OPINION
37
Mobile & telecoms
predictions 2020
By Kevin Billings, Director &
Industry Principal, Telecoms &
Media, Pegasystems
www.pega.com
Against the backdrop of transformative technologies and
the latest regulations, Kevin Billings, Director & Industry
Principal, Telecoms & Media at Pegasystems identifies
what’s in store for the media & telecoms sector over the
next twelve months.
Flush with 5G firsts but fuzzy on value
As 2019 ends, you can’t escape how much carriers have
raced to make their 5G network live with everyone wanting
to claim a 5G first, from first 5G village to 5G city to 5G
shopping centre. But, let’s be honest, all this techno sound
and fury is a game of retaining and winning those super-
nerd customers. Bundles that offer 5G some of the time,
in some places, may dislodge or cement high spending
innovator-class customers but aren’t going to pay for the
huge costs of 5G deployment. The job of articulating why
5G matters to the masses hasn’t got off the ground much
yet, and this will have to change in 2020 to pay for the
high upfront costs of both 5G and maintaining the legacy
services and infrastructure.
Being too complex and costly
Despite their best efforts, CSPs can’t help themselves and
make their businesses less complex and thus, less costly to
run. 5G is a case in point. The licences were hugely expensive
to buy, the networks are denser and more complex to plan,
deploy and run. And, marketing budgets are being ramped
up. As the dust settles, expect more CSPs to reflect on the
need for digital process automation that better connects
their customer frontend to the service backend. 5G and all
After an eventful 2019 for mobile
telecommunications, what can we
expect from the year ahead?
the rest of the ever-rolling digital transformation cries out for
more end to end robotic process automation.
Digital transformation is the new normal
Digital native spending power is on the rise and there’s little
brand connection to carriers, which is unsurprising when
some are nearly 40 years old and others are over 100 years
old. As customers flit between new digital experiences, CSPs
need to do more to be the platform for what’s next. This
is a tall order that can be achieved when CSPs rethink how
they run their digital businesses, empower more business
domain owners to be citizen developers who use low-code
solutions to ensure digital processes and products are always
adaptable at the pace of market demand.
Squarely in Political Sights on Customer Service
However, the UK sorts out the next stage of Brexit, it’s more
than obvious that high-speed broadband connectivity is one
of those top people priorities for politicians of all stripes.
2019 is ending with lots of heady corporate propaganda
about 5G and the start of a streaming subscriber war
between the globe’s biggest content holders. Consumer
expectations for flawless high-quality digital experiences
are soaring. Politicians fighting for office and looking for
levers to improve people’s lives have fallen upon high-speed
broadband coverage. CSPs will need to work out how to
respond in 2020 and, if they’re pushed to make bigger
capital investments, there will need to be a focus on more
internal process efficiencies to push down OPEX as CAPEX
see-saws upwards. n
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