6 Ways Telcos Can Grow

There are six fundamental ways incumbent telcos can attain significant revenue growth, on the way to becoming "Telco 2.0" organizations, according to a new report by STL Partners. Some of the strategies are process oriented, and aim to enhance what service providers already are doing. That might include such things as better marketing, better use of sales channels or core product enhancements.

Other strategies require a bit more, or substantially different profiles. Among the more far-reaching, one might argue, is the strategy of becoming an over-the-top application provider. That move essentially breaks the "territorial" model by severing the tight connection between access services and applications. Whether this ultimately will prove more strategic for fixed line providers or mobile providers might be debatable, in some markets.

Where widespread and easy access to incumbent facilities is possible, "footprint" extension for a facilities-based strategy is easier. In other markets, where wholesale is more expensive and harder to negotiate, facilities-based approaches using wholesale access might be more difficult. Most European markets are examples of the former, the U.S. market an example of the latter.

But most of the six major strategies will make sense as logical extensions of what service providers already do, with significant new emphasis. Providing more targeted solutions to business customers in some verticals, as well as providing other infrastructure-type services such as data center or hosting services, will not be foreign suggestions for most service provider executives.

Likewise, the suggestion that service providers can generate revenue by exposing network features to third parties will resonate.

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