As an industry, the telecoms environment is very good at talking about innovation. We’re great at showcasing it, too – companies large and small are forever popping up at conferences. Just look at things like the 4YFN start-up zone at Mobile World Congress.
Where the industry has a problem, though, is in making the leap between technical innovation and commercialisation.
We see this playing out on the small scale, where “bright young things” like the Parallel Wireless or Mavenir of 10 years ago are rather more jaded companies still fighting for traction today. On the large scale, we see that across the world telecoms providers are still struggling with how to build new businesses off the back of 5G, two-thirds of a decade after the technology came to market.
This gap is where TMN editor Keith Dyer is casting the eye of next month’s Mobile Network Innovation Summit. He sees a serious need for the telecoms industry to enable innovation in a practical form.
“I think of one major network operator’s experimental network pilots,” Dyer commented. “In the run-up to deploying 5G networks they had all kinds of interesting companies doing open RAN, and built a multi-vendor, disaggregrated core network software architecture.
“After all that, when the decision for volume deployments in the RAN and the core were made, they went with the incumbents.”
Overall it makes a body wonder whether the push for innovation had been more performative as a way to put downward pressure on the big network providers’ prices – something which, it may be noted, is one of the victories claimed by the Open RAN movement.
Before we drown in cynicism, there is some hope.
“There are some areas – relatively small areas right now – where it looks like the normal problems don’t apply and new companies can actually gain a foothold,” Dyer explained to TelcoForge, while offering our readers a 20% discount on attending, below.
“Those areas are NTN, quantum, AI, and energy efficiency and sustainability,” Dyer noted.
All these areas are ones where the major network providers are also struggling to get traction, either because the market is nascent or because they haven’t traditionally had an overwhelming presence there. Coincidence? Unlikely.
The good news is that these are all growing areas where a small company can make an impact. While the big players can offer efficiencies of scale, newer companies can offer efficiencies of efficiency. Because they don’t have to offer everything and don’t rely on institutional habits and structures built up over decades, they can move fast, specialise and deliver in ways that the larger players will struggle to rival.
The big challenge, of course, is managing the size imbalance between a Tier One operator and a start-up. Major operators demand terms that might not worry a multi-billion-dollar company – Dyer describes years of testing and trials at the supplier’s cost, for example, followed by customizing the solution, payment after delivery and a right to cancel at any minute. Whether that is supportable by twenty bright young things working out of their first office is a very different question. That’s a business moat which large players can and have used to spot and gobble up potentially problematic innovators.
As a result, getting operators to adapt their practices to reflect the companies they are working with is an essential part of successful commercialisation in the telecoms industry. Dyer is enthusiastic about the changes he sees under way in this regard.
“We have some very good examples coming to talk about their experiences,” he commented.
“Some companies are changing their policies or approaches, others are finding different ways to work with small companies, such as through incubators or other parts of the business.”
“I’m looking forward to getting the telcos talking with investors and with the start-ups themselves. There’s so much going on in these key areas, it’s anyone’s opportunity… provided there’s a way to translate that technology opportunity into results on the ground.”
The Mobile Network Innovation Summit is taking place in London, 12-13 May. Interested readers can use the code FORGE20 to get 20% off the registration fee.
