How AI Can Help Telecom

McKinsey analysts believe a range of new technologies, including artificial intelligence (augmented intelligence) can help service providers reduce capital investment up to 40 percent and network-related operating expenses by 30 percent to 40 percent.

“We estimate that just 20 to 30 processes generate 45 percent of the average operator’s operating costs. Using advanced technologies, such as machine learning, to simplify and digitize those processes can cut costs by as much as one-third,” McKinsey consultants estimate.

“Our analysis suggests that a cost reduction of 30 to 40 percent and increasing cash-flow margins from 25 to nearly 40 percent is possible,” they said.

source: McKinsey

“One company we know had 600 IT systems; another had 3,000 prepaid plans,” the consultants said. “Self help” systems also can help.

“A mobile operator we know reduced the number of support calls it fields by 90 percent after it set up sophisticated systems to track and anticipate the problems of its customers and to give them resources to solve those problems on their own,” McKinsey consultants say. “Providing self-service guides and automatic tips about possible problems can help customers solve 75 percent of the issues themselves. Customers can solve an additional 15 percent of problems by using advice from instant-messaging chats (with employees or artificial-intelligence agents) or from online discussion groups. This leaves just 10 percent of problems to be handled at the costliest level of support: a phone call with a customer-service agent.”

“With predictive models fed by customer information, mobile operators can develop cross-selling offers that appeal to individual customers and determine how best to reach them, down to the time of day,” McKinsey said. “This approach, we believe, can add as much as two percentage points to a wireless operator’s EBITDA margins.”

“One company increased its sales from cross-selling campaigns by 25 percent once it started using analytics to plan those efforts,” they add.

By running massive sets of customer data through machine-learning models, a service provider can identify people who appear likely to cancel their service. Then it can woo them with offers aimed at the causes of their dissatisfaction.

“Research by one mobile operator determined that two percent of its customers had a 48 percent likelihood of canceling their service in the next three months, a rate much higher than the five percent likelihood among its other customers, McKInsey found.

So the company divided the “likely churners” into segments based on the reasons they might cancel. Offers that sought to address churn drivers reduced cancellations by 15 percent, McKinsey found. Also, the mobile operator spent 40 percent less than it usually did to carry out such programs, the consultants said.

As Mobile Goes, So Goes Telecom

In the past five years, the telecom business has entered a period of slow decline, with revenue growth down from 4.5 percent to four percent, EBITDA margins down from 25 percent to 17 percent, and cash-flow margins down from 15.6 percent to 8 percent, according to McKinsey consultants.

Competitive boundaries are shifting as core voice and messaging businesses continue to shrink, partly under regulatory pressures, but also because social media is opening up new communications channels.

Among U.S. telecom companies, for instance, landline and mobile voice now account for less than a third of total access, down from 55 percent in 2010, while data revenue has risen from 25 percent of total revenues in 2010 to 65 percent today.

The issue is what to do. In the near term, horizontal mergers to increase scale are the most likely move by most firms.

In at least some cases, service providers will try to move into other segments of the value chain, either “up the stack” in the direction of applications, in some other cases perhaps “down the stack” (or backwards into the value chain), if one considers devices to be “down the stack” (I would put devices up the stack, but that is a matter of preference).

A third of the 104 respondents to a McKinsey survey were preparing to move into adjacent businesses such as financial services, IT services, media that are “up the stack” moves into parts of the ecosystem other than access and communications services.

To be sure, many of those planned initiatives will fail to be launched, in the end. The point is that one long-term solution to industry revenue shrinkage is to get into adjacent businesses elsewhere in the same value chain.

source: McKinsey

What Takes Place of Mobile Revenues Within a Decade?

It might seem fanciful in the extreme to predict that mobile services will not be the industry growth engine, much less the lead revenue driver, in a decade. But history suggests that will happen.

About every decade since 1997,  the U.S. telecom business has had to adjust to a fundamental change in revenue drivers. In 1997, about half of total revenue was driven by long distance services. A decade later, such revenues had shrunk to less than a quarter, and mobile service revenues had grown to about half of total revenues.

After another decade, internet access arguably grew to support half of total revenues. Likewise, over about a two-decade period, Verizon mobile revenues displace fixed network revenues. In 1999, Verizon earned 82 percent of total revenue from the fixed network. By 2013, 68 percent of revenue was generated by the mobile network. The cash flow picture was even more stark.

In 1999, the fixed network produced 82 percent of cash flow. By 2013, mobility was producing 89 percent of cash flow. The fixed network was creating only 11 percent of cash flow.

The picture at AT&T was similar. In 2000, AT&T earned 81 percent of revenue from fixed network services. By 2013, AT&T was earning 54 percent of total revenue from mobility services.

Also, consider CenturyLink. In 2017 (assuming the acquisition of Level 3 Communications is approved), CenturyLink will earn at least 76 percent of revenue from business customers. In the past, CenturyLink, like other rural carriers, earned most of its money from consumer accounts.

The point is that several shifts have occurred:

• Long distance to mobility
• Fixed to mobile
• Voice to internet access

Another big shift is inevitable, as revenues that can be generate by services for humans and their smartphones has reached saturation.

As hard as it may presently be to conceive of a different future, in a decade, the revenue drivers will have changed again, and mobile subscriptions for human users will have ceased to be the big revenue driver. For at least a few tier-one service providers, content and other apps are likely to be part of the story.

source: Business Insider

Smart Cities Business Model is the Issue

The business case for most “smart cities” initiatives is likely to be poor to negative, in most cases, one can argue. The reasons are simply that incremental revenues to sustain the services are going to be slim to non-existent in a direct sense, even in cases where a positive societal outcome is possible.

In many cases, sustainable operation will only be possible by supporting the apps with tax or user revenues; and some potential savings in energy use. To the extent there are perceived benefits, most will be hard to quantify, as they create a “more livable” city environment, with indirect value in ability to attract and retain business entities and support economic growth.

source: Nokia

On the other hand, some “smart city” use cases, such as connected vehicles, might well be underpinned by sustainable revenue models. Some believe it will be possible to create new subscription services, however, for parking or traffic information and other information services.  

source: ericsson

Coverage "Donuts" Could Connect 99% of Humans

How to connect the unconnected remains a key issue in most markets, for the simple reason that rural areas are difficult places to build infrastructure that can cover its own costs, much less support a sustainable business model.

And the challenge might be more focused than we have thought in the past. In fact, if new research by Facebook continues to follow the present model, it might be possible to connect up to 99 percent of human beings by extending the edge networks around cities just 39 miles (63 kilometers).

In other words, creating a new 39-km coverage "donut" around cities would allow internet access to reach 99 percent of humans.

New “pseudo satellite” platforms should play a role.

According to Stratistics MRC, the Global High-Altitude Pseudo Satellites (HAPS) Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.2 percent between 2017 and 2023. The HAPS market includes unmanned aerial vehicles, balloons or other airships. UAVs will lead the category, though.

HAPS are aircraft positioned above 20 km altitude, in the stratosphere, for very-long-duration flights counted in months and years, and essentially are substitutes for satellite coverage or other terrestrial infrastructure such as mobile networks.

The growth of HAPS is part of a larger trend, notably the replacement of bandwidth and spectrum scarcity by bandwidth and spectrum abundance as a fundamental condition in the communications business.

But here is why HAPS could be hugely significant: according to new studies by Facebook, 99 percent of the population (of 23 countries it has studied so far) live within 63 kilometers (39 miles) of the nearest city.

Facebook therefore believes that if it can “develop communication technologies that can bridge 63 km with sufficiently high data rates, we should be able to connect 99 percent of the population in these 23 countries.”

For such “edge of city” coverage, UAVs and other HAPS platforms might well be feasible as substitutes for satellite or terrestrial mobile coverage.

Up to this point, there has essentially been no way to create sustainable models, which is why subsidies (universal service support) have been essential. But much is changing in the area of communications platforms.

We are developing lower-cost connectivity solutions, releasing much more spectrum, enabling spectrum sharing and finding new ways to aggregate licensed and unlicensed assets to create much more capacity. The result is that the cost of connecting people and locations in very-rural areas should fall, in coming years.

When is Vertical Integration Possible?

Very few firms in the global telecom service provider business are likely to make significant moves to vertically integrate into other elements of the business. In part that is because such moves entail lots of execution risk (moving outside the perceived core competence), lots of capital and lots of scale.

According to McKinsey, there are four reasons to vertically integrate:

• The market is too risky and unreliable—it "fails";
• Companies in adjacent stages of the industry chain have more market power than companies in your stage;
• Integration would create or exploit market power by raising barriers to entry or allowing price discrimination across customer segments; or
• The market is young and the company must forward integrate to develop a market, or the market is declining and independents are pulling out of adjacent stages.

Generally speaking, “failing” markets have one or just a few buyers and sellers, a situation guaranteed to lead to big efforts to gain and sustain advantage. The relationship between content owners and distributors is a good example of such instances, and therefore also a reason vertically integrating content and content distribution makes sense, as Comcast and AT&T have done.

Another instance where vertical integration makes sense is when market power is held by others in the value chain or ecosystem. Consider the internet ecosystem, where devices claim about 15 percent of revenue and internet access about 14 percent, while application providers get about 18 percent.

Over time, revenue claimed by app providers will grow faster than any other segment. That likewise makes vertical integration rational for at least some tier-one service providers.

One way of describing the dynamic is to argue that “you have to own at least some of the content and apps flowing over your network.” In other words, own the actual apps, not simply the access pipe.

Vertical integration, in the internet era, can confer the traditional advantages of raising barriers to entry. When the leaders in one app segment can integrate the leaders in other strategic app segments, entry barriers arguably are created. That is the logic behind the “winner take all” trend in applications generally.

That typically does work so well with communications service providers, who rarely have the market dominance some leading app providers have attained.

Whether telecom becomes a declining market could affect the usefulness of a vertical integration strategy where service providers move to occupy other adjacencies. You might argue that moves into content ownership illustrate that trend.

The internet of things markets might provide another incentive to vertically integrate, though it is not yet clear.

source: A.T. Kearney, IP Carrier

But most service providers will not have the requisite scale to make such moves, sustain them and wring business value out of them.

It is getting harder these days to illustrate the structure of telecom value chain layers. Traditionally, the seven-layer open systems interconnect model had the physical layer at the bottom, the applications layer at the top. Originally developed as a framework for data communications, the stack later became seen as a sort of metaphor for business value as well.

In that scenario, customers might constitute something of a layer eight, driving the revenue model. And some might add a new layer zero of actual physical network elements. More relevant is the addition of a layer for devices, which some place below the communications layer, while others might place the device layer above the communication layer.

Precisely where such layers are placed probably does not matter so much as the understanding that vertical integration can occur both forward (towards customers and retail distribution) or backwards (“down the stack” to incorporate inputs).

As a practical matter, for telecom service providers, the issues are to move either up the stack or down the stack to enhance the value of the present business, especially by adding different revenue sources.

In the monopoly past, creation of network infrastructure elements and architectures, as well as devices, was handled internally, in some cases, by entities such as Western Electric, with development work handled by Bell Laboratories, for instance.

All that changed with deregulation, as the service provider functions (in the U.S. market) were broken into a couple of roles, while research and manufacturing likewise were separated. Western Electric the internal operation became Lucent the independent unit. The research function (Bell Labs) was spun off to AT&T, which operated solely in the area of long distance services, while the “Baby Bells” were created to handle local access.

source: www.intechopen.com

In some cases, vertical integration might prove useful. But most service providers are going to move horizontally, to gain scale in the present business. That has proven the most-prevalent revenue growth strategy in the telecom business over the last four or five decades.

source: Deloitte

Pick Your Poison: Smaller Markets or New Competitors

Amazon.com has launched its own delivery service, after already taking a stake in an  air freight company (Air Transport Services Group) and creating a branded “Prime Air” service. The launch might be characterized as a test, but that might also have been said of the Prime Air service, which has expanded. Amazon also has built its own air freight hubs.

That investment aims to vertically integrate at least some of Amazon’s own long haul operations, by creating its own internal logistics network for air freight.

The latest move goes further, and aims to create an Amazon-owned delivery service direct to its customers. In large part, the move aims to speed up delivery options, but also free up space in Amazon warehouses, as goods would move directly from manufacturer locations to distribution, bypassing delivery companies such as United Parcel Service  and FedEx.

source: myz

Some of you already will have understood the similarity to trends in the global telecom business, where enterprises that formerly were “customers” actually vertically integrate their own long haul or access functions as well as data center operations (fixed internet access or mobile access).

That removes demand from the public telecom markets. It is not so much that the enterprises become competitors as that they cease to be potential customers. Some might see an enterprise that builds and operates its own communications networks as a “competitor.”

In most ways, it is worse than that. Competitors represent a threat to revenues and profits, to be sure. But there always is the possibility to reclaim market share from such firms.

When enterprises create their own facilities-based networks, they remove demand from the markets all the competitors serve. In part, that limits the size of markets, as some amount of present revenue and future growth is removed.

It is not an unusual story. In many ways, cloud computing internalized by enterprises eliminates demand for data center services. Other trends, such as open source, also limit sales and growth  in other areas such as servers and associated gear.

None of this is unusual, as a business strategy. Telcos often speak about “moving up the stack” into the applications layer. In industrial value chains, “backward integration” is the equivalent of a service provider moving further “down the stack.”

Forward integration, in an industrial value chain, normally describes occupying new niches in the value chain (towards retail and away from raw materials) that correspond to a telco “up the stack” strategy.

If, as many expect, enterprises in the 5G era are more able to create their own mobile and wireless networks using a mix of unlicensed and shared spectrum, as well as licensed spectrum, then two things will happen.

In some cases, end user demand will be removed from the market. In other cases, former enterprise customers could become actual direct competitors to service providers. Pick your poison.

Telecom Growth Will Tilt to Business Segment in Coming Years

Though many of us expect enterprise customers will drive incremental 5G revenue growth (because of internet of things), business segment revenue was moving to the forefront even before observers predicted IoT would emerge as the key driver of incremental revenues.

To be sure, business segment revenues arguably have driven telecom service provider profits for many decades. But Bain and company analysts predict that the percentage of total revenue will continue to tilt in the direction of business sources for the foreseeable future.

source: Bain and Company

How Much Can Mobile Operators Earn from IoT Connections?

Just how much revenue might mobile operators earn from connecting internet of things devices? It all hinges on volume. Mobile connections might generate monthly revenue of perhaps $1.50, while connections to specialized low power wide area networks might generate about 15 cents from each connection, per month, according to Analysys Mason.

Perhaps among the optimists, Analysys Mason believes mobile operator connectivity revenue could amount to as much as US$28 billion in 2025, about 14 percent of total potential IoT revenues.

source: Analysys Mason

By way of comparison, application revenue will constitute 61 percent of total value chain revenue and hardware will generate 25 percent. So up to 86 percent of IoT revenue will be earned by app and device/infrastructure suppliers.

LPWA networks (such as LoRa, NB-IoT and Sigfox) might reach US$22 billion in total value by 2025. Connectivity revenue might generate eight percent of the total revenue from the LPWA value chain.

source: analysysmason.com

source: ABI Research

Spectrum Abundance Will Bring More Private Mobile Networks

The mobile business always has relied on its access to licensed spectrum as the foundation of its revenue model. Spectrum scarcity, among other elements, has shaped the business model in fundamental ways.

That is not unusual. Many industries rely on relative scarcity to create value that can be monetized. In the internet era, such scarcities also create incentives for innovators to attack.

If one assumes spectrum scarcity will in the future be replaced by spectrum abundance, it is inevitable that disruptors will enter the market. In many cases, those disruptors will be “former customers.”

Look to the undersea capacity business for clear examples of how this will work. In the past, enterprises generally have purchased communications services from communications service providers.

Of course, since the 1980s, it has been possible for enterprises to create their own virtual networks. In some cases, at least portions of such networks could be created on a “owned facilities” basis.

Source: Dean Bubley

That has taken the form of ownership of actual fibers within third party cables, in some cases taking the form of owned point-to-point microwave facilities and in other cases rental of wavelengths.

If you assume orders of magnitude more communications spectrum will be released in the future, it is logical to assume that many enterprises might evaluate the creation of private networks, for a variety of purposes.

Creation of multi-tenant indoor mobile networks is one application. Such “neutral host” facilities would offer “inside the venue” access to all mobile operators, on a for-fee basis. Think about the Boingo business model, or any standard roaming agreement, and you get some idea of how value is created: the mobile operator or enterprise gets access in hard to reach places.

Also, in the same way that enterprises have created their own computing networks, so all the new spectrum and protocols can enable private enterprise mobile networks, especially to cover campus locations, support industrial, medical or other internet of things networks.

That is going to remove some amount of potential business from the public markets. Again, look at the undersea capacity markets. Some enterprise customers (Google, Facebook, others) now find that have so much volume that they can build and operate their own global networks.

That essentially removes sales opportunity from the “public” markets. On trans-Pacific routes, such private networks already have removed as much as a third of demand from the market. On routes between North and South America, private networks carry as much as 70 percent of total traffic.

Something like that is possible in the mobile business, as enterprises use the bounty of new spectrum to create their own private networks. The only issue is how extensive the trend might eventually become.

In some cases, the private networks arguably will mostly have the same business function as Wi-Fi, which is to say there will be little negative impact on suppliers of access services.

Access to the cloud still will be necessary, but the private location-based mobile networks will take the place of Wi-Fi.

In some cases, such as neutral host facilities, mobile service providers will substitute services spending for capital investment to build their own in-building networks.

The clearest winners for such new private networks will be software, hardware and device suppliers. Again, Wi-Fi infrastructure provides some guidance. If internet of things connectivity becomes as big a deal as many expect, that revenue generation by devices, software and transmission hardware will be key.

source: analysysmason.com

Will Valuation of Telcos Fall?

Something new is happening in the global mobile business. Facing financial distress, entities tend to sell themselves. But what happens if potential buyers simply see such dire circumstances that a purchase does not make sense?

That appears to be a danger for Oi, the bankrupt Brazilian former incumbent. Inability to merge or sell has been an issue for Reliance Communications in India, as well.

So the new trend that bears watching is whether business conditions might get so severe that a struggling service provider cannot sell itself, because there are not willing buyers.

In other cases, such as the proposed T-Mobile US acquisition of Sprint, no acquisition premium has been proposed, as normally would happen. In other words, the buyer sees little reason to pay any premium.

All those situations--no takeover premium; no ability to entice a buyer or no ability to arrange a merger--suggest that the value of telecom assets is in some growing number of cases in danger of falling.

Whether that value can fall so far that complete shut down (liquidation) is the only available option is among the questions that must now be asked.

If that starts to appear in numerous markets, the logical consequence will be that equity values of most telcos will start to fall. That is a significant new business problem, in addition to revenue growth, profit margins, falling average revenue per account, competition and growing capital investment or operating cost issues.

A half century ago, the idea that a country’s national telecom provider could go bankrupt likely was seen as highly unlikely. Since all telecom companies were “sole provider” government-owned entities or monopolies, a bankruptcy, one would have argued, would imperil the national economy and therefore would be prevented by government intervention.

In the competitive era, we have become accustomed to the idea that smaller and competitive service providers indeed can go out of business. But there have been few examples of tier-one, former-incumbent service provider bankruptcies.

That now has happened, as Oi, the former incumbent in Brazil, has entered bankruptcy, albeit the more-familiar “restructure to stay in business” variety, not the “going completely out of business” version of bankruptcy.

Under the best of circumstances, a firm attempting such a gambit would wipe out its equity holders, restructure its debt and try again. In other cases, a buyer might be sought. It is not clear whether any buyers exist for Oi, some would argue.

The problem is the seemingly-unstoppable decline in the legacy fixed network business, which obliterates the contribution made by Oi’s mobile business.

Like many other markets, Brazil’s mobile market features four strong contenders, a situation many would say leads to depressed profits, as beneficial as that level of competition might be for consumers.

Though it is possible to envision a stable oligopoly, a mobile market with four roughly equally-matched suppliers is not sustainable, many would argue. Eventually, consolidation that creates a clear leader, with at least one strong follower, is probably necessary to sustain long-term profitability in the market, as that situation discourages uncontrollable price competition.

In principle, oligopolies are the likely “normal” market structure in the capital-intensive telecom business. In the mobile business, the key question now is whether “three” contestants is stable and sustainable, or whether even that is too many, in some markets.

Oi has nearly 19 percent share. Vivo, the market leader, has nearly 29 percent market share. TIM has 26 percent share, while Claro has 25 percent share. The “perfectly stable” market structure might have something approaching a 50-25-13 market share structure (plus or minus five share points for each contestant).

With such a structure, no provider has huge incentive to launch destructive pricing wars to gain share, as the other contestants can be expected to simply respond, depressing prices and profits across the board, without changing market structure.

source: Anatel