By AKANI CHAUKE
JOHANNESBURG – TELECOMMUNICATIONS providers must reinvent and provide unmatched experience to customers through digital and innovative products lest they struggle in an increasingly digitalised industry.

This is according to a recently released study by advisory firm, Analysys Mason, and Huawei.

Entitled, “Digitalisation Reshaping Operations: a new Digital Operational Model for the Future,” it has illustrated how digitalisation is fundamentally reshaping the way businesses are being operated, and how in order to remain competitive a new operational model for the future operational environment is necessary.

Vimal Naikeny, Chief Technology Officer, Digital and Cloud Business at Huawei Technologies Africa says five to six years ago voice calls and short message systems (SMSs) were “all the rage” and there was no anticipation that this would change.

Since then, there has been a shift in consumer mobile usage behaviour.

“As a result, it has become crucial for telecom operators to reinvent themselves, becoming more agile, while providing an unparalleled experience to customers through digital and innovative products,” says Naikeny.

“Otherwise, they will face major challenges in meeting customer demands and retention as voice, SMS and roaming business are no longer the revenue generators of the telecom world.”

Anil Rao, Principal Analyst at Analysys Mason, says the telecommunications industry is at a major tipping point as operators embark on important digital transformation initiatives, with software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), internet of things (IoT) and 5G still to come.

“The new operations model must be underpinned by highly automated operational processes, enabled by analytics powered operations software platform and supported by an operations workforce with the software skills to continuously enhance operational efficiency by developing automation as part of their daily duties,” Rao says.
– Guardian