The future development of the telecommunications market is one where telecommunications lives at the centre of nearly all communications and entertainment services, observes data and analytics company GlobalData.
Around the world, consumers are being presented with a growing set of service options including:
- Multiplay communications services incorporating bundles of voice, video, data and mobility.
- Over-the-top (O-T-T) services which range from messaging, to social media, to content from the likes of Netflix, YouTube and Amazon.
- Offline experiences like sporting events and concerts – sometimes sponsored (or owned) by telecom service providers.
- Content offers controlled by service providers who are either developing their own content or acquiring content assets.
This new landscape could seemingly be a problem for service providers as they fight for their share of consumer spend.
However, Amdocs, a telecom billing and operations specialist, argues that it could all be a boon to telcos if they can situate themselves at the centre of all these services.
Technology analyst Peter Jarich says, "It's a great vision. Not surprisingly, it's also one that Amdocs can help to enable, thanks to billing assets which touch more than just traditional telco offers. However making it happen, will require more than just technology".
This means acting as a portal to access to all of these new services, including navigation, discovery and single sign-on, potentially earning a share of the partner service revenues it enables.
It also means presenting a unified billing experience and simple bill presentation for all of these services.
Service providers looking to turn this vision into a reality will need to actively develop strategies, to cultivate a broad set of communications and entertainment partners, building business relationships with them in the process.
''Many have already begun this process but aspirations at being in the centre of consumer's communications and entertainment universe means being aggressive in their partnerships, proactively pursuing new partners, and going broader in these efforts than they have to date," Jarich adds.
