A next step in opening the telecom operator’s world is to allow partners to leverage the existing telecoms infrastructure. Enabling third parties to leverage native telco assets and resources for new services or for pure reselling will help drastically increasing volume (long tail) and thus impact profitability. BT has done a great job with their Web SDK to enable third parties and provide partners with the ability to re-package distribution assets like broadband or voice networks independent of the operator’s own retail efforts. They can then – based on those telco network and customer data assets – issue new services to support largely non-telco business processes.
This seems like a reduction of the telco business. But when you look at it from the right angle you will soon realize that a unique proposition will enable a new way of making business and a unique role in this new eco system for operators. Besides the use of infrastructure, the operator controls or can offer authentication and identity through verified billing records in the BSS and OSS, security assets, e.g. SIM, Location as in location based services, user behavior patterns (everything from micro blogging to average online and talk times), credit/eligibility and micropayment, channel availability (which device and service are you currently using?) and user network (who are you talking to?) and last but not least: service- and call centers.
With setting those capabilities free to use in non-telco business environments a whole new market opens as source for new revenues. Operators will focus on and continue to mature these distinctive assets to grow the market with partners as well as their own end users. With bridging the two business partner focusses, the telco’s primary operator role makes them logistics service providers for data. This to me seems like a safe bet, when it comes to future growth.
We will soon see platforms like the sourceforge marketplace in the open software space arising in the telecom world with more open and partner enabling offerings. The Apple App Store as announced last month is a first step.
Operators supporting the new ecosystem through operating such platforms will be the ones to benefit first from the ways of doing business in the new open telco space.
