Friday, 23 December 2016

Friday, 16 December 2016

2016 in Review -----Trends in Telecommunications, Media and Technology




Dear Audience, this article is a summary of moments in 2016 from all of us at NGIT, we hope you enjoy it!

We witnessed dramatic changes in telecommunication business in 2016 as the world is digitizing fast, and we saw the growth of the networks, number of terminals data volumes and carrier adapter of digitals among the consumers. Digital transformation is expanding in base across various industries and fully digitized like media, photography, news, music and travel while some of them are just becoming digitized. Digitization offers enormous market potentials in Telecoms in terms of their potential presence.

However, reality today shows that most of the telecommunication  operators are stuck on their traditional markets where they are faced with revenue profitability decline especially in Africa .  For instance in Nigeria, before the new suspended price floor of N0.90k/MB, the industry average for dominant operators including MTN Nigeria Communications Limited, EMTS Limited (Etisalat) and Airtel Nigeria Limited was N0.53k/MB. Etisalat offered (N0.94k/MB), Airtel (N0.52k/MB), MTN (N0.45k/MB) and Globacom (N0.21k/MB). The smaller operators/ new entrants charge the following: Smile Communications – N0.84k/MB, Spectranet – N0.58k/MB and NATCOMS (NTEL) – N0.72k/MB
These Prices were recently debated on for an increase by NCC for a better data price floor. All in the move to increase revenue profitability and ROI.

Telecoms are also lagging behind over the top companies digital command scalabilities. Telecoms of today are highly complex with many product and service combinations offered through various channels maintaining various platforms so they cannot move faster. Their cultures are still technology centric so it is not surprising today that their market capitalization are much lower than over the top internet companies. What telecoms should do as we look ahead into the year 2017 which is the opportunity for telecoms is to digitize. Digitize to define new business model, digitize the delivery model and embrace the digital culture. First they need to decide are they a connectivity players offering various connection services to various customers whether a consumers or residential? Are they a digital enabler offering various platforms to businesses that connect to end users? Or they are digital life provider for their customers tapping more into the service part of the market which is growing today with digitization. 

In doing so, telecoms can learn a lot from the over the top companies especially in the domain of the digital customer experience. Self-Service capabilities, 24/7 availability of the services all which are embraced throughout the personalization of the services. Those are the elements where telecoms can learn better   from over the top companies and be better. Telecoms should be simplified. They should eliminate non value edit part of their portfolios and they should simplify their operations. Eliminating services that don’t add value from the perspective of the customers. They should be developing a set of unique digital capabilities and they should embrace a culture which is much similar to successful digital start-ups for today. They should acquire new digital talent and collaborate internally and they  should transform their culture 

In essence, impart for telecoms in the year 2017 as we look ahead  is to Simplify, Digitize and Consolidate.
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