Four enterprise verticals emerged as the most promising for telcos: financial services, manufacturing, automotive and aviation
A new report from GSMA Intelligence revealed that telcos see the enterprise space as a $400 billion opportunity, which the firm said equates to about 35% of the existing worldwide mobile operator revenue base.
Further, four verticals emerged as the most promising: financial services, manufacturing, automotive and aviation. The GSMA reported that in 2023, these sectors presented significant addressable opportunities for telcos, valued at $59 billion, $61 billion, $22 billion and $16 billion respectively, and the expected CAGR for each — again, respectively — is 10.9%, 12.1%, 12.0% and 8.4% from 2023 to 2030.
“Telcos looking to monetise their investments in 5G need to look beyond consumer centric and basic connectivity driven use cases,” said Tim Hatt, the head of research at GSMA Intelligence, adding that in order to realize this monetization, though, telcos need a “greater focus” on offering things like network slicing and private networks in the short term, while continuing to develop end-to-end solutions for enterprise use cases in the longer term.
“Enterprises are increasingly looking for service providers to integrate a blend of technologies that fit their specific technology environments and business needs. Though the competition is fierce, telcos have assets and capabilities they can leverage to play in over one-third of this trillion-dollar market,” Hatt continued.
The GSMA also found that core telecoms services offer “little headroom for growth,” and suggested instead that telcos should focus “expanding and innovating in technology services beyond core,” such as cloud computing and cybersecurity, as well as developing new partnerships.
“Though competition is intense, digital transformation is reshaping the fundamentals, creating demand for new solutions and impacting established supplier ecosystems,” the firm stated. “This presents a significant opportunity for operators to redefine their role in the B2B landscape. They need to look beyond connectivity solutions and services and take a broader view of the opportunity.”
This shift in focus — towards expanded offerings and new partnerships — is crucial for survival because, as the report highlighted, telcos will be competing with others for this market: According to the report, 24% of operators view hyperscalers as formidable competitors in edge networking and cloud, while 41% view security vendors as key competitors in security.
“To succeed operators must look to collaborative approaches and new partnerships as well as adopting an enterprise-centric solution-oriented approach; being more like IT consultants than connectivity sellers,” summarized Hatt. “Telcos need to consolidate and simplify enterprise portfolios, adapt sales and marketing, and acquire new technical and commercial skills to effectively serve ever-evolving needs of enterprise customers.”
