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Driving telecom growth through ecosystems

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The traditional route to market for telecom is for CSPs to develop services and push them directly to their enterprise and consumer customers in a vertical model. 

As we move forward into the 5G era and beyond, in order to fully utilize the rich capabilities within our modern networks will require a new model than the traditional vertical model. 

3rd party ecosystem partners will represent a valuable outlet to expose, deliver and monetize network capabilities to their extended markets and thereby creating a multi-faceted route to market. 

What is it?

Digital ecosystems already exist in various industries and they are based upon agreed technical and commercial constructs among the participants. Think of the travel industry where airlines and hotels and car rental companies’ offerings are available through various intermediary 3rd parties and reservations systems.  Or think of the financial industry where funds transfers between and among financial institutions can be transacted, purchases made, and revenue shares implemented.

For our telecom industry, some ecosystem models exist in some areas such as how 3rd parties can develop mobile phone apps that can run on either Android or Apple devices or how developers can add a push-to-talk or text function to a rideshare application.

We need to continue that momentum and broaden our telecom ecosystems to engage more parties. This will enable us to tap into some of the more complex capabilities within our modern networks and enable 3rd parties to onboard these capabilities within their applications that they deliver to their enterprise and consumer end-customers. In so doing, the ecosystem puts more network capabilities to direct use to the benefit of other participating ecosystem partners.

What are the challenges/opportunities?

Our modern telecom networks are very complex. However, they are software-based and that means they are inherently programmable compared to earlier networks that were built upon purpose-built and proprietary, closed platforms. Software-based programmability helps to remove the primary technical obstacle to open digital ecosystems in telecom. We also have an industry-wide cultural challenge to overcome. Network services markets are highly competitive and CSP vertical delivery of services has served as a channel protection model. 


 

How the broader telecom landscape helps to address the challenges  

The solution to these challenges is two-dimensional. On the technical side, there are many industry-wide initiatives underway to move telecoms closer to other industries’ underlying ecosystem fabric models. Leveraging the inherent programmability of modern networks and by implementing more modern and well-defined APIs and leveraging modern best-in-class digital ecosystem security practices, we are approaching a truly open and secure digital technical environment to support open ecosystem for telecoms.

That leads us to the cultural and commercial challenge. The imperative to generate new revenue growth will outweigh the traditional reflex to remain insular within vertical paths to market for CSPs. As the lines of demarcation between telecom and compute become further blurred and as more and more players enter the digital ecosystem space, the opportunity for CSPs to get their network investments exposed to -- and consumed by -- more and more end-users becomes the path forward.


 

How Nokia is helping

Nokia contributes to this evolution in many ways. On the technical track, we are contributors to many of the standards bodies and groups that are paving the way including GSMA, 3GPP, TMForum, Linux Foundation CAMARA, MEF, BBF. And in addition to our participation in those groups we are strong advocates of real-world applied progress.

In 2023 we launched our Network as Code offering that enables 3rd party application developers to onboard powerful network capabilities into their applications to enrich the experience of their enterprise and consumer end-customers. We now have market traction in multiple geographic regions and multiple vertical industries where we work with ecosystem partners to deliver real solutions.

As part of the required cultural evolution, ecosystems benefit from new consumption models that enable participants to “quick start” into real-world trials and deployments. Our Telecom SaaS program provides us with the environment required to do this.

And to further enable ecosystem solutions, our Monetization and Charging solutions support the wide range and shape of commercial models that ecosystem commerce may take. 

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