Telecom Industry Value Chain

The accelerated rate of change in the telecommunications arena is always a topic close to the hearts of all stakeholders in the industry. Analyzing the different dynamics at play in the sector has never been so interesting. The former monopoly environment has been dragged kicking and screaming into an era of almost Adam Smith-like demand and supply, something that it was certainly a long way from even a few years ago. So, what has changed on both the demand and supply sides of the equation?
First, the demand side has finally begun to exert its rightful role in an open economic market. Under previous regulatory regimes, the demand side was not properly represented. Indeed, the supply side
“dictated” what was going to be sold. So, as user power begins to take its rightful place, consumer and business customers alike begin to drive new services and associated products. The key challenges for today’s purchasers of business communications services and equipment are:
• Mapping the increasingly mobile nature of employees onto the emerging mix of fixed and mobile services, devices and applications.
• Bringing the cost of providing communications services under control: the “consumerization” of services within the business means that areas such as mobile and VoIP are increasingly taking control away from enterprise CIOs and exposing the business to both cost and security risks.
• Rationalizing all of the communications systems and aligning them to business processes, making IT and telecom services a true part of the business and not something hidden below the ground.
• Examining the degree to which third parties can be used to reduce the number of suppliers essential to delivering this new set of services – and determining whom to trust.
The supply side of the industry faces remarkably similar challenges. The days of designing and building its own telecom equipment are long gone and reliance on telecom equipment and software providers, as well
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