New business case for telcos

What most recent studies try to explain to telcos is that they would be wise to adopt a new business case to survive in the changing environment. What is at stake? Facing high voice prices, consumers and enterprise are turning to alternative solutions, such as VOIP or WiFi. It is just the taking off phase and already some telcos report that 35% of their customers are using VOIP services (see FT 2006 results). The result is necessarily a drop in traditional voice revenues (average of 5% a year in Europe). The studies also predict that VOIP would also go wireless. VOIP over WiFi for example offer the way of cutting further the bill. And the assessment is validated by the fact that consumers do not want to have multiple terminals. The demand for dual mode (cellular- WiFi) phones is increasing and by 2012 would account for 14% of handsets sold to enterprise customers. Fixed - mobile convergence, combined with VoIP, will allow corporate customers to reduce their voice spend by over 30%, according to Analysys. What telcos have to do is to rethink their business case, in offering more attractive bundled services for consumers (defensive strategy) and launch corporate home-zone services (i.e. Femtocells) to reduce the demand for dual-mode devices (offensive strategy) that will take traffic and revenues away from their networks.