{"id":5415,"date":"2012-02-03T14:38:31","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T13:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=5415"},"modified":"2012-02-03T14:38:31","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T13:38:31","slug":"telcos-have-a-dying-business-model-apis-and-cloud-services-are-the-future-says-alcatel-lucents-laura-merling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/5415-telcos-have-a-dying-business-model-apis-and-cloud-services-are-the-future-says-alcatel-lucents-laura-merling.html","title":{"rendered":"Telcos have a dying business model – APIs and cloud services are the future says Alcatel-Lucent\u2019s Laura Merling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laura Merling<\/a> from Alcatel-Lucent<\/a> spoke at the Monki Gras conference in London earlier this week, saying in effect that telecommunication companies have a dying business model. <\/p>\n

She gave a two-minute summary of Telco history.  \u201cFirst it was all about voice,\u201d she said. \u201cThen the intertubes happened. Now you had data \u2026 then it went back to voice, the big push for wireless. Then of course wireless moved, so it\u2019s not about voice any more, it\u2019s about the data.\u201d<\/p>\n

She expects the next step to be \u201cconnected devices \u2026 the phone goes away, everything you do both data and voice happens on other devices.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does this mean for telcos? They have become commoditised, she said, suppliers of data plans. \u201cIt is a big commoditised business that has no real innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the future, the data plans dies,\u201d, Merling says. \u201cThink about it. How many devices have you got? Think about connecting all of those. You probably want the same data plan. But why pay for a data plan? How will telcos make money? You can\u2019t just keep increasing the data plan.\u201d <\/p>\n

Instead, the money is going to come from the APIs and accessing the services.<\/p>\n

Enter Twilio<\/a>, a virtual telco. \u201cI think of twilio as a craft telco\u201d, said Merling, tying in with the beer theme that flowed through Monki Gras. \u201cDo they sell hardware? No. They have software and APIs.\u201d She says the Twilio business model scares the industry: it is based on transactions, not data plans. She also noted how old established vendors are buying up software-based providers, such as BT acquiring Ribbit and Microsoft acquiring Skype.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow\u2019s telco, says Merling, is a based on a software stack. \u201cAntennas and towers are not going to go away, but the infrastructure becomes all software based … combining network services with cloud infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt Alcatel-Lucent we sell hardware. We sell big giant boxes. But this is where it is going.\u201d She says the telcos are now aware of this, hence the title of her session \u201cHow telcos got API religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her final prediction? \u201cJeff Lawson becomes the CEO of AT&T. Why? Because the model has to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a thought-provoking talk, though the unspoken question was whether in fact the telcos will successfully transition or whether they will simply become less important, continuing to maintain the pipes while others profit from what flows through them. <\/p>\n

I interviewed Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson<\/a> in October last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laura Merling from Alcatel-Lucent spoke at the Monki Gras conference in London earlier this week, saying in effect that telecommunication companies have a dying business model. She gave a two-minute summary of Telco history.  \u201cFirst it was all about voice,\u201d she said. \u201cThen the intertubes happened. Now you had data \u2026 then it went back … Continue reading Telcos have a dying business model – APIs and cloud services are the future says Alcatel-Lucent\u2019s Laura Merling<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,56,95],"tags":[135,224,586,606,921],"class_list":["post-5415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-mobile","category-web-2","tag-alcatel-lucent","tag-bt","tag-microsoft","tag-monkigras","tag-twilio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}