Service providers are some of the largest enterprises in the world and are on the forefront of digitization and network transformation. But the world is changing; influenced by fluid macro-economic and geo-political climates. Regulation and the commoditization of traditional consumer services means that these revenue streams are now beginning to generate minimal growth.
Competition remains fierce, moving beyond local or regional borders to encompass a global scale. Waiting in the wings are yet more competitors, who see the huge opportunities in developing 5G-enabled services designed for a data-hungry public.
With connectivity revenues flattening, service providers are faced with a difficult balancing act. On one side is the need to evolve their network to keep pace with exploding bandwidth and customer expectations, and on the other side are the large capital and operational expenses (CapEx and OpEx) required to operate existing platforms and build new competitive service offerings.
Additionally, security across your vast infrastructure also a top priority. A breach can jeopardize not only your own intellectual property, but compromises customers’ data privacy. Service providers need to expand their infrastructure to meet growing capacity demands, but this increases the threat landscape that must be monitored and controlled.
You must meet evolving customer expectations, which requires agility, continuous innovation and frequent technology upgrades. But you may be constrained by rigid operating models and little OpEx left to invest in innovation. It’s up to you to transform your organization, including your operating models, technologies, talent acquisition and service creation. The evolution to open, software-defined, automated networks is a central strategy for service providers.