telco 2.0

The Telco 2.0 team’s view is that the way forward is to understand and specify an end-to-end commercial framework for telcos within the two-sided ecosystem. The diagram below summarises this at a high level.

2-Sided Telecoms Business Model: Schematic Architecture

The analysis and brainstorming sessions in Nice focused on 7 important aspects of building a two-sided platform strategy:

1. Open APIs –how to open telco networks to reduce access and/or transaction costs for other retailers.
2. Retail Services 2.0 – how telcos can provide both their own retail services and the B2B platform services that will enable other retailers to sell products and services successfully through their networks.
3. Devices 2.0 – how telcos need to access more of the intelligence in devices and exploit it for their own retail services and two-sided business model strategies.
4. Enterprise Services 2.0 – how telcos’ assets can be used to remove or reduce the barriers other service providers face in interacting with end users.
5. Content (esp. Video) Distribution 2.0 – how telcos are in a position to make money by helping to restore rational behaviour to the market
6. Technical Architecture 2.0– how telcos need to be able to easily access a key untapped asset - customer data
7. Piloting 2.0 – how to succeed and learn quickly.

The key issues and action points in each of these areas are described in the Executive Briefing Report, including an analysis of how current industry initiatives (e.g.s GSMA, TMF, NGMN, MMA, OMTP, OMA initiatives) map against the schematic architecture above.

From top-down analysis...

In the 'Two-Sided' Telecoms Market Opportunity strategy report we identified a number of areas in which telco assets could be applied to produce new sources of value. These areas were determined by exploring how Telco assets (grouped into seven 'service capability' categories) could add value to multiple vertical industries (see chart below)

The Seven 'Two-Sided' Service Capabilities Apply Across Multiple Industry Sectors

In the report, we also produced a detailed top-down model to size the potential market for each service capability in each vertical.

...to bottom-up analysis...

We are now recruiting a small number of partners to help us fund the next stage of the research project, which is to develop a deeper understanding of the two-sided B2B VAS market opportunity:

• Its overall potential size and, most importantly, the size of specific opportunities within it
• The potential ecosystem associated with each opportunity area and the roles to be played within it
  
• The business model options for operators and other ecoystem players - who to charge, what to charge for?
• The nature and volume of transactions that will flow through the ecosystem and the distribution of value among ecosystem players

This is important to operators and vendors within TMT (our partners) because it will give them sufficient detail to support business decisions:

• A detailed business case to justify investment in specific opportunities