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There are two dimensions to this. Structural i.e. do telcos have relevant assets that would enable them to capture value going forward? And then cultural – are telcos capable of the DNA reset needed to compete with their emergent competitors (e.g. Facebook, Google, etc.)?
In my experience (W. Europe centric), telcos spend a lot more time agonising about the former while shying away from the latter. If they were smarter, they would do it the other way around.
Telcos themselves probably believe they devote plenty of management attention to the question of disintermediation. Every few months senior managements ask the question – the only thing that seems to change over time being the identity of the potential disintermediator (first Skype, then Google, then Apple, now Facebook) – and junior managers scurry away to look at the data, and then come back with the reassuring conclusion that with a bit of added effort, telcos can capture value by exploiting 'unique' assets like location, bill
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