Outside Perspective
16
Becoming a Digital Telco:
Is the road map redundant? By: Alex Leslie, Founder, DisruptiveViews
The question is no longer whether telcos need to transform their businesses into something that resembles Google or Facebook, but how. Whether fuelled by fear or by excitement, the race is on and, crucially, the political will is right behind the transformation. What any given telco will look like in two to three years time will vary. What we know is that the model will be more transactional than telcos are used to, very much less focused on contracts and post-paid regularity. Payments will be the new billing. Customer service will move to center stage. And Millennials will want their data for free. This means that partnerships will become critical to a telco’s business viability. The burning issue is how to transform the business in a timescale that telcos have never even contemplated before. There are, essentially, five choices.