• TelecomTV’s first Telco as a Platform Summit recently concluded
• We ran a poll during the summit to discover the benefits that a Telco as a Platform strategy could bring to operators
• Creating new enterprise services is regarded as the top advantage for most respondents

Implementing a Telco as a Platform (TaaP) strategy could help telcos develop new services for the enterprise sector, according to the results of a poll conducted during TelecomTV’s recent Telco as a Platform Summit.

We gathered participants for our new summit from major industry players, associations and analyst houses to take a deep-dive into the different ways to design a platform-based approach to services and create more innovative offerings for customers.

We then asked the summit audience about the main benefits to network operators of a Telco as a Platform strategy. Notably, most respondents (73%) voted for the option ‘Create new service opportunities in the enterprise market’. This answer perhaps comes as no surprise to anyone in the telecoms sector – operators have been looking for appealing new solutions that their business customers would not only benefit from but truly need in order to achieve their own goals. And considering that enterprise services make up the lion’s share of a typical telco’s revenue pie, it is a no-brainer that operators will continue putting as much effort as they can into discovering services that enterprises are willing to pay for.

The next most popular choice in the poll was ‘Develop new channels to market across the portfolio’. This answer garnered as many as 60% of viewers’ votes, suggesting that embracing a TaaP strategy would help telcos to reach their target audiences via novel channels.

Close behind in third place was ‘Enhance innovation efforts with developers and partners’. A total of 58% of respondents in the poll selected this option, highlighting the widespread trend in the industry for telcos to be highly engaged with developers and partners on the quest to unleash innovation.

According to the poll result, implementing a TaaP strategy could also enable operators to compete better with global tech companies. This notion was supported by 48% of voters, and it corresponds to the growing challenge for telcos to deliver unique services in a digital era that is highly dominated by tech giants which, in most cases, can tap into a higher level of financial resources and talent compared to network operators.

Slightly less popular among respondents in the survey was the option ‘Monetise their investments in cloud native and automation’, which won 43% of votes. Judging by this result, it appears that the audience was not entirely convinced that a platform-based approach to services necessarily correlates to reaping monetisation benefits from the investments that telcos have been making in cloud-native and automation-related offerings and capabilities.

Not far behind was the option ‘Create market differentiation from other telcos and techcos’. Attracting 39% of votes in the poll, this answer suggests that a TaaP strategy would not be sufficient for telcos seeking to differentiate their proposition in the highly competitive market in which they operate.

‘Become more attractive to investors and skilled talent’ was the least popular answer in our poll, gathering just 29% of votes. So, it appears, the audience was not very confident that a platform-based approach to telco services would win the hearts and minds of both shareholders and potential fresh blood in the industry.

To find out more about how a platform-based strategy can help telcos, check out our Telco as a Platform Summit discussions on demand, which feature expert speakers from ConnectiviTree, Deutsche Telekom, Telenor and Verizon among others.

- Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, Deputy Editor, TelecomTV