The prevailing feeling of the Great Telco Debate (GTD24) was a sense of Europe being “stuck”. The industry is not doomed but it feels frustrated and marginalised too. This is my take on what the discussions in London, 5th December 2024, revealed about the state of the industry in Europe at this moment, and what to do about it.
Below is an extract of a report I wrote about the day. Please contact me if you'd like a copy of the full report, including recommended actions. It's free but I believe it's valuable and I'd like to know you value it too!
How to unstick?
The industry can "Grumble on" with the status quo, "Rupture" as external forces make the pace, or find a way to "Unstick". Options include:
A new technological/operational paradigm, including harnessing data and AI, automation, cloud, satellite and ‘platform thinking’
Structural changes, for example moving towards servco/opco or other disaggregated models, and infrastructure convergence (e.g. energy + telco) to develop more focused investment and innovation
Please get in touch if you would be interested in joining me, Dean Bubley and Industry Leaders for a one-day workshop “Unthinkable: How to Unstick Telecoms Investment and Innovation?” to explore the way forward in London on Tuesday 18th February 2025 - and book the date in your diary!
The Great Telco Debate 2024 (GTD24)
The Great Telco Debate 2024 (GTD24) took place at The Chartered Accountants Hall, at One Moorgate Place, in London on 5th December 2024. My thanks to Telecom TV and Chris Lewis, who staged it brilliantly, kindly invited, fed and watered me, and shared the better photographs in this report like the ones below.
Format
It was a day-long event discussing five motions in separate sessions with around 200 participants. There were networking breaks between each well-timed session, and overall the event is well thought through, carefully designed and valuable. Each debate motion was proposed, panelists then argued for/against in 3 minutes without slides, and there was a lengthy audience Q&A.
How GTD2024’s Explosive Motions Expose the Industry Zeitgeist
The motions debated were like sticks of dynamite, expertly placed in industry fissures, to blow apart opinions and expose new seams of insight. It is a real skill of Chris Lewis, Grahame Wilde, and the Telecom TV team – chapeau to you all!
The questions are a bit like nitro-glycerine, an unstable and explosive mix of two or more compounds which detonate when a spark or other form of energy is introduced.
Like an explosion, the result of each motion is not typically a tidy conclusion. Although there is a concluding vote on each question, I am not convinced that each for/against outcome is always completely meaningful. Sometimes it reflects how the question was interpreted, rather than an agreement on an underlying truth.
So the real richness is in the debate - examining the debris of the blasts and trying to make sense of it all. In that sense, I think the debate itself provides a great snapshot of the zeitgeist - how people are thinking and feeling in this moment about the industry, and particularly in the UK and Europe, given the demographics of the participants. And the blasts can cause a degree of shock, awe and confusion, sometimes leaving the participants (e.g. me) slightly dazed and confused in the moment.
Hence I have taken some additional time to reflect on what I heard and what it means in addition to the posts I made live from the event, also summarised in this report.
The Fissures in the Telecoms 2024 Zeitgeist
The challenges include:
Some of the discussions on the telecoms industry’s attempts at innovation can seem like an emotional battle between wishful thinking, hype, scepticism and world-weary resignation.
Important and valuable concepts (such as platform business models) are buried and hidden by the noise from / scepticism about industry initiatives like network APIs, which while potentially valuable, need a new business and operational approach to work well. And, in fairness, the over-use and hype over the words and concepts themselves.
There is a focus on technologies (6G, APIs, etc.) over outcomes. This is to some extent because that is where the money is - where folks, often vendors, are understandably willing to pay for research and debate because it advances their needs. Technology is also an interest that many of the personalities in the debate are only too happy to follow at the expense of others.
There is a perpetual scale paradox, where operators eschew focused ongoing commitments to innovation because the opportunity doesn’t seem to “move the needle”, while those opportunities that seem like they might move the needle require either global scale and skills that individual operators don’t have (and HSPs do) or collaboration in which they often fall short.
The impact of De-Globalisation (i.e. geo-politics becoming fractured and regionalised) creates a new level of complexity in an industry that would prefer to think of itself as becoming globally homogenous. That would be simpler after all, even if it has never necessarily been true.
I believe that progress is possible, but these challenges and others need to be unpicked. The following is an extract covering the first of the debates, and the contents of the rest of the report.
Debate 1: Platforms and APIs - there’s gold here, somewhere…
Snapshot of the debate: What is this stuff for?
Motion: “Aligning APIs with a digital platform will put CSPs at the heart of the digital economy.”
The inimitable Chris Lewis won the opening Great Telco Debate by defeating this motion. The panel comprised:
Amit Liebstein, Global Telco Account Executive, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Erez Sverdlov, VP Cloud and Network Services, Europe, Nokia
Fahim Sabir, Director, Digital Solutions, Colt Technology Services
Geoff Hollingworth, CMO Rakuten Symphony
Nathan Rader, VP of Service and Capability Exposure, Deutsche Telekom
Nik Willetts, CEO, TM Forum
The panel explored a lot of the dynamics and examples of success and failure (notably, not focusing on what customers want).
Take-Outs: The platform gold under the debris
The motion is an excellent example of the destructive and destabilising power of the GTD24 questions, at least four aspects are colouring the debate (not to mention Dean Bubley’s long-term aversion to the word ‘digital’):
Platform business models/’platform thinking’ are vital to telcos’ success. I see there being three layers to this concept.
First, making IT work as a platform, providing re-usable capabilities rather than endless bespoke project-based solutions.
Secondly, operating as a platform business, where it is easy to provide offers created with third parties, because external interfaces (which include APIs) are efficient and easy to use. This may be provided though a marketplace and involve ecosystems of partners to aid delivery.
Thirdly, there is the concept of an industry platform, whereby operators collectively provide a common service to others to maximise the scale benefit of an offering.
In contrast, I feel and sense antipathy to the phrase ‘Telco as a Platform’. It is a slightly vague term, using the trendy ‘as a’ format. I can sort of guess what it might mean – something important, which I outline below - but I don’t really like it, and sense others don’t either, because it feels like empty hype. The word ‘platform’ is also horribly over-used.
APIs are important, but… There is a lot of interest around the network APIs in the GSMA’s OpenGateway initiative. And it is a great idea for the industry to standardise. But there are other useful APIs out there, and ultimately APIs are a means to an end, and it is the ends that matter. APIs are little doors to a piece of data or functionality that a programme needs to achieve those ends. External APIs, like OpenGateway, need to be supported by internal processes and automations – and this is one area in which standards like the TM Forum’s Open Development Architecture (ODA) is incredibly valuable, providing a map and a guide to how to build the processes that will make the bigger machines work.
Telcos’ role in the economy. The motion cunningly includes the word ‘central’, hinting at the trap of thinking that telcos must be central to – or most important in – something. Telcos are often in between things, as they carry data from one place to another, and they are certainly critical enablers of economies. But the idea of ‘centrality’ is an ego trap for the unwary. Nothing is central in an economy – it is a vast web of many ecosystems interacting and changing.
I voted ‘against’ the motion because it is a flawed premise that APIs will make telcos central, or indeed that they should be.
However, the nuances of the ‘platform’ concept are enormously important, despite some of the annoying hype around the words. It is about a better way of doing business, which is broader and more nuanced than the motion allowed. It touches how you are organised, what you sell, and how you interact, as well as how you think.
APIs matter too. They are an important feature of technical architectures in modern businesses, and provide the potential to enable new business models. But the important thing is what are they for, and I feel that telcos can get a bit hand-wavy here and say ‘it’s all too complicated for us so we’ll leave that to someone else and stick to engineering’.
This abdication of responsibility will cost telcos dearly in both time to success and who ultimately benefits/profits most from the solutions they enable. In practice, some of the solutions may be delivered by someone else, but telcos need to get to grips with what APIs are for, to do them well and ultimately benefit to the maximum extent.
Actions: attend to the details
Do not entirely outsource understanding the details of what APIs mean to your customers to somebody else (e.g.s SIs, developers, platform provider). By staying close to the detail, you will understand value better and help to develop better solutions. Follow use cases and case studies, talk with your customers and the ecosystem.
The TM Forum’s Open Development Architecture (ODA) and other “Mission” focused work is a valuable resource to help make all the parts work together, with benefits beyond enabling new APIs. Ensure this is factored into your plans.
The report in full
The content above is an edited extract of the report, and does not include the Executive Summary. The full contents of the report are:
Executive Summary 3
European Zeitgeist 3
Stuck in the middle with you. 4
How to unstick?. 4
Debates & recommendations in summary. 5
Introduction 6
The Great Telco Debate 2024 (GTD24) 6
The Zeitgeist in brief 6
How GTD2024’s Explosive Motions expose the Industry Zeitgeist 7
Debate 1: Platforms and APIs - there’s gold here, somewhere….. 8
Snapshot of the debate: What is this stuff for?. 8
Take-Outs: The platform gold under the debris. 8
Actions: attend to the details. 10
Debate 2: Telcos and AI - are we fighting or dancing? 11
Snapshot of the debate: customer focus is where it is at, isn’t that where AI should be?. 11
Take-outs: where is the value from AI?. 12
Actions: careful with that AI, Eugene. 12
Debate 3: Techcos, APIs, AI – a bomb in the word salad 13
Snapshot of the debate: what are we talking about?. 13
Take-Outs: Francesca was right, but what is a techco, really?. 14
Actions: to be more than a better connector, pursue a compelling purpose. 14
Debate 4: IoT & 5G – is 5G the answer to IoT’s enigma? 15
Snapshot of the debate: IoT is a complex, thin-margin game. 15
Take-Outs: today’s telco IoT money is connectivity - can they do more?. 16
Actions: have IoT in the locker and focus on solving problems. 16
Debate 5: 6G is coming, but no one seems happy 18
Snapshot of the debate: the wheels are already turning. 18
Take-outs: 6G’s coming, ready or not! 19
Actions: join the 6G discussions - plus is something else needed?. 20
Interested in more and/or want change?
Please get in touch if you would like the report and/or be interested in joining me, Dean Bubley and Industry Leaders for a one-day workshop “Unthinkable: How to Unstick Telecoms Investment and Innovation?” to explore the way forward in London on Tuesday 18th February 2025 - and book the date in your diary! Discussions will include explorations of:
A new technological/operational paradigm, including harnessing data and AI, automation, cloud, satellite and ‘platform thinking’
Structural changes, for example moving towards servco/opco or other disaggregated models to develop more focused investment and innovation