As revenues from traditional services continue to shrink, the pressure to innovate looms large for CSPs. Here’s how BSS can help them transition to a modern tech business.
With rising competition and the roll-out of next-generation connectivity enabling new industry use cases, traditional CSPs are under pressure to provide more digital services and operate like a tech or internet company would.
To facilitate this transformation, CSPs must look under the hood of their business. True transformation starts with creating the foundations of a flexible network infrastructure. CSPs need a platform-based business, which can support zero-touch partnering, alongside industry and enterprise business models.
In this blog, Lejla Pljevljak-Rašidagić, Chief Product Officer at ZIRA, looks at how modern BSS solutions enable the transition from telco to techco, ensuring profitability for CSPs in the digital age.
The communications industry is facing immense pressure to reinvent itself. As core services like calls and SMS continue to be taken over by OTT providers and VoIP calls, and consumer ARPUs reach all-time lows, the viability of a traditional telecoms business is decreasing. This is reflected in the gradual decline in B2C revenues: according to TM Forum, consumer revenues fell by 1.6% from 2021 to 2022. On top of this, high inflation is increasing business costs and making already hefty CAPEX network investments even costlier.
Under these circumstances, CSPs are also competing with new players in the market. Hyperscalers like Google or Amazon have vast amounts of cash available, giving them the ability to purchase or build their own network infrastructure. No longer reliant on traditional telcos for connectivity, hyperscalers can focus fully on innovation, gaining a significant strategic advantage over CSPs.
To keep pace with competition and thrive in the face of growing challenges, CSPs need to rethink the fundamentals of their business and shift away from traditional services.
Let’s look at how BSS makes this possible.
The transition from telco to techco is more than a change in technology or infrastructure. It requires a transformation of internal and external operations that can align the business to customers’ requirements in the modern era.
This process entails unique challenges for CSPs, such as:
A modern, flexible BSS solution can help CSPs address these challenges for a gradual yet comprehensive transformation.
Here are some of the specific elements of a modern-day BSS solution that can support a transition to techco:
Modern BSS solutions can help CSPs scale reliably and flexibly with demand and serve a wide range of different customers within a B2B2X or digital marketplace model. Using open APIs and cloud-native approaches across the organization, BSS makes the implementation of new solutions and the creation of partnerships far easier.
To enable cost savings and maximize efficiency, BSS solutions can introduce automation or artificial intelligence into CSPs’ day-to-day operations. By simplifying everyday processes such as invoice generation or rate sheet management, CSPs can liberate time and resources to focus on providing new and improved services to their customers.
Modern-day BSS makes it possible for CSPs to enhance or replace components of their existing IT back-end selectively and gradually. This way, they can avoid disruption to customers while introducing new efficiencies.
As well as enabling digital transformation and serving current customers better, these unique features and capabilities also make it possible for CSPs to enter new markets. With a flexible BSS infrastructure, CSPs can move beyond mobile, data, and broadband and unlock growth opportunities in fast-moving digital consumer services.
Categories such as digital gaming, online video, and digital music are set to be worth more than $513 billion by 2027, according to research by Omdia. The earlier CSPs step on the trajectory of digital transformation, the sooner they can get a slice of this enormous revenue opportunity.
In the current communications ecosystem, CSPs need to reconsider their business priorities in order to remain relevant in the digital age. Against a rising tide of technology companies, CSPs need to adapt their service offering and operations to retain their competitive edge. With modern, modular BSS solutions, they can create efficiencies, form new partnerships, and unlock business opportunities, ensuring they have a space in the market for many years to come.