Technology trends reshaping Telcos

By 2025, 70% of new applications developed by organizations will use low-code or no-code technologies, up from less than 25% in 2020.

The telecom industry is evolving quickly, as businesses and consumers seek out game-changing use cases—from autonomous vehicles to robotic surgery to an unfathomable range of seamless digital interactions—that operate on the back of telcos’ substantial 5G infrastructure investments.

Telco leaders are broadly aware of the magnitude of transformation that the moment demands, and many are creating elaborate plans to overhaul everything from business models to operations to customer experience. Ongoing excitement about the potential of AI, driven by advances in generative AI, is pushing the industry to rethink the scope of its transformation plans. However, many telco leaders are struggling to manage the talent implications of these shifts, including determining what talent they need and how to beat out the competition to get it.

Organizations no longer have the option to continue on as they have — they have to adopt and accelerate digitalization.” It’s no secret that telecommunications service providers have seen better days. On one hand, over-the-top (OTT) providers have grown bigger and bigger by investing on research and development without the need of paying for infrastructure. On the other hand, CSPs have seen their profits dwindle while their expenses have increased exponentially. All while paying huge sums to keep their core telephony services up and running.

But it's also no big secret that, with the restrictions on physical activities, COVID-19 forced us to see the benefits of going digital. From e-commerce to M2M to IoT to work-from-home to automation to shorter time-to-market, we all had a sneak peek at the good results digital transformation brings. And that is just the tip of the iceberg: Empowered with low code, CSPs embracing digital transformation can really outpace OTTs at their own game.

1) Lower Operational cost : Due to the nature of the telecoms business, most CSP networks have a heterogeneous mix of legacy platforms and island solutions for various products. It is not unusual that many of those platforms have already reached end-of-life/end-of-service and their maintenance translates into huge operational costs. A digital transformation that enables virtualized services not only lowers OPEX but allows individualization for key businesses that can drive retention up.

2) New CSP driven services : With the advent of low code platforms, developers (product owners and business people with no or little programming skills) at CSPs can create and individualize services and applications. These apps, either OSS or BSS, are directly and securely integrated to the local telecoms network, all with single sign-on (SSO), and unified billing. Moreover, the possibility to tailor their solution to the exact needs of a certain group of users, CSPs improve customer retention. While global OTT services can't be tailored to the needs of, for example, the SoHo and SMEs markets, low code allows differentiated solutions even for different verticals. By offering real product differentiation from their competitors and not only a better pricing strategy, CSPs can achieve higher margins per user.

3) Faster time to market : Reaction times in the telecoms industry have been historically long: The complexity of the telecoms networks, the huge number of third-party vendors involved in a project, the amount of decision-makers … But COVID also showed CSPs that they could react faster to stay competitive. And CSPs now have low code.

4) Automation is the key : Long gone are the times when CSPs needed to invest time and resources to be able to make the jump to a different environment (development, testing and live) to bring new services online: going from development to user-acceptance to live environment, everything was costly and slow. Now, with continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), CSPs are able, with the push of a button, to move whatever they want between different environments, reducing time, resources and costs, while delivering results much faster and with better quality.

5) Help the customers in their Digital Transformation journey : A low-code platform for telecoms allows CSPs to help their customers embark on their own digital journey. As low-code and no-code user interfaces are based in building blocks, customers themselves can create and individualize their own services to better serve their business outcomes. And, if their end customers are getting better business outcomes, CSPs' businesses will be doing just as good.

The key trends to keep an eye as we move along in the journey are -

a) Ever expanding connectivity

b) Edge computing

c) Next gen tech bets

d) xRAN

e) Trust architecture and Digital identity

f) Artificial Intelligence

g) Quantum Technology

As technology continues to evolve, so should telcos’ strategies for capturing tech talent. Early movers give themselves the runway to experiment with creative strategies that may pay dividends in the long run—and to adapt and hone these strategies based on rigorous evaluations.

Telcos’ future success rests on their ability to make the most of the opportunities that emerging technologies present. Multiple elements will need to fall into place, and telco leaders are developing ambitious transformation plans. But talent strategy is also a critical part of the equation, and it’s often not getting the attention it deserves. Business leaders would be well-advised to take the reins in shaping and steering tech talent strategy to ensure they have the people to get the job done.

Thank you for reading through this article. My sincere intention is to publish one article each month on the latest technological advancements in the industry. If this was useful to you, do consider subscribing to the newsletter and feel free to drop your comments.

Have a great day forward :)