White Papers

CSPs face unprecedented challenges in the modern market, yet opportunities for innovation and growth abound. Sponsored by Cerillion, TM Forum's latest Telco Revenue Growth Benchmark Report delves into critical trends reshaping the industry and outlines actionable insights to thrive in a competitive landscape.

This TM Forum white paper, sponsored by Cerillion, looks at how CSPs can "delayer" their businesses into Service Companies (ServCos), Network Companies (NetCos) and Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos) to improve competitiveness and overall profitability.

This white paper delves into the opportunities available to CSPs and their unique role in enabling and monetising smart city initiatives, and the vital part played by robust and flexible BSS/OSS solutions in supporting the interconnected devices and systems that will form the foundation of smart city projects in the coming years.

New mobile private networks (MPNs) are currently being deployed at a rate never before seen, with annual spending in the sector now totalling USD10.9bn. As such, MPNs are being hailed as something of a surprise growth area for the telecommunications industry, however research shows that communications service providers (CSPs) are not the main players in this market.

After years of build-up and growing anticipation, the first consumer services based on 5G were finally launched around the world during 2019. In the UK, EE, O2, Three and Vodafone all launched 5G services to some degree, whilst the big four carriers of the US – AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint – have also rolled out commercial 5G services in various cities across the country. These launches have made one thing clear – telcos need to think differently about 5G services by ditching the traditional mindset around pricing and come up with more innovative ways of monetising their services. Radical improvements in bandwidth, speed and latency offered by 5G mean that telcos can leverage the opportunity to offer richer digital experiences and find new ways to engage their customers.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is creating an exciting new ecosystem for companies to disrupt existing markets, create new monetisation opportunities and rewrite the rules of the game. The key to monetising IoT, however, lies in quickly identifying the right layer for your business to operate within the IoT value chain and selecting the business model which can deliver a compelling value proposition to your customers. In order to reap the benefits of IoT, businesses also need to embrace digital transformation, invest in new support systems capabilities and comply with newer standards.

The advent of the digital economy has placed new demands on Communications Services Providers (CSPs) and the current breed of BSS/OSS systems are simply unable to cope with these demands. CSPs have to contend with legacy systems that are unable to integrate efficiently with new applications, resulting in a tangled web of disparate operational systems and processes. CSPs need to quickly reimagine the ways they operate and engage with their customers to succeed within this new paradigm.

Digital Transformation is fast becoming a key strategic objective for many Communications Service Providers (CSPs). Moving BSS to the cloud is an important aspect of this transformation. However, many CSPs do not have a strategic roadmap to migrate their BSS to the cloud and very often the key drivers for cloud adoption are purely commercial objectives. While CSPs understand that moving to the cloud makes perfect business sense, the reason for this passive approach stems from privacy and security concerns, internal resistance to change and a perceived immaturity of cloud technologies, among other concerns. As more CSPs offer cloud services to their customers and see demonstrable benefits, many expect the cloud BSS adoption levels (currently <10%) to dramatically increase by 2020.

Subscription services are becoming increasingly popular as businesses strive for predictable recurring revenue streams to drive customer engagement. But, as these service provider offerings mature and competition increases, so too does the need for businesses to differentiate through innovative pricing and product packaging.