Kyle Whitehill - COO, Vodafone India leads this year’s NGT Asia Summit in Sentosa.
Leading operators are now finding themselves in the hands of the ever-creative software/hardware companies and the changing consumer culture. iPhone appstore was the first to take advantage and make millions from the operators' customers, creating a financial redistribution within the Telecom industry. Despite this the world’s largest mobile-phone company (Vodafone) has just posted a 2.9 percent rise in profit.
A consortium led by Vodafone COO Kyle Whitehill is currently meeting in Sentosa at the NGT Summit held by GDS International. This closed meeting featuring Zhang Fan - CTO - China Unicom, Anil Tandan - CTO - Idea Cellular, Ravinder Jain - CIO – Aircel and Mu Piao Shih - President - Chunghwa Telecom was called to debate the rapid pace of communication, transforming from the one-to-one (direct) voice communication to the fast, informal and responsive opinion and thought exchange we have today and how operators can reduce the immense cost of a large network but maintain a high level of customer experience.
“The challenge with new technology is that it's big, complicated, expensive and with 3G, 4G, LTE, and TDD making its mark in the industry we are faced with the ultimate threat of being a dumb pipe provider. Our role is to provide fast, effective solutions that meet customer needs.” Kyle Whitehill - COO, Vodafone India and chairperson of the NGT Summit.
Such consumer and technology transformation has distorted the way 'Prosumers' consume their products and services, and interact with their mobile devices. The industry waits to see if Asia's Top Telecom guns can decide on a unified approach to map revenue streams back to the operators.
“It’s not just about the way communication has transformed, but also a revolutionary change of customer behavior. Traditionally, the consumers simply consumed products and services; but now they are becoming ‘Prosumers’ who use traditional services, but at the same time share, recommend and critique these products as well.” Roar Wiik Andreassen Chief Strategy Officer, DTAC
We at NGT are very proud to host the region’s leading telecoms lights and are looking forward to working closely in collaboration with all our CTO's over the coming years in APAC as they diversify and optimize their networks. This has been an exceptional gathering even by our own high standards and much progress has been made by our operator and vendor partners alike.
Nick York - NGT Summit Director Asia Pacific concludes.
