After several years of cost-cutting, financial restructuring, and asset divestitures, the telecommunications industry is investing for growth in managed services and outsourcing for enterprises, in multimedia content and video for consumers, suggests Marc Winther, Group Vice President, Telecommunications at IDC. In a presentation at the sixth annual European Telecoms Forum, last April, Marc Winter mentioned innovation and new services as the top priorities for European telecom companies, and IP VPN and application-aware networking, broadband and mobile data, as the technologies enabling this growth.
This two-day event, held in Rome, focused on key issues such as the migration of telephony traffic from fixed to mobile networks, the revolution in the use and provisioning of broadband access services, expanded implementation of wireless solutions throughout organisations, and the impact of the introduction of 3G services. It had more than 300 attendees.
Howard Rheingold, one of the conference keynote speakers and author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution , pointed that personal computers, Internet and mobile telephones joint, is becoming a more commonplace, and create an entirely new medium for human activity and communication. Although we are at the very beginning of this new techno-social revolution, groups of people around the world already use the new medium to self-organize collective action in social, political, economic and cultural activities. Telecommunication companies that recognize the unique character of this new medium will thrive, and enterprises that confine themselves to old strategies and ways of thinking might not survive ‘.
In a recent IDC research , the telecommunication market is expected to grow 4% this year. That is lower than the standard growth rates of a few years ago but significant in light of the stabilization in the market last year.
Peter Cochrane, co-founder of ConceptLabs and former chief technologist at BT remarked some differences between IT and Telecom sectors. IT sector has been between a rock and a hard place for decades, with prices falling and technological ability rising year on year, and by degree the customer has gained more and more control and leverage with each new generation. For the telecoms sector, however, it is a new experience. With rapid commoditization, fiercer competition, limiting regulation, and technology changing faster than the industry can respond, it will be the companies that are most adaptive with the smartest business models that will survive. Cost and staffing cuts are a given, as are the march of bandwidth, mobility, IP, and many new service options .
2004-05-12
Notícias – Press-Releases