GROWTH opportunities can emerge from disruption, telco players said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the 2016 Asian Carriers Conference, Rozaimy Rahman, executive vice president of Global & Wholesale at Telekom Malaysia, said digital disruption has changed how enterprises operate and plan for future growth. More so, it has changed the way they sell products and connect to their customers.
“It (disruption) is impacting all sectors, changing existing business models. Disruption is an opportunity,” said Rahman in a conference attended by over 1,300 delegates from 60 countries at Shangri-La Mactan Resort and Spa.
He warned that more “sea of disruptions” will occur in the coming years and that telco players must prepare ahead to remain relevant and survive competition.
“Digital disruption creates new paradigms of businesses,” he said. For instance, Rahman predicts that with the coming of 5G technology, the industry must expect a lot of convergence to happen, more migration to occur and birth of niche products or services.
Digital disruption also resulted in a shift from network-centric to user experience-centric models among telco players.
Yong Kim Sang, senior consultant at Huawei, said operators are now competing on content and attractive digital services. A lot are also moving into video services to cater to the changing preferences of the market.
ACC is an annual convention of telco players in Asia. Now on its 12th year, ACC provides a venue for bilateral meetings, workshops, exhibits, and networking events.
“As the ACC navigates a sea of change, we foster an environment that encourages new developments in the digital disciplines of SMACS, which stands for social engagement, machine-to-machine innovation and the Internet of Things (IOT), analytics and big data, cloud computing and platforms, as well as cybersecurity-to protect a most vital new currency—data,” said PLDT/Smart executive vice president and ePLDT president and chief executive officer Ernesto Alberto, who welcomed the delegates during the plenary.
“We continue to attend ACC to foster and strengthen relationships, with the end view that we can all, multilaterally and bilaterally, quickly discover new revenue streams, to replace and recover the high-margin legacy voice business that has practically disappeared. New post technologies have emerged and disrupted us and, as a consequence, market behaviors and buying habits have changed,” he added.
Alberto shared PLDT’s digital transformation story from a mere telephone company into a digital enabler in the country.
“After 12 years, we have acted wisely and evolved along with the challenges and demands of transformation,” said Alberto. “We also had to do it for ourselves, to help us internalize the tectonic changes happening in our midst, and for us to act accordingly upon it with equal digital resolve – with speed and efficiency,” he added.