Connected Verticals: Enterprise or Wholesale Turf?

By Camille Mendler

Working in the telecom industry is a tricky business. Restructuring is a way of life, market consolidation is urgently needed, and margin defence – let alone growth – is a consuming pre-occupation. Then there’s the internal issue of turf: Who owns which customer? For builders and operators of telecom infrastructure, that’s a critical issue to address – right now.

A light burns in the long, dark tunnel of disintermediation that the telecom industry is currently lost in. It’s called Connected Verticals. A ‘connected’ vertical is an industry – like Healthcare, Transport, Energy and Broadcast – that stands to be transformed through a strong injection of telecom innovation.

Really, telecom innovation?
Telecom innovation like M2M, 4G, Ethernet and cloud computing (heads up: without a network there is no cloud) is triggering the emergence of new business models, revenue streams and powerful efficiencies in several connected, adjacent industries. 

The problem: There’s vast potential for the telecom industry to mess up. Disagree? I invite you to complete Informa’s Vertical Markets Survey to tell me otherwise.  

Messing up will be for the usual venal reasons: Money, and who gets it. Are Connected Vertical opportunities the remit of Enterprise divisions, Wholesale divisions or warrant entirely new teams? And are the most prominent Connected Verticals right for every telecom industry player to target?

Don’t wait too long to decide
There’s still a hard road to travel to build trust with Connected Verticals. But I warrant that it’s a critically important issue that the telecom industry simply can’t afford to get wrong.