Internet value propositions are heavily impacting on Operators' top line growth and leading to OPEX reduction. Areas such as VoIP (Voice over IP), fast revenue making services with short life cycles, and smart pipelines that can rapidly accommodate new consumer applications are firmly on the agenda.

This has significant implications for your portfolio strategy, in line with your own consumer insight and segmentation.

Building the climate change imperative into business planning is important for Operators but requires proven experience, relevant methodologies and, above all, facts. What's more, Governments are eager to get ICT on the agenda as an enabler in addressing the climate change challenge. There is, therefore, a clear need to have enough data and experience of how Telecoms solutions can be re-purposed in other domains and how this might positively impact the climate.

There is a need for Operators to close the gap between increased traffic and non-corresponding revenues. Evolving existing networks and solutions, as well as transforming your organizations and set-up, is the way forward in order to compete with strong competition from other players. This also necessitates different packaging and ways of working within your own organizations.

The required transformation is a complex process, requiring an incremental approach and involvement of the right contributors.

In these turbulent times, Operators might be eager to free up capital in order to support new future investments and to sustain mobile business growth. We already understand that mobile voice is a saturated market and data traffic is growing dramatically. With the right service packaging and attractive proposals, the voice cash cow can still fund growth on the mobile side, with the addition of attractive and innovative packaging for existing and future offers.

Operators demand clear ROI for new investments and short pay back times. Top line is compromised due to technology and business convergence as well as the strong competition coming from other domains, like Internet players. There are multiple areas to be considered when trying to grow or simply defend your top line.

The pressure to reduce OPEX is still out there. Operators need strategic partners to support them in cutting OPEX while maintaining competitive advantage in the eyes of their customers. From HR optimization to re-engineering your own processes, OPEX optimization usually impacts people. So, whatever action is required, it needs a careful approach and a holistic business perspective.