Telecom companies must focus on understanding the specific needs of their customers and turn these insights into innovation and ideas for products and services that will generate revenues, according to KPMG’s UK Head of Telecoms.
In a keynote speech to the Total Telecom Finance Summit in London, Joe Gallagher warned that – with the advance of 4G - opportunities for players in the sector were huge, with analysts expecting traffic per smartphone to increase 17 times by 2016.*
He said that, in order to be successful market players in 2020, many telcos will need to change their business models now - otherwise many of them will “run the danger of ending up as dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum”.
Joe Gallagher told the summit: “The big challenge for telcos is how to understand their customers better and develop a close relationship with them, but to do so in an industrialised way. Many of us are overwhelmed with the amount of data and the advance of technology, and the security of that data will be increasingly important. My advice is be brave in how you invest, be brave in how you collaborate and be brave in how you hire.
“At the moment there is too much fighting with each other going on in the industry, too much protecting individual pieces of the pie. What the industry needs is to have more profitable conversations with each other. Operators need to talk with application providers and vice versa, because both sides need each other. The same goes for the interaction with government and regulators. Operators too often go to the regulator as individuals. Coming together as an industry will give telcos the fire power to grasp all that opportunity.”
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Note to Editors:
The Total Telecom Finance summit is a two day conference for those involved in finance and investment for global telecommunications, sponsored by KPMG and Lloyds Bank. The event takes place at the Grand Connaught Rooms in London, October 10 & 11 and address the landscape for mergers and acquisitions, investment and funding choices, globalisation and regulation.
http://www.terrapinn.com/2012/ttfin/speakers-list.stm
*Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2011 -16
For further information please contact:
Katrin Boettger, Senior PR Manager
Tel: +44 207 896 4232 / 0782 4475168
Email: katrin.boettger@kpmg.co.uk
About KPMG:
KPMG LLP, a UK limited liability partnership, is a subsidiary of KPMG Europe LLP and operates from 22 offices across the UK with over 11,000 partners and staff. The UK firm recorded a turnover of £1.7 billion in the year ended September 2011. KPMG is a global network of professional firms providing Audit, Tax, and Advisory services. We operate in 152 countries and have 145,000 professionals working in member firms around the world. The independent member firms of the KPMG network are affiliated with KPMG International Cooperative ("KPMG International"), a Swiss entity. KPMG International provides no client services.
