Entries by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

Diversification Into Other Verticals Is Critical to Amdocs Sustaining Long-term Growth

Amdocs has made substantial progress on its reinvention, diversifying its customer base, portfolio and business mix while shifting the market perception of the company from a traditional OSS/BSS provider to more of an ICT software transformation specialist. However, most of Amdocs’ transformation thus far pertains to the telecom industry; Amdocs still needs to transition from being a telecom-centric vendor to a multifaceted provider that supports a diversified mix of verticals. The pressure to move in this direction will intensify as the telecom industry’s challenges persist and Amdocs’ organic growth from the industry continues to slow.

Nokia’s Fixed Networks Unit Poised for Long-term Growth Despite Market Challenges

Nokia’s outsized and unique position in the broadband infrastructure ecosystem enables the company to play a key role in orchestrating partners and customers to achieve their objectives in the most optimal way possible. Fiber will remain the coveted access medium for high-speed broadband, but the world will also employ other broadband access mediums to a large extent.

How AI Is Revolutionizing Cost Efficiency and Customer Experience in Telecom

TBR’s latest telecom research indicates customer care, which includes contact centers, will be profoundly transformed by AI. Though traditional AI has been utilized in customer care for many years (e.g., chatbots and interactive voice response), GenAI will take customer care to an advanced state. TBR estimates that GenAI could reduce the costs of running contact centers by up to 80%, and this is an area telecom operators are keenly interested in as they remain focused on cutting expenses across their businesses.

The Telecom Industry Faces a Reckoning

TBR’s research indicates that the telecom industry has entered a period of rationalization and that the operator and vendor landscape, as well as the telecom business model, will fundamentally change over the next decade. The anti-pragmatic, restrictive and often hostile regulatory environment, coupled with macroeconomic headwinds (especially the relatively high cost of capital), and the inability for CSPs to truly transform into cloud-native digital service providers have brought the industry to this precipice.