“It’s not easy running a telecom business”: Isn’t the point of the digital transformation making a telco business easier?
This blog post from Accedian is commenting on another one from Deloitte on MVNOs business models and how those companies have also the need to evolve as the market is changing for everyone, not just MVNOs. At some point, the article seems to argue that being a mobile operator, virtual or not, is not an easy thing to do, and, thus, somehow, operators are safe from certain market intruders, such as non-telecom operators trying to enter the IoT market. However, it is important to note that being a telco is a difficult proposition when there is a lot of legacy infrastructure, but would a cloud-based operator that only rents capacity have such complexities? The answer should be “no” as that’s where MNOs are heading. The idea of NFV and SDN is precisely to eliminate what makes being an operator complex and cumbersome. Thus, in the not so distant future, being a cloud-based almost automated MVNO should be a piece of cake. The wild animal, however, is still finding the right business model to monetize access. It turns out that the intruders have the business models for IoT, but lack the connectivity, which is the easy part. On the other hand, operators are still defining their business models and their role in the IoT value chain beyond access. Whose more protected from who?