A Unified Approach for Telecoms

The average telephone handset has evolved, and as a result thousands of start-up companies are profiting out of the Telecom sector’s advances, supplying the various add-ons which inevitably accompany any new wave of technology.

Such innovations were used by the operators to supplement the pricey voice packages. However, the operators are now finding themselves in the hands of the ever-creative software/hardware companies and a changing consumer culture. iPhone appstore was the first to take fiscal advantage from operators’ customers, creating a financial redistribution within the Telecom industry.

With the telecom giants left to maintain the costly infrastructure that supports this ever growing new-media industry, the outlook for today’s communication service providers is set to get worse in a new 4G world where broadband is everywhere; LTE, WiMax, FTTX and cloud services to name a few.. The NGT APAC Summit committee is only too aware of this and believes that they must act now to prepare for the future. How can telecom giants sustain increasing costs and avoid being relegated to the sidelines as bit-pipe providers?

To answer this question visionaries from companies such as Skype - Dan Neary, VP and GM Asia Pacific, Telenor - Sanjay Vaghasia, CTO, Vodafone - Durgadas Misha, Head of IT Outsourcing, Deutsche Telekom - Neil Millner, Head of Network & IT Procurement, and Virgin Mobile - Carl Ambrose, CIO, have joined a closed door meeting at the NGT APAC summit in Singapore to provide a unified investment strategy and Long Term Evolution (LTE) across the existing 3G networks. Such increased download speeds will allow the telecom industry to capitalize on the change in consumer habits and provide wider service offerings.

‘Such a meeting has been a long time coming, large operators have been losing revenue as the communication market has diversified, network optimization should lend to them finding new revenue streams as the level of service can expand’ – NGT Summit Director Asia Pacific.

A lack of focus has brought about inefficiencies related to roaming issues for users, and limited development efforts for each technology, the world is soon to be "unified" under LTE and at that point the industry can expect much greater economies of scale for both hardware makers and services providers, the NGT APAC committee are sure to take advantage of this.