There’s a saying, "If you want to hide the treasure, put it in plain sight. Then no one will see it". It's easy to be distracted by all the kerfuffle about 5G, IoT, AI, AR/VR, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, decentralized web, digital transformation, digital services, cloud computing, cloud services, open APIs, content services, and the myriad of smaller telco-focused technology mini-kerfuffles such as policy control, IMS, etc.
The simple truth is for the telecommunications industry the treasure remains in telecommunications, that is people and things communicating over a distance in real or near real time using telcos' interconnected networks. Something that appears to be quite legacy. However, over the past decade there’s been an important shift; telecoms is now programmable, so telecom services are available from many more companies.
Twilio is a poster-child for the rise of programmable telecoms. Twilio is currently valued at $16B. Note Axiata Group’s market cap is about $10B. Others: RingCentral is valued at $9B, Talkdesk, a contact center service started from a Twilio hackathon has an estimated valuation of more than $1B. Enterprises refer to these companies as telcos/telecom service providers. Twilio has risen rapidly in the North American SIP trunking market; remember those E1/T1 trunks for connecting an enterprise’s PBX to the PSTN - its now a SIP trunk over the internet, from Twilio and not Verizon or AT&T. RingCentral delivers enterprise telecoms, wrapped up in the trendy phrase of UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service), but it's enterprise telecoms. The $1.2T telecom services market is shifting.
With the technology shift to programmable telecoms, there has also been a shift in how enterprises buy telecoms. From only being available from telcos, it also now available from web-centric companies. In my article on this, I discuss this shift and how telcos can successfully manage it.
At TADSummit Asia, which will be happening on 28 to 29 May in Kuala Lumpur, you’ll have a chance to meet everyone involved in the programmable telecoms ecosystem. Included are technology and service providers like hSenid Mobile and Apigate who are helping telcos and enterprises manage the shift to programmable telecoms, in Asia and globally. Asian developers who have won at TADHack KL, will share their ideas, experiences, and needs. We’ll have leading analysts from Ovum share their analysis on RCS (Rich Communication Service) and UC. Enterprises will share their experiences in programmable telecoms across chat bots, conversational interfaces, and omni-channel communications. I’ll also be giving a Programmable Telecoms MasterClass on the 29th of May. And The Fast Mode will be there supporting us!
TADSmmit will show you the treasure in plain sight, and help you take your share.
