Telcos are not condemned to suffer the same fate as the Polaroid camera, claimed Idate at its annual Digiworld Summit this morning.
A recent report by the analyst firm revealed that after a setback in 2009, the global telecoms market has been inching back to a more solid recovery since 2011, growing by a modest 2.7% in 2012.
While this translates into a telecom services revenue of €1.1bn a year, analysts warned that this is a slower recovery than the economy as a whole, but Idate CEO Yves Gassot denied it could mark the beginning of the end for the industry.
He said: "The market is still growing in the US, despite the pessimistic outlook in Europe. However, telcos are not condemned to finish like the Polaroid camera, but they do have to reinvent their footprint and business models in the internet ecosystem."
Gassot added that telcos must focus on smart access, 4G and fibre to take advantage of smart connectivity.
Dor Skuler, VP of the CloudBand business unit for Alcatel-Lucent, admitted:"We’ve failed in ‘time to innovation’."
Speaking in relation to the use of cloud inside the network, he went on to say: "We were using ’90s methods in the 21st century."
Vivek Badrinath, deputy CEO of Orange, added: "We’re no longer perceived as access providers but augmented life providers. We have to be smart telcos, and we won’t invent the future alone, open innovation will bring a lot of value.
"The biggest change maker to us at the moment is mobile banking."
Badrinath said that Africa holds massive potential for this, and that increasing network coverage is the key to this expansion.
He finished by saying that telcos have "trust, expectation and reliability" but that has to be built on.
According to Idate, the number of worldwide mobile customers should top the eight billion mark in 2017, with one billion internet users also coming in 2017.
