Why Connectivity Cannot be the Only Driver of the Connectivity Business

Ericsson offers a fairly simple argument for why big service providers have to consider moving into other areas of the information ecosystem: growth will not be found in the consumer connectivity business. 

Simply put, growth rates in the consumer communications business are forecast to grow only about 0.75 percent per year to 2030, while the broader information technology business grows at a compound annual growth rate of 12 percent per year.  

source: Ericsson

The service enabler role shows the biggest growth opportunity for service providers and includes providing digital platforms on which businesses can configure and integrate value-enhancing digital capabilities into their processes. That is a huge challenge, but offers high rewards, if connectivity  providers can create service platforms, system integration and content management roles. 

Service enablement also logically includes becoming a supplier of edge computing facilities, managing devices, software and data. 

source: Arthur D. Little

source: Arthur D. Little, Ericsson

5G: Less Impact than You Expect Now, More than You Expect Later

New technologies almost always have less impact than expected at first, and important new technologies almost always have greater impact than expected later in their adoption cycle. Get ready for that to be true of 5G as well. 

According to Gartner, after a period of building hype, 5G is about to enter a possibly-inevitable period of disillusionment that might last for a few years or more. 

Perhaps some of that explains the productivity paradox, which sometimes includes the observation that the introduction of advanced technology can lead to lower productivity for a period.

For that reason, one would be right to remain skeptical that 5G, in and of itself, will dramatically boost productivity beyond the benefits of fast 4G. The hoped-for advantages of 5G-related edge computing and internet of things use cases will require rethinking and retooling the way organizations and people work. So we might not see clear advantages from those technologies until 6G is well underway. 

That said, productivity often eventually does show up, after a decade or more. The productivity paradox was seen very prominently in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s when there was a big uptake of information technology, but productivity growth slowed down over the same period.

Labor productivity growth came down from about three percent in the 1960s to about one percent in the 1990s despite the increase in computing and information technology investment. 

source: Gartner

One possible explanation is that productivity is increasing, but we simply cannot conveniently measure it. It is difficult to quantify the value of better computers that cost the same, but increase in performance, for example.

Another possible explanation is that it takes organizations and people a while to adjust to much-better technology. In that view, organizations have to retool the ways they work before the IT investments actually can help. 

U.S. Consumers Might Reap as Much as $32,000 Each Year in Economic Value from Internet Apps, Services

The actual amount of consumer welfare from new digital products and services might be quite high, even if measures of gross domestic product value them at zero. 

Products with zero price are difficult to value. Measures of gross domestic product measure goods with prices, so any products with a zero price are not reflected in our GDP or productivity statistics. 

Although information goods have become increasingly ubiquitous and important in our daily lives, the official share of the information sector as a fraction of the total nominal GDP (about four percent to five percent) was the same in 2016 as it was 35 years earlier. That might strike you as odd, and that is precisely the problem. 

Facebook users spent 50 minutes per day on Facebook and Instagram, up from zero in 2005. The same might be noted for any number of other digital apps. They either created completely new goods that did not exist before,  or replaced and significantly improved previously existing non-digital goods. 

The average American spent about  22.5 hours each week online as of 2018, according to Erik Brynjolfsson, Avinash Collis, and Felix Eggers in an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but much of the value of that time cannot be captured by normal GDP metrics. 

In many areas, such as music, media, and encyclopedias, people substitute zero-price online services such as Spotify, YouTube, and Wikipedia for goods with a positive price such as CDs, DVDs, and Encyclopedia Britannica. 

As a result, the total revenue contribution of these sectors to GDP figures can fall even while consumers get access to better quality and more variety of digital goods, the authors note.

The authors estimate that digital products actually add as much as $32,000 in actual economic value per person. 

source: PNAS

SDN is an Architecture, Not a Product

Every now and then, a promising technology either is subsumed by other platforms and technologies, or simply fails to gain traction. Gartner believes software defined networking has reached that stage, in part because its fundamental premise--separating the data plane from the control plane--now is simply the foundation of network design, not a “product.”

Network functions virtualization in the communications networking space provides an example of how that basic principle--separation of control and data planes--simply is an architectural principle for modern networking. But some had hoped SDN would abstract hardware from software in ways that would foster an awful lot more innovation in software. That arguably has not happened so much, some would argue. 

At least in the communications networking space, SDN influence has lead to NFV, where the ability to separate data and control planes is allowing service providers to operate with lower cost, using generic hardware in some cases, and control software that is more centralized than before, meaning less-complex network elements can be deployed. 

source: Gartner

Can Telcos Be Platforms?

Every fast-growing or large company, in any industry, might well aspire to become a platform, it seems. How widely platforms might be adopted, or “who can become a platform” seems less clear. Perhaps the clearest examples are provided by software or application companies such as Facebook.

Increasingly, many of the biggest businesses are software companies with platform business models. In a platform business, creators and suppliers add content and services to the platform, which draws users, which creates various monetization models.

It is not so clear that any connectivity provider has an easy road, in that regard. Operating as a platform means becoming the gravitational center of a broad ecosystem of consumers, suppliers and developers. 

The problem for any connectivity services provider is that, in the internet protocol ecosystem, which now virtually underpins all digital services and products, there is a logical separation between physical networks and devices and the apps or services people and businesses want to use. 

Under such conditions, by definition, ecosystems are built in the disarticulated apps sphere, and are not inherently dependent on the physical networks that supply connectivity. The best analogy I can think of is electricity. Think of all the businesses and revenue streams and products that are built on the assumption that electricity is available. 

Then ask yourself whether a direct business relationship must exist between any supplier of a product and the supplier of electricity. The answer, of course, is “no.” Electricity has to be provided, but there is no essential business relationship required by any others in the ecosystem who supply products using electricity.

And that, fundamentally, is the problem connectivity providers face when looking to become platforms. They simply have no actual advantages in the device, applications or value-creation roles that are not directly related to the core business of supplying connectivity. 

To be sure, that is not an inherent problem for some suppliers of infrastructure, including roads, electricity, waste water or drinking water or natural gas. Growth rates might be nil, but there is modest, if any competition, which means profits, if not high, are steady. 

Telecom, in contrast, is in what might be termed the worst of all possible worlds. Once a formal monopoly with low but guaranteed rates of return, it now is It a competitive  business with high capital intensity, significant regulation and changing consumer preferences. 

It is as if an electrical energy supplier discovered that its customers were, in large numbers, disconnecting from the grid and creating their own energy. Think of voice or text messaging services and you’ll get the analogy. 

That would create incentives to “find something else to sell.” And that is where the obstacles begin. To be sure, many platform suppliers created themselves from nothing. In principle, any firm can hope too become a major platform, early on. But that is key: a firm has to move “early on.”

Established platforms beat others to market. A decade headstart often is insurmountable, once 

network effects are obtained. Once a firm becomes a platform, aggregating value, the scale advantages become moats.

So is 5G a platform? Mobile operators can hope that will become true, to some extent, perhaps as Amazon Web Services might be considered a platform. Most might tend to prefer the term “enabler,” even if some platform characteristics have developed. 

Skeptics might well conclude that connectivity providers selling services directly to retail end users have little chance to become major platforms on their own. Additionally, connectivity providers might have precious little ability even to leverage a growth path others have employed, namely, working with other key app providers.

Perhaps a good example is the way Uber and Lyft leverage other existing platforms such as iOS, Android, and Google Maps. It is not so clear how a connectivity provider can create a platform role when, by definition, other potential partners can simply assume connectivity exists, with no business relationships required. 

The trick is finding use cases where a direct business relationship, though not formally required, adds value and speeds market adoption by the other partners. Among the advantages large connectivity providers always tend to cite are scale, customer relationships and brand awareness (perhaps trust, as well). 

Those assets might lend themselves to marketing and distribution roles. That is why many firms believe they can be suppliers and creators of linear and over the top video entertainment services; home security; banking or payment services. 

Detailed Voice Guidance for Google Maps

Google Maps for sight-impaired, in U.S. and Japan, for the moment. 

What to Do with DirecTV?

I honestly have no idea what AT&T might eventually decide, regarding its DirecTV holdings, with one exception. I cannot conceive of AT&T giving away the free cash flow that asset represents. One way of looking at matters is the free cash flow from DirecTV funds 93 percent of AT&T's dividend, for example. 

For that reason, all speculation about AT&T divesting DirecTV has seemed to me a non-starter.  But one way of restructuring, such as combining DirecTV in some way with Dish’s video assets,  

Private equity firm Apollo Global Management has proposed that AT&T spin out DirecTV into a new entity that combines Dish and DirecTV assets and leaves AT&T as the controlling entity. 

At least in principle, that would leave open the ability to use cash flow to support dividend payments, debt reduction or share buybacks, while further deleveraging AT&T. 

There are regulatory and deal risks. Charlie Ergen, Dish chairman, is a notoriously difficult negotiating partner. On the other hand, Dish’s future as an independent entity does hinge on harvesting satellite video while building an entirely new revenue model. So maybe Ergen’s incentive is higher than ever. 

But, all things considered, it seems to be the barriers are high to the status quo. Yes, the linear business is shrinking, so replacement revenue sources are necessary. But AT&T has been through this before, as it harvested its declining long distance calling business to invest in new lines of business. To be sure, that effort might be deemed a failure. After all, AT&T sold itself to what was then SBC, which rebranded itself as AT&T. 

But one might argue that failure was one of execution, timing and perhaps luck. Linear satellite television will go the way of long distance voice, eventually. The issue is how to wring value out of that asset (advertising and support for the streaming business) as that process unfolds. 

Fiddling with the ownership structure, or attempting a big merger with Dish, might make more sense were AT&T not committed to being a force in consumer media services.