Telco: are you ready to share?

The “sharing economy” market model may bring a whole new range of services to the telecom world. Opportunities are exciting, for those prepared to seize them, and practically endless for those able to creatively generate them. Yet, are Telco ready to share? What, how, when, and especially why? Let’s explore a few examples where “sharing” may apply to the telecom domain, moving from more traditional to innovative contexts.

Sharing operators’ assets: Long ago, operators have started to share their core assets, including mobile antennas, radio spectrum, network equipments, and value added services, in order to optimize costs and services. Cloud technologies and collaborative business models are boosting this trend, in many fields. In the near future, it is possible to envision a mix of public, private, hybrid, and crowdsourced network resources, where users connect simultaneously and without any exclusive subscription to any telecom player.

Sharing customers’ voice/expertise: several telecom operators are already involving customers in sharing their knowledge through “social” media. Customer services communities (sometimes called “social CRM”) are a typical case, where members help each other on a variety of topics. Also widespread are platforms/initiatives for customers to share their “voice”. Finally, additional schema may involve participation of customers in “crowdsourcing”, such as hackathons and a variety of innovation programs, often including start-ups incubation or facilitation.

Sharing customers’ assets: a few operators have started to allow (and sometimes encourage) customers to share their telecom-related assets, as for instance their Wi-Fi access (e.g. Vodafone Wi-Fi Community powered by Fon). Additional scenarios involve customers sharing their value-added services or voice/data buckets with others (in a kind of mobile wallet). Even more creative options may involve customers putting unused services, airtime, or spare capacity back to a “Telecom grid”, similar to the business model experimented in various utility domains.

Sharing customers’ journeys: either temporary or permanent relationships among customers may trigger new customer journeys, both in terms of customer acquisition and customer service behaviors. With priority changing to access over ownership, telecom operators will have to consider alternative and shared customers’ journeys, with new on-boarding processes and very dynamic and creative relationships. Journey of customers will be interconnected and dynamic, often with customers willing to engage peer-to-peer. 

Sharing operators’ & customers’ data: new market models can be envisioned when customers, operators and other business entities start sharing their data. New business processes and even new business categories can be defined, by monetizing customer insights which would not be available without sharing the data in the cloud. Considering M2M/IoT as well as the creation of collaborative relationships between customers and IoT entities, this opportunity may become explosive in the near future!

Sharing trust across industries: the most promising opportunity for telecoms will likely be the possibility to become a “trust infrastructure” for decentralized peer-to-peer exchanges (i.e. the sharing market). For the sharing economy to thrive, in any industry, it is fundamental that people trust each-other. Operators have here the chance to enable this trust, thanks to their communication assets and customers’ relationship. Also, if “traditional” trust can be based on online feed-backs and similar, the blockchain technology (e.g. Ethereum) is really the great opportunity to drive!

To conclude, scenarios above are just a small hint towards a future where sharing may boost the telecom industry. By leveraging digital and cloud, Telco may exploit both the blurring of industry boundaries and the merging of personal and professional domains. As an example, telecoms may use their infrastructure to facilitate users to 3D- produce/print what needed by someone in their area, possibly utilizing holograms technologies for the design. Nevertheless, all this said, significant transformations must be addressed by Operators to access the huge sharing opportunities lying ahead.

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