Open Telco: a new business potential

Until today, most mobile operators have still been very profitable, although Average Revenue per User (ARPU) has been steadily declining. The core mobile services, voice and text messaging, bring the majority of the income. In addition to those, new innovations have actively been searched for the last decade with insignificant success. One reason for the modest results can be found from the so-called walled garden approach. The situation is finally changing: openness and Open Innovation are the new paradigms. For a long time, open APIs have been utilized by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), such as Google, Flickr and Yahoo, and now the same approach has been proposed for mobile operators, as well. However, mobile operators have difficulties in justifying the opening of the walled garden: the major challenge is the lack of business case. This paper proposes an Open Telco approach to accelerate the innovativeness in the mobile space. The proposal is analyzed utilizing the so-called STOF (Service, Technology, Organization, and Finance) Model. Finally, recommendations for the next steps are given.

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