissel-Henriette Larsen, Director of Strategic Partnerships for Nordic telco Telenor, Stephanie Burris, marketing manager at Viavi Solutions, and Steven Baker, VP of product management at KORE Wireless.
Identifying key stakeholders and opportunities
Larsen said that this process starts for Telenor by identifying key stakeholders in local markets and providing a tailored approach.
“Our approach is really to co-create with key players,” she said. Stakeholders have a better perspective from their vantage about how to maximize local market opportunities, she said. For Telenor, it’s Industry 4.0 verticals in Nordic countries, and shipping and port logistics verticals in Southeast Asia.
KORE’s role as an IoT connectivity services provider requires it to navigate connectivity with more than two dozen service providers. There’s strength in that combination, Baker said.
“When we can take all those providers and make them part of a single product that we’re deploying globally, each of them gets a piece of that action if you will,” he said.
Baker and Larsen underscored the important of piloting as a way to test the waters first-hand.
“The best way I’ve ever experienced to deliver a good reputable market based product is to take a stab, but work with a customer through the process to gain that understanding,” said Baker.
Jack of all trades, master of none: Carriers can’t be expected to develop subject matter expertise in every single emerging vertical opportunity. The trick, said Baker, is to recognize the abstraction points where you can provide value and work with partners to develop the rest.
“We partner for many of those, probably 40% of those, so we’re driving value out to some other folks,” he said.
This formative point in service development and ecosystem is representative of the evolution of telecom to 5G. We’re in deployment mode, said Viavi’s Burris.
“It’s greatly focused on deployment right now because that’s where the industry is,” said Burris. “So we’re seeing these ecosystems pop up and these use cases pop up, and we are helping the different players ensure end-to-end connectivity and service quality.”
One throat to choke
For connectivity solutions providers like Viavi and KORE, the increasingly distributed network topology employed by 5G presents emergent challenges. Like network allocation, said Burris.
“We need to make sure network resources are prioritized. There are a lot of demarcation issues that might happen as you roll out those use cases,” she said.
Lenahan used the “only one throat to choke” analogy to describe the cusotmer’s perspective: The vendor that delivers integrated services is the one customers will complain to when it doesn’t work right.
Burris agreed that’s an issue from the retail customer end, but sees enterprise relationships differently. Many enterprise customers already have a relationship with a hyperscaler or hyperscalers as well as a telecom provider.
“So they might have two throats that they want to choke,” she joked.
“There are so many challenges but also many opportunities for new players to come into this,” remarked Telenor’s Larsen. She pointed to Telenor’s lab testing facilities as an important resource for their ecosystem partners.
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