by Kandy, io
The Telco2.0™ concept is a network evolution movement for communication service providers (CSPs), commonly known as telcos, that focuses on helping them move from a unidirectional business model, in which they create service offerings and provide them to consumers, to a bidirectional business model where information and communication technologies (ICT) and applications become the platform to interconnect multiple providers (upstream customers) with different users (downstream customers); turning the CSP becomes into a broker that allows them to exchange services, information or even goods. The goal is to transform the CSP into an entity that offers hundreds of services that bring together applications and content from various sources (including Internet-of-Things, wearables, B2B, etc.) to create composite product/service offerings enhancing their relevance in the digital economy.
Telcos can take various roles to address the Telco2.0 market by becoming:
- platform providers – exposing their own capabilities as well as partner and third-party capabilities to create new and exciting communications products and services
- service providers – exposing a smaller subset of their own (or third-party) capabilities to offer a service (voice, video, sms, collaboration, etc.) to developers
- application providers - creating and providing applications and services from their own capabilities (and those of third parties) to consume as retail or over-the-top (OTT) white label applications
- application resellers - offering a marketplace (resell and revenue share) with applications created using the telco's (and/or third-party) capabilities and platforms.
Kandy plays a significant part in the majority of these roles by exposing GENBAND's carrier-grade communication capabilities, offering bundled applications called wrappers, and creating white label OTT and boiler-plate reference applications as well as full-fledged unified communications (UC) solutions. For example, Kandy APIs and SDKs enable telcos to quickly embed and leverage voice, video, messaging and collaboration capabilities into any application; and Kandy wrappers are fully functional yet customizable applications that allow telcos to integrate them into their service offerings or resell them to consumers or businesses to integrate into their own processes or websites.
CSPs need to address multiple transformations depending on the model chosen and their ability to transform: network, costs, processes, IT infrastructure, product packaging, business models and more.
Some additional sources of information about Telco 2.0: