East Asia leads the telco-to-techco race – Omdia

Omdia has developed an index designed to quantify the ‘telco-to-techco’ transformation, which describes the full integration of communications and technology services by an operator. It takes into account of the scale of its high-speed broadband platform, its capabilities in AI, big data, and security, and its portfolio of enterprise digital services and vertical market solutions. The highest possible score is 40.

Of the major global operators assessed by Omdia, China Mobile got the highest score of 31. Japan’s NTT came close second on 30 and East Asia completed a clean sweep of the podium when SK Telecom of South Korea finished third with a score of 28.5. Telefónica was the highest ranked from the rest of the world, with Africa’s MTN propping up the table.

“A telco that has adopted the techco model successfully is a software-based organization that offers services in areas such as AI, big data, the cloud, and IoT, and can implement digital transformation for specific vertical sectors,” said Matthew Reed of Omdia. “Overall, the operators covered in the benchmark are making good progress towards a software-based operating model and with their development of enterprise digital services. But their vertical markets focus is less advanced generally and is an area that needs more work.”

Digital transformation is generally considered desirable for two main reasons: efficiency and new revenue streams. In the latter case, this is a belated effort by the telecoms industry to beat internet companies (so called OTTs) to the punch when it comes to offering added value services to their subscribers. Omdia informs us that digital transformation revenue, which is China Mobile’s term for revenue from new digital services, accounted for 29.4% of its service revenue in 2023, an increase of 22.2% year on year.