Benchmark-based assessment of outtasking, outsourcing, and managed services for mobile network operators

Current telecoms market pressures are inducing the traditional, vertically integrated network operators to embrace new business models and consider innovative partnerships. Specifically, the increasingly rapid and complex technology migration, strict regulatory requirements, high customer expectations with regards to innovative services and quality of service, and high capital expenditures on one side, and the competitive environments, saturated markets, and pressure on profit margins on the other side are forcing the operators to become more efficient, while securing access to skills and sufficient scale of operations. Taking together this and the opportunities arising from the vertical disaggregation of the value chain and the standardization of interfaces, a new breed of horizontal partnerships between operators and new vertical business models including suppliers and 3rd parties are gaining footprint in the telecoms markets. In addition to technical aspects, economic issues have to be considered. Both strategic and operational impacts arising from the new business models need to be evaluated. This application session paper presents a top-down, benchmark-based approach for evaluating the impacts of various scopes of outtasking, outsourcing, and managed services, adopting a structured method that takes into account operator characteristics, network technologies, network layers, geographies, processes, delivery options, and potential extensions of the business model, such as infrastructure sharing and asset-sale-and-lease-back. Demonstrations using real-world cases will show which items have the largest potential for optimization, and uncover the approximate efficiency gains that one can expect by applying various constraints on the sharing of delivery platforms by the managed services provider.