<p<We have been watching with great interest and curiosity the many recent telecom customer win announcements. It seems that each carrier is trying to 'out-win' each other, particularly outside their traditional core geographies.
Some of these wins have been where telco ‘A’ won a deal that was formerly telco ‘B’ and we say okay – Was this strictly a price issue or something else, say a creative solution or approach?
Other wins involved telco ‘A’ winning a deal that was managed by a former outsourcer, say ‘B’. This makes us scratch our heads and wonder – What does this mean to the telecom and IT industry?
Is a shift in telecom finally starting to help telcos win against IT?
As noted in former issues, we have commented about the trend of telecom providers moving into the IT providers space through evolving their services, products and capabilities. Sometimes it has been through acquisition, other times through evolution. At the same time traditional IT providers have been evolving their data and voice integration and management capabilities.
When this is combined with software companies such as Microsoft developing services such as hosted VoIP, this sure makes the future look very interesting. May the best provider win!
Investment Trends in Canadian Telecom
We have noticed the growing trend for telecom providers to switch some or all of their organizations over to income trust funding mechanisms. We have been asked by many of the IT and telecom media what does this mean to the industry and their customers?
We are not financial industry analysts, but rather technology analysts who understand telecommunications technology, and more importantly, the impact on telecom customers.
So our answer to the question is this: The Canadian telecom industry continues to need massive amounts of investment to continue to deploy broadband solutions. The industry is also evolving to providing enhanced solutions and services that involve computing and infrastructure investment as well.
With our current foreign investment guidelines and the last few years of decreased investment in telecom, as it was no longer seen as the ‘darling of Wall Street’, the income trust model provides the vehicle to support investments required for Canadian providers.
We will continue to track the evolution of the industry as telecom and IT continues to evolve and collide.
Roberta Fox can be reached at editor@foxgroup.ca