Telcos still not waking up to competition

Many telcos have expressed fears that they are not making the 'significant changes' necessary to survive in today's highly competitive global marketplace.

Professional services firm Deloitte found that more than half of senior executives who responded to a survey believe that 'significant improvement' is needed in seven critical business processes.

These are identified as revenue assurance, IT management, new product development, business information, customer service, service provisioning and billing/collection.

Three-quarters of respondents indicated that their existing internal processes made it difficult to react quickly to market demands.

"This survey shows an industry still scrambling to manage extraordinary change," said Phil Asmundson, a partner in Deloitte's Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Group.

"Since the 1990s, telecom service providers have been pressed to evolve from a static monopoly model to a more agile, retail-oriented approach. The overall picture is bright for operators which rise to these challenges.

"But it has become increasingly clear that today's telecoms market is swiftly separating into two kinds of players: the winners and the losers."

North American executives were more likely than their counterparts in Europe and Asia Pacific to acknowledge that they needed to do a better job of managing customer information, and were less likely to voice concerns about service provisioning.

The survey also found that industry executives anticipate a rapid migration from voice to data products.

While more than half of executives regard voice as their 'most significant' source of revenue today, only 38 per cent expect it to be the 'most significant' contributor by 2007.

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