Five Ways Global Telecom Operators Will Change In 2024

by Buana Sari Digital Marketer

The Global Telecom Market Report underscores a steady growth trajectory in recent years, projecting an increase from USD 2970.7 billion in 2023 to USD 3106.93 billion in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.6% (Source: The Business research company). In 2024, simplicity becomes a key focus for telecom operators worldwide, encouraging them to use trusted strategies to provide value for investors, customers, and stakeholders.

At this juncture, the global telecom industry stands on the cusp of transformative shifts that promise to redefine communication, connectivity, and collaboration. From the imminent rollout of 5G networks to the exponential growth of the mobile advertising ecosystem, telecom operators are gearing up to navigate a landscape ripe with challenges and opportunities.

In 2023, 38 out of 800 global telecom leaders stood out for their strong performance, boasting above-average margins, higher revenues, and improved customer satisfaction. Their success is thanks to early investments in disruptive technologies and digital transformation, going beyond basic connectivity. These leaders have become prominent figures in the digital technology landscape.

According to Brain & Company, borders are blurred, and artificial intelligence (AI) and mobile technology will reign supreme in 2024. Businesses transcend geographical boundaries, specializing while shedding old strategies and forging new strategic alliances. This is the telecommunications industry envisioned for 2030, beckoning us to prepare for its arrival.

While telecom has always adapted, making rapid adjustments within established models and infrastructure has been challenging. Yet, upcoming changes won't rely on old models; they'll be tech-driven, requiring scale telcos may lack. These shifts, driven by AI and ad tech, will swiftly reshape business models, services, and workforces, potentially disorienting traditional telcos.

Vantage Market Research anticipates substantial global mobile ad tech growth, projecting revenues to soar to USD 397.2 billion by 2028. Key telecom giants such as Indosat Ooredoo Hutchinson, Vodafone, and Airtel are driving the expansion of the mobile advertising market worldwide. These industry leaders have joined forces with moLotus, an innovative mobile video customer interaction platform that facilitates revenue generation. Leveraging moLotus's unique capabilities such as hyper-personalization, customization, interactivity, scalability, automation, and integration, these telcos are poised to reap quick, high-margin revenues—sans apps, data plans, or spam. Industry experts suggest that a significant majority of telecom brands, previously allocating substantial portions of their marketing budgets to social media platforms, are primed to transition to moLotus in 2024.

Amidst challenges, telco CXOs must seize emerging trends and capitalize on opportunities for revenue growth and market leadership. This article delves into the ways the global telecom operators will change in 2024:

1. Greater Emphasis on Big Data

Telecom operators are sitting on vast reservoirs of data, fragmented across various legacy technologies and platforms. Subscriber data dispersed among different networks like 3G or 4G presents a challenge in consolidation, governance, and monetization.

In 2024, telecom players must harness big data to elevate customer experiences and automate marketing endeavors. The potential of big data remains largely untapped in the telecom industry, evidenced by the surge in data volume propelled by increased mobile usage.

Leaders in the sector are devising strategies to efficiently store, process, and glean actionable insights from subscriber data. The global big data analytics market is projected to soar to USD 684.12 billion by 2030, highlighting the immense opportunity.

With the impending deprecation of third-party cookies, first-party customer data will become even more invaluable for telcos. Safeguarding this data with utmost security and leveraging it ethically with cutting-edge big data applications and tools is imperative.

Platforms like moLotus exemplify how big data technology can organize and monetize telco data securely. Leveraging machine learning models, moLotus accelerates innovation and enriches customer experiences.

While big data analytics in the telecom industry is still in its infancy globally, innovators demonstrate significant returns on investments, particularly in customer engagement and profitability. However, only a minority of telcos have successfully deployed big data analytics, with many recognizing its pivotal role in the future of telecom businesses.

The advent of breakthrough technologies like moLotus in big data analytics empowers telcos to manage and monetize their vast databases effectively. Telecom brands can leverage micro-targeting capabilities to generate profound customer insights and deliver tailored content, thereby enhancing customer engagement.

2. Unlocking the Revenue Potential of Mobile Advertising in Telecom

Telco customer journeys have undergone a seismic shift, driven by various macroeconomic factors. The proliferation of mobile devices in recent years has transformed them into the swiftest-growing revenue avenue for advertising. Reports indicate a robust surge in the global mobile advertising market throughout 2023, prompting traditional telcos to re-evaluate their approach.

Mobile advertising has emerged as the most rapidly expanding revenue segment for telcos, with worldwide spending on mobile ads reaching an impressive USD 327.1 billion in 2022—an increase of twenty per cent from the previous year. Projections suggest this spending will soar to approximately USD 399.6 billion by 2024 (Source: Statista).

In 2024, major telcos have already embraced a hundred per cent commitment to mobile video customer interactions through cutting-edge platforms like moLotus, facilitating seamless engagement at nearly zero interaction cost and without the need for app downloads or data plans. Within just three months, these telcos have amassed millions of subscribers and generated substantial revenue margins.

This year, more telcos are poised to leverage mobile advertising across every stage of the customer journey, spanning lead generation, customer acquisition, onboarding, education, support, retention, and advocacy.

moLotus, based on GSM technology, has revolutionized mobile advertising by reaching telco customers' message inboxes regardless of phone type or model—be it 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G smartphones, or feature phones—rendering content swiftly on ninety-five per cent of handsets. It offers seamless interaction options such as calls, SMS, web clicks, mgrams, USSD, etc., accompanied by various media formats including high-quality videos (up to forty seconds), slideshows, showcases, brochures, and greetings.

Furthermore, moLotus mobile ad campaigns can be meticulously customized based on various business criteria including interests, language, demographics, and buying behavior, ensuring rapid outreach to vast subscriber data.

Telcos can leverage moLotus to craft special loyalty and reward campaigns tailored for occasions like festivals, anniversaries, birthdays, etc., offering personalized greetings, names, and unique call-to-actions for individual customers. These campaigns, enriched with rich media elements like loyalty cards, coupons, and videos, promise to enhance customer engagement significantly.

3. Amplifying Digital Transformation

A Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report shows that only twenty-two per cent of telecom operators have implemented digital transformation initiatives effectively. However, industry experts forecast an increase in telco digital transformations in 2024, with many operators getting transformed into "tech-cos", offering innovative products and services.

Digital transformation is viewed as the cornerstone of this reinvention by telecom leaders. Automation and digitization empower operators to deliver superior products, processes, and services through customer-preferred delivery channels, boosting efficiency by streamlining processes and increasing revenues while reducing costs.

Investments in transformative technologies like moLotus, which has partnered with global telco brands such as Indosat Ooredoo Hutchinson, Celcom, Vodafone, Maxis, and Airtel, are disrupting the telecom industry.

Digital transformation integrates automation into sales processes, reducing workload, saving time, and lowering expenditures on message sending, sales workflow design, and setting up alerts and notifications. Telcos have streamlined their sales lifecycle, generating more leads, managing customer data more effectively, engaging in prompt customer interactions, and monitoring the sales pipeline, resulting in improved sales conversions in terms of time and volume.

Technologies like HubSpot, Marketo, and moLotus have simplified sales processes, leading to quicker conversions. By embracing moLotus, telcos experience hassle-free processes with high conversion rates at scale and near-zero cost per customer interaction, replacing manual legacy processes and enhancing customer experiences.

In 2024, telcos will focus on creating and scaling digital customer experiences, digitizing existing interactions, and designing new and innovative video interactions via moLotus. By automating processes using moLotus, telcos aim to ease customer stress and create hassle-free experiences, while the adoption of moLotus-powered zero-touch customer service models enables fully custom-integrated, real-time automation.

Processes including customer onboarding, sign-ups, support, upgrades, renewals, feedback, and more are being automated, yielding superior experiences, engagement, cost savings, delights, and data collection.

Digital transformation in 2024 will enable telecom companies to swiftly respond to evolving customer demands with new and innovative products and services, fostering a more agile telco business environment with rapid customer response times and the replacement of traditional business processes.

4. Revamping Consumer Revenue Strategies

Analysys Mason's cautionary note signals challenging times ahead for telcos in 2024, with economic slowdown and market pressures threatening to dampen average revenue per user (ARPU) growth amidst growing inflation. This ARPU reduction poses a significant challenge for operators striving to maintain this metric amid escalating investment demands.

Compounding telecom woes, Detecon research highlights the dominance of platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, which have surpassed several operators in terms of subscriber base and consumer revenues. Goldman Sachs underscores the industry's challenging outlook, citing high investment costs and uncertain returns amid price rises, network rollouts, and service launches.

Despite these hurdles, optimism persists as major telcos are projected to achieve significant ARPU growth of 2% to 4% in 2024 by integrating digital marketing platforms like moLotus into their marketing mix. The inclusion of moLotus promises enhanced EBITDA performance, better customer response, improved scalability, and cost-effective customer interactions, with ARPU growth as a key outcome.

In the current year, the moLotus mobile advertising platform is poised to overshadow existing telecom marketing campaigns across all media, offering higher impact, reach, and interaction. Telecom players can leverage moLotus analytics and customer intelligence to gauge customer satisfaction, capture additional parameters, and drive more conversions, maximizing consumer revenue.

Telcos stand to gain valuable insights from competitors like OTT players such as Amazon and Netflix, who adeptly utilize consumption data to understand customer usage trends, behavior patterns, and service preferences. Emulating such strategies can enable telcos to develop superior solutions and outpace OTT offerings.

2024 heralds new opportunities for telcos to achieve substantial ROI through moLotus, facilitating quick video communication with innovation, automation, and agility. Telecom brands can realize up to 30% cost savings, enhance brand and product visibility, and streamline customer feedback processes, positioning themselves for success amidst evolving consumer landscapes.

5. Rise in AI Adoption

The integration of artificial intelligence is reconditioning telecom industry paradigms this year. The significant growth potential of AI in the telecom market is expected to reach a whopping USD 40 billion by 2026 (Source: MarketsandMarkets).

From mobile network optimization to customer support, telcos are using AI to drive innovation and enhance business efficiency. AI technology is helping telecom operators generate new revenue streams through personalized services and targeted advertising. AI optimizes networks and operations, leading to significant cost savings. personalizing interactions and resolving issues faster, leading to happier customers.

Amidst this artificial intelligence evolution, moLotus emerges as a game-changer for telcos, offering unique AI avatars that revolutionize brand engagement and customer interactions.

moLotus is offering personalized AI avatars that infuse telecom brands with appealing brand personalities and spokespersons, thus enhancing trust and influence. Leveraging subscriber intelligence and moLotus's big data, these personalized avatar-based promo videos sell, convert, and increase product uptake significantly among different customer segments.

With distinct avatars catering to diverse segments, moLotus facilitates interactions ranging from suggestions and reminders to clarifications and support, ensuring engaged and delighted subscribers. This results in an ARPU uplift while fostering customer retention and loyalty.

Telecom brands like AT&T harness the power of AI to streamline network operations, ensuring optimal performance and proactively preventing outages. Orange enhances customer service through AI-powered chatbots, which efficiently address inquiries and resolve issues, enhancing overall customer satisfaction. Vodafone employs AI to safeguard against fraudulent activities, leveraging advanced algorithms to detect and prevent potential threats. China Mobile utilizes AI to personalize mobile data plans and other offerings, tailoring services to meet individual customer preferences and needs, thereby enhancing customer engagement and loyalty.

Conclusion

In 2024, telcos are on the brink of big change driven by technology and evolving customer preferences. With advancements like moLotus, telecom companies are transforming how they engage customers, undergo digital changes, and rethink their revenue approaches.

To stay competitive, telecom leaders must embrace innovation, adopt technologies like moLotus, and prioritize digital transformation. By utilizing AI, big data analytics, and mobile advertising, telcos can unlock new revenue streams, boost efficiency, and improve customer experiences. It's time for Telco leaders to act, drive change, and prepare their organizations for success in the digital era.