Vittorio Colao, CEO of Vodafone, has been saying this recently: I don’t like the word ‘carrier’. A ‘carrier’ is not what Vodafone wants to be.” Instead, he’s keen to become a provider of “smart pipes” and perhaps even of “NaaS” - that...

Over the last six weeks on this blog we’ve been examining why telcos, in the current climate of uncertainty, are perceived as ‘defensive’ by investors - namely low financial leverage and robust cash flow generation (see here). This trend appears to be continuing, but telcos shouldn...

Last month, Qualcomm purchased at auction 40MHz of spectrum (1452-1492 MHz, known as ‘The L-Band’) for £8.3m ($16m). Since then there has much speculation about Qualcomm’s motives and the services that they will deploy, focussing upon Mobile TV. The answer tells us a lot about how...

This is the first of a series of articles celebrating two years of Telco 2.0 blogging, and focused on our favourite hot topic, two-sided markets. In this first article we’ll be going into some depth exploring what two-sided markets are. (For a shorter high-level introduction, look here). Later...

Another common use of the word “platform” that sometimes confuses people is the way it’s used to describe the technology that goes around individual applications in a computer system. Like Microsoft Windows, Linux, Adobe Flash in the browser, Symbian S60 in a mobile phone, or what ...

We are close to finishing our latest research report, The Two-Sided Telecoms Market Opportunity , which outlines in detail how operators can achieve growth by adopting a two-sided business model. We’ve invested a huge amount of time and effort in sizing the opportunity for operators a.) by cap...

Telco 2.0 is all about new business models telcos need in order to survive the crashing price of their staple product, voice. We reckon that addressing entirely different markets and needs — in particular the two-sided business model — is the answer. But sometimes it’s hard to expl...

In our previous post on the airline industry, we noted how they had created a 2-sided business model using frequent flyer miles. These sub-divide the product (seat reservations, i.e. “options to fly”), and the sub-divisions can be sold at a significant profit to upstream partners like ba...

Our next Telco 2.0 event is coming up in April, and is sub-titled “Is there $250bn in new 2-sided telecoms business models?”. As with all marketing, sometimes accuracy is an early victim at the altar of the gods of simplicity and clarity of the message. A more correct title would be R...

A large focus of our analysis currently is on two-sided business model for operators. We recently explored the opportunity for ‘Broadband Service Providers’ (fixed and mobile) from an access and delivery standpoint (we estimated a $250bn opportunity in 10 years time in mature markets alo...