Barcelona, Spain, 25 February 2016: As the smartphone becomes the de facto standard for accessing the Web and over-the-top (OTT) services, it disrupts traditional telecom revenues. A new report from global management consultancy Arthur D. Little (ADL) and SAMENA Telecommunications Council (SAMENA Council) urges Middle East and North Africa operators to ride the OTT wave, and, in parallel, look for new revenue streams to grow sustainably.
In The OTT conundrum for MENA telecoms: Achieving sustainable growth in a digital world, ADL and SAMENA Council report that new digital disruptions will increasingly dictate new norms within the business.
Building on SAMENA Council’s earlier initiatives to help bring telecommunications operators together, the report draws attention to accelerating the pace of adoption within the changing digital space. Insight from the report reveals that with slowing population growth, falling prices and regulatory changes, the environment will become harder to navigate.
According to the analysis presented within the report, there is no agreement within operator circles on the approach towards providers of OTT services. The report urges operators to take the lead to initiate collaboration and partner with OTT players in messaging and voice, and make every effort to rebalance revenue towards more data. At the same time, the predominant approach for an OTT video content play is to have pan-regional scale.
For companies to continue growing in a sustainable way, though, the report from ADL and SAMENA Council points at tapping into adjacent revenue streams such as ICT services and smartization,while increasing efficiency. A digital transformation might increase efficiency by 30%, whereas bad debt optimization might bring an EBITDA uplift of 1-2%.
The full report can be found at: http://www.adl.com/MenaTelcoOTT.