Why telcos must address infrastructure reach and resilience now

Telcos’ infrastructure largely coped with higher demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, but what now? There is growing pressure to improve network performance and coverage, as customers’ and stakeholders’ expectations continue to rise. Indeed, for the second consecutive year failure to ensure infrastructure reach and resilience was ranked as the top risk facing the industry in EY report, Top 10 risks in telecoms.

As we review the effects of the pandemic, it is increasingly clear that many things will never be the same again. Work-life balance has shifted and few employees are going back to the office on a full-time basis. Consequently, home connections are more important than ever.

In fact, home connections need to be business-grade. The upstream connection needs to be as good as the downstream to handle an increase in video calling. Additionally, the bandwidth needs to cover it all. Network reach and reliability were already top of mind for telcos before the pandemic but growing demand in the wake of the health crisis have only added to their importance.

The changing geography of demand

The rapid shift to home working has created more challenges around how connectivity is experienced. As the workplace has shifted from the office to the home, many users have seen a drop in network performance. As remote working becomes the norm, many household users have moved out of urban locations altogether but are often finding that the fastest packages are unavailable in their area.

As a result, there is rising demand for better fixed and mobile broadband, regardless of location. The latest edition of EY survey, Decoding the digital home, shows that one in four households experienced an overall downturn in network performance during the pandemic, and 37% of households surveyed are frustrated that the packages offering the fastest speeds are not available to them.

It is not only customers who are demanding change. Policymakers and regulators are keener than ever to tackle the digital divide. They are recognizing that gigabit infrastructure needs to travel further, and at price points that smooth the path to adoption.

Reliability over speed

Aside from reach, resilience has continued to be critical. Consumers want more reassurance and better guarantees around quality, whether in terms of signal reach or fallback options in case network outages occur.

A change in approach is essential. Operators have spent years differentiating their offers on the basis of maximum speeds and throughput. Yet this messaging fails to resonate with most: 4 in 10 consumers do not know the speed of their connection according to Decoding the digital home. They just want it to work, and work well.

Consequently, the customer promise needs to move beyond speed alone. We are starting to see operators offering “full house” connectivity: Wi-Fi that covers all rooms across the household. These propositions talk the language of the household and provide a firmer foundation for more trusted customer relationships.

Consumers are also increasingly using smartphones for hotspot connectivity when the network goes down. They understand how an “unbreakable” service could work; one in which an operator switches to secure 4G connectivity when necessary and where customer support is offered around the clock. Fixed-mobile convergence is evolving in a new direction, with network resilience at its heart.

Building an ecosystem

To deliver the kind of connectivity that today’s consumers and businesses expect, operators must think beyond the boundaries of their own organizations. If an operator cannot build out a required solution themselves – or there is no government support available to help reduce the costs – they may be able to partner with an organization that can help.

The big operators, for instance, may consider partnering with some of the up-and-coming satellite companies – a technology that is now coming back into the mix. Co-investment in fiber infrastructure and rural mobile networks also continue to gain ground, creating better rollout economics in the process.

As an operator today, you must therefore be able to answer some of the following questions:

·??????Do you have the right long-term network upgrade roadmap?

·??????Can you call on government support?

·??????Are there fellow operators that you can partner with?

·??????Are there specialists that you can work with to improve your network quality, with resilience and reach in mind?

·??????Do you have the proposition and technical solutions to offer reliable Wi-Fi throughout your customers’ households?

Smaller operators may decide to hone-in on one aspect of communication and target a niche area of the market. Larger operators may inevitably try to deliver more of a comprehensive offering. Either path is fine, as long as they have built the right ecosystem.

Partnering to succeed

Ultimately, operators must build a value proposition that meets a greater customer focus on reliability, delivering an agile combination of services that are sensitized to customers’ needs. They also need to gain a deep understanding of their ecosystem position, who their potential partners are, and where they need them most.