Telcos could lose up to $172 billion from core revenues in five years if they fail to make improvements to their voice and messaging strategies, said a report.

The new report from the Telco 2.0 Initiative, founded by analyst and consulting firm STL Partners, showed that telcos can fight to reduce this loss by $80 billion through intelligent optimisation of prices and bundles, service enablement, exploiting new standards such as WebRTC and VoLTE, creative approaches to own brand OTT services, and a greater focus on enterprise communications.

Over the next five years telecom operators will face significant further declines in traditional service revenues due to so-called ‘Over The Top’ (OTT) competition, vulnerable pricing structures, economic pressures and societal changes, said the report.

It pointed out to how telcos can slow the decline of voice and messaging revenues and build new communications services to maximise revenues and relevance with both consumer and enterprise customers.

The report also included detailed forecasts for nine major developed markets - US, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, UK, Italy, Singapore and Taiwan - in which the total decline is forecast between $92 billion and $172 billion on a $375 billion base between 2012 and 2018, giving telcos an $80 billion opportunity to fight for.

It studied the impact and implications for other technology players including vendors and partners, and general lessons for competing with disruptive players in all markets.

“Perhaps the most surprising thing is how effective some telco strategies have been in defending against disruptive competitors like WhatsApp. Then again, there are some markets, such as Spain, where the combination of telco pricing and economic conditions have played right into the hands of the so-called ‘OTT Players’,” said an expert.

“Equally, there are some great opportunities for telcos to build new value, particularly in the Enterprise market, where some of the more traditional technology companies like Cisco face increasingly disruptive competition from players like Google and Microsoft,” he said. - TradeArabia News Service