Telcos Need a Google Strategy, Report Finds

NEW YORK, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Telecom network operators and communication service providers (CSPs) are facing a growing and undeniable outside threat from big market disrupters, and they need a clear understanding of how those forces are changing their business in order to ensure their long-term survival, according to the latest report from Heavy Reading Insider (www.heavyreading.com/insider), a paid research service of TechWeb's Heavy Reading (www.heavyreading.com).

Don't Get Googled: Lessons From Telco Market Disrupters analyzes the impact that major players such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Skype, and Twitter are having on the way consumers use telecom services and on the value proposition for delivering those services. The report defines the components of value of a telecom network operator and shows how the activities of specific telecom market disrupters affect these components. It assesses the strengths, weaknesses, successes, and failures of the disrupters, and offers guidance on what they might do next and how network operators should respond. The report profiles the relevant activities of 11 of the most significant disrupters.

For a list of companies covered in this report, please see:

http://img.lightreading.com/lri/pdf/hri0910_companies.pdf

"Telecom operators and CSPs have long understood the threats posed and the opportunities created by competitors such as system integrators, network integrators, and enterprise solution providers," notes Danny Dicks, research analyst with Heavy Reading Insider and author of the report. "But they are now threatened by more commercially disruptive types of organizations, with innovative business models, global scale, or the financial and market power to significantly disrupt telcos' businesses – and their impact is harder to predict and counter."

The business of telecom network operators and CSPs is being shaken up as never before, Dicks says. "Not only is there more competition from companies pitching for the same fundamental market position, but just as telcos and CSPs try to move beyond the limits of their traditional revenue-generation activities, they find that a host of competitors from beyond telecom is preparing to move onto their patch," he continues. "To understand how all this might play out, network operators must have a clear picture of how their position in the value chain is changing, so that they can better understand how to create a viable survival strategy."

Key findings of Don't Get Googled: Lessons From Telco Market Disrupters include:

• Telcos and CSPs have much to learn and much to fear from powerful global players in related sectors.
• Preparing for changes in the nature of interpersonal communications will be necessary – in particular, investment in traffic management and video-optimized networks.
• As more of everyday life becomes connected, telcos will find it harder to extract value from transactional, content-based, and even communications activities.
• Telcos have a key role to play in enabling others to deliver high-quality services, which is their core value.
• Telcos and CSPs can ride the coming wave of cloud-based business services – they have a crucial piece of the cloud puzzle.

Don't Get Googled: Lessons From Telco Market Disrupters is available as part of an annual single-user subscription (12 monthly issues) to Heavy Reading Insider, priced at $1,995. Individual reports are available for $900 (single-user license).

To subscribe, or for more information, please visit: www.heavyreading.com/insider. For more information on all of Heavy Reading's Insider services, please visit www.heavyreading.com/research.

To request a free executive summary of the report, or for details on multi-user licensing options, please contact:

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About Heavy Reading

Heavy Reading is an independent market research organization offering quantitative analysis of telecom technology to service providers, vendors, and investors. Its mandate is to provide the comprehensive competitive analysis needed today for the deployment of profitable networks based on next-generation hardware and software.

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SOURCE Heavy Reading