With the exploding increase of OTT usage, telecoms are facing flat growth and increasing difficulty in generating profits vs. OTT cloud service providers. More storage and cloud bandwidth is needed, causing increased CAPEX/OPEX requirements for maintaining network performance from operators. To counteract these business challenges, telecoms must adopt new Value Added Services (VAS) to differentiate themselves, attract new customers, and boost profits.
Offer OTT-like Services, and Reap the Rewards
For telecoms to be successful when competing with OTT players, they’ll have to increase their VAS offering for their customers and enable cloud connectivity services themselves. In this way telecoms can help increase customer loyalty and generate stickiness. This can be done in one of three common ways:
– By developing these OTT-like services using their own infrastructure.
– By entering an agreement to work with OTTs for these kinds of solutions.
– By utilizing these solutions from large cloud providers such as AWS and IBM/SoftLayer’s marketplace solutions.
Our recommendation is to try a different option: gain highly profitable partnerships with software companies with ready-made cloud solutions. Working this way enables the ability for fast go-to-market capabilities, customized rebranding, and more.
Innovation and Service are the Names of the Game
Quite simply, innovative techniques are what will allow telecoms to compete with larger competitors and generate customer stickiness and increase retention capabilities. This includes customized pricing models, local and reliable customer service, and enhanced reliability over the cloud – all of which will ultimately result in increased customer loyalty and added value for customers. Telecoms should not neglect the importance of maintaining and improving service quality, as this is consistently recognized as the most important factor for customer satisfaction. This is a critical factor that is generally missing with OTT online cloud services.
Conclusion
By using the guidelines above, telecom operators can adapt to the changes and services taking place in the market today, and win over the customers they’re looking for. In the end, customers will always adapt to new ideas and technologies, as long as they meet their needs. By providing their own online cloud services, telecoms strengthen their stickiness and loyalty levels with their customers, and can increase their ‘wallet share’ VAS, and realize new streams of revenue generation.