The State of Digital Transformation in Telecommunications

What holds the telecom sector back from taking greater advantage of digital transformation? Three key things: 1) the strict regulatory framework in which telecom operates; 2) the multitude of technology stacks that have accumulated due to the rapid pace of innovation in the industry over the last 20 years; and 3) a multiplicity of IT systems inherited after years of consolidation across the sector.

We conducted a survey of telecom operators to better understand which aspects of digital transformation are most important to them and where they are placing their investment “bets”. We asked them about the degree to which their organizations had already adopted technology and practices such as DevOps, Cloud and NFV. And we asked how they planned to address the OTT threat including aspects such as user data monetization (taking a leaf out of Facebook and Google’s book).