The opportunity of Beyond Connectivity Services

No one can dispute that connectivity has been the prime domain of network and communication service providers (CSPs) for decades and it is as vital to our society today as other utilities. We cannot envisage anymore a world without connectivity and yet what society really cares about - and it is willing to pay premium for - is not the connectivity, but the services that ride on it.

This should not be surprising to anyone; it is not different to say electricity. With all its greatness, it is the vast array of home and office devices electricity enables that really makes a difference to our lives, not the electricity itself.

By equal measure, it should not come as a surprise to find that society expects connectivity to work as reliably as electricity. Most of us privileged enough to live in developed countries have grown used to, barring some exceptional circumstances, electricity flowing through our houses and business seamlessly and without variations of flow or quality. CSPs understand that consumers expect the same level of quality of service from connectivity and that is why they continue to invest heavily in their systems and operations. However, this level of investment coupled with a decreasing willingness from consumers to pay more solely for connectivity, is pushing them to expand into the territory of over-the-top services to improve their revenues.

Now, if one searches for the meaning of “over-the-top beyond connectivity” services, the number of answers is endless. Most of which revolve around the concept of CSPs offering ‘services’ to Consumers or Enterprises in addition to their traditional wireless or wireline communications offering. Of course, in this context, ‘services’ can be a very elastic term depending on who is defining it. As such, this can include anything from gaming to robotics, AR/VR, V2X, IoT, SD-WAN, Edge, e-commerce, digital payments, and the list goes on and on.

From this, it would not be unreasonable to surmise that whatever the agreed definition is, it is potentially highly complex, yet can also potentially reap extremely high revenues for those who can get it right.

As expected, several of these often-called digital offerings have been in the market for nearly a decade and CSPs offer them today reliably. However, more complex services often require industry knowledge plus a broad range of skills, partners, and technical solutions (Cellular Private Networks, Wi-Fi, edge, security, applications, and more). The complexity that these solutions entail, is pushing CSPs’ organizational structures, people, and platforms in ways that were not originally designed for, threatening deals and profitability.

Despite these hurdles, the potential for monetizing their existing connectivity assets and upselling other services is too great for them to overlook and the risk of disintermediation is too high to dismiss. If the economics stack up, Enterprises will buy these services to stay ahead of their competition and will do so with or without the help of CSPs. If the CSPs fall short on consumers’ expectations, the competition from the wider eco-system is fierce and extremely fast-paced. There is no room for error.

Therefore, whether the services and simple or complex, it is undeniable that without the right automation strategy and modern systems to deliver these services, CSPs will not succeed. They will either not meet the agreed SLAs or supply the services profitably and competitively or all the above.

Amdocs has been working with CSPs for years and we understand their pain points and the organizational and eco-system challenges they face. We have worked closely with them in automating their service delivery processes for years and we know what it takes to help CSPs succeed.