Where Will Highest Revenue Growth Happen in Telecom, Through 2023?

With the caveat that aggregate global trends can conceal local differences, the highest-growth products in the communications business through 2023 are streaming video, mobile internet and video games. Traditional subscription television growth will be zero, while fixed broadband will grow at two-percent compound annual rates.

source: PwC

What Happens Next in Telecom Industry?

Looking at market share held by the largest three companies in the industry, one can clearly see that industry consolidation rises over time. The existential danger is the bend of the S curve late in the cycle, which shows loss of market share to new competitors or products.

For telecom service providers, the danger is that late-cycle shrinking of the core market.

Eventually, the S-curve suggests, entire markets become unstable, and can shrink, because of changes in technology, customer demand and business model evolution, almost always from outside the traditional boundaries of the industry.

source: AT Kearney

We already have seen this for key segments of the telecom industry, where long distance revenues changed from high margin, high volume to low margin, low volume. We have seen the shrinkage of fixed network voice lines in many developed markets, lower profit margins and revenue from mobile voice and messaging.

At the same time, mobility has assumed the role of driver of industry results globally, while internet access and video services have replaced some of the losses from voice services.

That sort of product replacement is normal.

The big industry question is what replaces mobility as the industry driver, as mobility growth reaches saturation.

Between 2009 and 2019, Internet Access PPI Prices Fell, CPI was Flat

This chart shows the producer price index for U.S. internet access services between 2009 and 2019. The Producer Price Index (PPI) is a family of indexes that measures the average change over time in selling prices received by domestic producers of goods and services, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Consumer Price Index measures price change from the purchaser's perspective. Sellers' and purchasers' prices may differ due to government subsidies, sales and excise taxes, and distribution costs.

source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

The importance of the PPI data is that the “cost” of internet access has fallen over the 2009 to 2019 period, before service provider non-controllable costs such as taxes are added.

The importance of the PPI data is that the “cost” of internet access has fallen over the 2009 to 2019 period, before service provider non-controllable costs such as taxes are added. The same time period, looked at from the Consumer Price Index, shows what end users pay, including taxes that are part of the cost of the product.

source: BLS

Including taxes, the cost of internet access between 2009 and 2019 has remained flat.

Can, Should AT&T Divest DirecTV?

By some estimates, AT&T free cash flow overall is about 14 cents for every dollar of revenue, while Verizon earns 16 cents per dollar of revenue. So some worry about the cash flow generating capability of AT&T’s DirecTV business, which most reasonably expect to drop over time.

Some even speculate that AT&T would be better off selling DirecTV.

That might not be an easy decision. DirecTV still represents per quarter, or roughly $32 billion worth of annual revenue and probably $2 billion per quarter of free cash flow, $8 billion annually. For a firm whose financial model is based on high dividend payments, free cash flow to pay those dividends really does matter.

source: Business Insider

source: Bloomberg

Beyond all that, does it really make sense that AT&T, whose new positioning is a “modern media company, really want to chop media revenue and cash flow to reduce debt, as important as that is? Does AT&T really want to lose the bundling and churn-reduction advantages it seemingly reaps from offering video plus internet plus mobility?

Even if Time Warner arguably represents the future of AT&T’s video streaming efforts, there is no way revenues and cash flow from streaming can replace the linear video business anytime soon.

Some believe AT&T should have spent its cash on something else, such as more fiber-to-home deployments, for example. Few believe there was any way for AT&T to expand by growing its mobile or fixed network assets inside the United States.

But for some of us, that is the primary issue: can AT&T wring much more revenue out of its fixed and mobile footprint? An argument can be made that more FTTH investments would not provide the revenue or cash flow lift of acquisitions such as DirecTV or Time Warner. In fact, some would argue higher returns, and better strategic value, is possible only elsewhere in the ecosystem.

We can argue about the merits of the DirecTV and Time Warner acquisitions, compared to other possible uses of cash. But it is hard to see where else AT&T could have gotten free cash flow and revenue gains, immediately, from other investments such as more fiber-to-home or advanced LTE.

Sure, AT&T could divest DirecTV. It could use the proceeds to reduce debt. But where else can AT&T quickly boost revenue and free cash flow, were it to do so? I just do not see it.

AT&T FTTH Gains Seem Mostly Upgrades by Existing Customers

What impact is AT&T fiber-to-home having on company internet access accounts. Well, it is, as they say, “complicated.” For two decades or more, when a telco replaces copper access lines with optical fiber, it sees two types of changes.

Copper-based accounts go down, while optical accounts go up. Perhaps most of the change is simply existing customers switching from copper to fiber access services, for little net gain in total accounts.

That seems to be happening with AT&T FTTH accounts as well. According to Moffett Nathanson, AT&T achieved 57 percent growth rates for its FTTH services over the past year. But total broadband accounts have not grown at the same rate.

“Despite the dramatic growth at AT&T Fiber, AT&T’s broader IP broadband category has posted only modest subscriber gains over the past year,” the firm says.

The logical explanation is that existing customers have been upgrading to the new FTTH service, and dropping their former copper or fiber-to-node service. That also would make sense if AT&T conducted the sort of marketing campaigns cable operators do when introducing a new service: target existing customers first.

Over time, as those conversions reach an end, AT&T is likely to switch to targeting non-subscribers. Only after a few years of that activity will we be able to assess how well AT&T’s FTTH program has been in potentially taking market share from cable operators.

Which Firms Most Value "Critical Thinking?"

“Critical thinking skills” seem to be valued much more than technical expertise by executives running firms that emphasize innovation and experimentation.

That stands to reason, actually. Firms that intend to innovate people who “think outside the box,” as there often is no template to follow. Firms with other strategies, such as that of “fast follower,” only need to know enough to copy the leaders. Imitation, not thinking, is required.

Deloitte’s 2019 Industry 4.0 readiness report surveyed 612 technology, media, and telecom (TMT) respondents. Of that sample, Deloitte says 29 percent were “high innovators, firms that place a high priority on innovation and embrace experimentation, giving their leaders the leeway to learn from failure.

“Strikingly, the number-one skill that high innovators say they’re working hardest to develop isn’t technical: It’s critical thinking skills,” Deloitte says. “For less-innovative companies, critical thinking comes in last of eight skills probed.”

source: Deloitte

“Human skills” may be just as crucial to success as technical ones, overall, however. While 65 percent of respondents to the Deloitte 2018 global human capital trends survey indicated technical skills will need to increase as AI is integrated into enterprises, 62 percent pinpointed the expanding need for complex problem-solving skills, followed closely by cognitive abilities, process skills, and social skills.

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