Defining the North Star for Digital Telco

It would be an understatement to say that the telecom industry is changing. In the past, traditional telecom networks utilized proprietary hardware and software, and numerous operations were manual. Telcos also used to offer conventional consumer-oriented services, and the network was at the center of business.

With the advent of digital technologies and the digitization of networks, IT now plays a central role. Through software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV), there is hardware and software decoupling and network operations are becoming automated. There are use cases beyond mobile and industry-oriented enterprise use cases enabled by 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Additionally, customers are becoming the center of telco business. As a result, telcos face a survival imperative to be “tech-driven” and transform into “digital” telcos to compete with over-the-top (OTT) systems and internet players.

To deal with this unprecedented period of technology innovation, telcos need a north star for their business that provides a shared vision for their products, services, technology, and customers. They must focus on the following business imperatives to develop and define their north star strategy:

1. Expand consumer engagement.
2. Transform and grow the networks.
3. Expand business engagement.

Expand Consumer Engagement

Telcos need to make the customers the center of their business and manage and deliver high-quality experiences. Therefore, telcos must implement the following business use cases to develop a north star approach to expand consumer engagement:

• UC1 – Omnichannel Customer Engagement across all digital touchpoints.
• UC2 – Advanced personalization such as recommendations, cross-selling, and upselling.
• UC3 – Simplify business offerings by combining telco and non-telco products into unified offerings.
• UC4 – Business agility through time to market in hours or days instead of months.
• UC5 – Partner lifecycle management by partner on-boarding, provisioning, monetizing, and settlements.
• UC6 – Exposure of IT, Network, and Partner capabilities to the ecosystem for open collaboration.
• UC7 – Seamless and immersive consumer services enabled by 5G for Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Gaming, and 4K Video.

Transform and Grow the Networks

Networks form the “core” of the telecom business. Telcos need to manage and deliver an ultra-fast network experience to the consumer to meet the challenges of super-exponential growth in bandwidth demand. Additionally, telcos need to implement the following north star business use cases to transform and grow the networks:

• UC8 – Monetize the investment in 5G.
• 1 – Transformation to Cloud native network architecture.
• 2 – Intent Based Networking.
• 3 – Network Intelligence and Automation powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technology.
• 4 – Edge Computing.

Expand Business Engagement

Telcos must implement the following north star components to business use cases to create greater value for Enterprises, Server Message Blocks (SMB), aggregating their network capabilities, and specialized vertical industry solutions:

• UC9 – Advanced Enterprise and SMB services such as Fixed Wireless Access, Enhanced Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), and Value Added Services such as teleconferencing services leveraging AR/VR enabled by 5G.
• UC10 – Smart Home, Smart Cities for Waste Management, Emergency Services, Logistics Management, Vehicle to Everything (V2X), and Industry 4.0 enabled by 5G.

Summary

Telcos have a tremendous opportunity ahead of them with the capabilities of 5G, SDN, NFV, IoT, AI, and ML technologies. It may be challenging to decide which products or technologies to focus on and where exactly to begin. Defining and establishing the north star business imperatives and use cases mentioned above will help create alignment and momentum across the entire telco organization.

GlobalLogic Telecom's service portfolio uses the critical business imperatives outlined above as its foundation. We are excited to work with our telco clients to accelerate their digital transformation journeys, and we would be happy to discuss your own needs after filling out the below contact form.