“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
Albert Einstein.
The OTT-T (Over The Top Threat) is ringing “destructive innovation” alarm bells in the ears of most global telcos. The OTT (Over The Top) play threatens to take the cream off the top, relegating CSPs to commoditised bandwidth providers whilst remaining capital intensive (it’s expensive to build and maintain far-reaching data networks). CSPs need to reinvent themselves so as to avoid being led down a similar path of business model destruction as has occurred in the music industry – read the rise of MP3s and iTunes killing off traditional music distribution.
Huawei has proposed an ever-so-slight, yet ever-so-interesting evolution from OTT to a VTT (Via The Telco) model. Under this model the CSP becomes not just the commoditised data distribution channel, but also the sales, marketing and billing channels… But CSPs are only viable as a sales and billing channel if they are more convenient and offer more value-add than the alternatives. They certainly have natural advantages as far as subscriber reach and trust in existing billing mechanisms though.
However, large telcos are potentially held back from making such a revolutionary change by their inflexible B/OSS.
So within this quandary lies an opportunity that could be the saviour of many Telco behemoths – for a vendor to supply a compelling content delivery and billing B/OSSaaS model, built around the aircraft carrier analogy.
If a CSP is unable to innovate fast enough with their own B/OSS then they’d certainly be prepared to pay a premium to the vendor that can provide bolt-on flexibility to turn on new revenue streams right?
Standing out in a highly saturated and fragmented OSS market can be really difficult. We’re regularly involved in bake-offs where we see dozens of OSS
One of the things I love about my job is all the vendor demos I get to see. Product demos are one of the four
Have you read the book, “The 4-hour work week” by Tim Ferris? It was one of those relatively rare books that inspired a complete mindset
Over the years, we’ve been involved in many OSS procurement events and have seen a variety of different pricing models proposed by vendors. Being software,
Here at Passionate About OSS, we are exactly that – Passionate About OSS (Operational Support Systems). We’re also passionate about BSS, NMS, or any other names you call the tools that help to operationalise your network.
