The telecom market can feel like a roller coaster, with the spread of broadband mobility, cloud services and 100 percent market penetration making for unprecedented innovation — and competition. 2010 promises a raft of market changes that will only serve to complicate the landscape further.
In this special for xchange, our sister publication, Billing & OSS World, talks with Kieran Moynihan, vice president and CTO Telecoms for IBM Tivoli, about telecom’s incredible dynamism, intensifying competition, and the importance of customer service.
What strikes you the most about what’s happening in the telecom market right now?
Kieran Moynihan: The telecom market changes every day, there is so much dynamism. When we sit down with CTOs at carriers, the first, biggest challenge or concern is that the level of competition has intensified to an unprecedented level – across wireless, fixed broadband, fiber, cable, IPTV and all the new services like VoIP and video over IP, particularly in the more mature markets like South Korea, Singapore, Australia, the U.S. and Europe. That’s really driving significant challenges within their own businesses. In many areas, such as wireless, there are literally no new customers. You have to hang on to the customers you have, and increase revenue with new services — against a backdrop of commoditizing basic wireless 3G access, DSL and things like that.
How does the rise of content affect the landscape?
KM: The whole area of television and video-on-demand content is playing to the strengths of existing cable and satellite companies. By extension, there is a lot of focus around control of the home. People want to establish a gateway into the home to offer a lot of services and for it to be the focal point of the smart home of the future. When your fridge and smart energy appliances all want to connect, they’ll utilize a gateway/hub, and that will drive the smart home of the future. It will make for some interesting battlegrounds.
What do you see happening on the business side as we move forward?
KM: On the enterprise side there’s a significant trend regarding the convergence of unified communications, VoIP, cloud services, and externally provided telecom. A blurring of the lines.
The telecom service providers have been looking at the cloud model over the last 12 to 18 months. They realize they have a critical asset, [and] they have the customer base. Traditional [Tier 1] telcos have a huge market share. They are realizing the need to leverage that customer base, so we’re seeing AT&T and Verizon, for instance, truly getting into the cloud service provider business as a value-added extension to current portfolios.
How are new trends driving the way providers look at their software needs?
KM: What you're starting to see, both in the general telecoms market and in the cloud, is a larger focus on the customer experience and quality of experience. They really need to push the end customer to the center of the paradigm. It's getting to the point where it doesn't suit incumbents or competitors to keep dragging the pricing floor down. End users are willing to take lower pricing always.
Networks and service quality, the customer experience and customer care are the new differentiators. They want to make sure that every touch point an end user has with the service provider really represents a strong positive experience. There’s a lot of focus on empowering customer care.
They want to combine the management at the device layer, the network layer and for customer service, on an integrated platform. We've put a huge focus and significant R&D dollars to be able to manage the telecom and IT networks in a very customer-centric manner.
To read the full, in-depth Q&A at our sister site, Billing & OSS World, click here or on the source link below.
