Emerging Trends in Telecom – by Ashutosh Madan
Thought Leadership | Mohit | February 27, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Telecom is a booming industry. GSM alone (which is about 85% of world-wide wireless market) contributes about $ 3 Billion revenue every day. While all sectors of economy are getting badly impacted by the economic recession and liquidity crunch, impact on telecom is a little less severe, at least in countries like India & China. Some people even argue that as the organizations tighten their belts and reduce their expenditures, it may possibly lead to accelerated growth in some segments of telecom industry. Tightening economic conditions are likely to make ‘work from home’ preferred option – both for employers as well as employees. At the same time, video conferencing is becoming preferred mode of communication & relation building with customers. All this is resulting in need for better & reliable communication leading to accelerated up-gradation to IP networks, further penetration of Fibre in the access network and rapid development & deployment of other associated technologies..
Keeping the above discussion as the back-drop, this article looks at the emerging trends in Telecom industry in medium term horizon (3-5 years) from the perspective of 3 key players – Customers (end-users) who buy the services, Operators who sell these services and Equipment vendors who make these services technically feasible and available.
Customers
Customers are always looking for value for money – high quality services & abundant choice at a minimal cost! Key attributes are:
- Quality: Crystal clear quality in all modes of communication, at all times
- Quantity: Variety of services – Voice, Data, Video & Mobility – available at the same time, from the same device and at high data speeds
- Cost: Customers have got used to the declining rates of telecom services and expect the trend to continue in future as well.
Operators
Some of the key challenges/opportunities for the operators are:
- Customer care – Provide pleasant user experience and abundant choice in technologies and product packages
- Outsourcing: Outsource Network and IT functions to focus on core aspects of their business and strategic initiatives
- Inside building coverage – Ensure good coverage inside buildings even if it means sharing network resources with competitors as nearly 70% of the voice & data calls are expected to originate inside the buildings in the coming years
- Coverage/Penetration in Rural areas – Adapt technology to make communication in rural areas profitable
- Fuel bill reduction – Fuel & Power contribute about 25% of operator’s OPEX. Operators have great interest in technologies which reduce this expense as it improves their bottom line as well as earns approval from environmental considerations.
Network Vendors & Technologies
Technology advancements are driven by the applications which customers find appealing and solve the operational issues faced by operators. Some of the key ones are:
- Triple Play, Mobility & Coverage: Customers want to be able to use the triple play services (Voice, Data and Video) all the time and everywhere – indoor or outdoor. Multi-billion dollars are being invested in development and enhancement of mobile technologies like 3G, WiFi, WiMax & LTE. Enhanced need for Indoor coverage is leading to development of Femto cells. Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) is also gaining increased importance as it makes sense to switch from Mobile access to wire line access as soon as wire line access becomes available
- IP Technology: Development of MPLS technology which provides differentiated and assured Quality of Service (QoS) has overcome the best effort nature of IP telephony. Advancements in IP technology have also opened up new modes of communications like web-collaboration, intelligent call-centre applications etc. High quality video conferencing which provides almost a real interaction experience is likely to become killer application. DWDM enables very high bandwidth over fibre. Since high bandwidth needs to be available at the customer premises as well, Fibre is going to penetrate deeper in the access network as well.
- Machine to Machine Communications: There are physical limits to the number of telephone connections that can be sold to human beings! Machine to machine communication can potentially increase it in the order of billions! For this to be commercially successful, it requires standardization of protocols & simplicity of operation
From the above analysis, we can see that changes in Telecom are taking at a rapid pace. And, these changes are being driven as a result of collaboration between three key entities involved. While the pace of the change may at times look over-whelming, customers have been quick to adapt to these changes and have enjoyed the benefits of the technology advancements. Despite the turbulence in the short run, journey of telecom evolution, indeed, looks very exciting in long run!
About the Author: Ashutosh Medan is an Associate Director with Capgemini, India. He has over 16 years of diverse experience in Telecom. He has worked in the entire value chain of telecom – Network Commissioning & Deployment , Product Development as well as System Integration of IT solution for telecom operators. From technology perspective, he has worked in almost every area of telecom – PSTN, GSM, GPRS, VOIP, IN, PTT, OSS & BSS. He has worked with, as well as worked for, both Telecom operators & Network vendors. He has also authored & presented several papers/white-papers and has extensive experience in leading training programs.
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Tags: Deloitte, emerging, EY, india, kmpg, Telecommunication, trends, us
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