Telecommunications operators are under pressure and vendors while approaching operators, need to recognize these challenges to position themselves and help them achieve their objectives. Network service providers can choose to either optimize the traditional access business or search for new sources of revenue. In practice, we witness that often companies pursue a mixture of these two options. Companies must consider key strategic imperatives to better understand how they will impact the future profit pools. Only then can companies position themselves to compete better. They have to generate profits, defend market position with new pricing strategies and excellent customer experience, improve capacity expansion, redefine business models and manage growing complexity with the 4G introduction.

In order to respond to these operators’ pressing needs, I believe that telecommunication vendors have to be more creative and get a better understanding of their customers business model to help them generate more added value to the end-user.

A great example is the M2M (MAchine to Machine) market and the collaboration between OSS/BSS vendors and operators. While there is great excitement surrounding the operator opportunity presented by M2M, only those that recognise that it is a different market, partner effectively and address the OSS/BSS implications will unlock the true potential of the market.