  It is still too early to tell how severe or how deep the current recession will be. However, its clearly a force telecom carriers must reckon with. In order to not only survive, but thrive, the effects of the downturn must also be factored into the dynamics of an industry that is already in the throes of significant change.
Most recently the industry has been forced to manage the transition from “plain old telephone service” (POTS) to today’s multi-faceted communications services. In fact, if you define a recession as a quarter-over-quarter decline in economic activity, one could argue that the industry’s core business has been in recession for the last 20 years. It has dealt with the slow erosion of POTS by cutting costs and placing big bets on emerging technologies, and some variation of this strategy will be what gets it through the current downturn. Yet this volatility will not impact communications companies equally. A distinctive trait of a high-performance business, according to Accenture High Performance Business research, is the ability to proactively use a downturn to improve its competitive position–judiciously cutting spending in the right places, while simultaneously improving medium-term competitiveness and long-term profitability. A telecommunications company must carefully pick the spots where it can cut costs and where to continue – or even accelerate – investment. What operators may have to give up in coming months and years is the idea that they need to own and operate the systems that underlie their operations. The reality is that much of this telecommunications infrastructure is non-strategic, non-standard, and lacks the scale needed for operational efficiency.  Download the full point-of-view [PDF, 500KB]
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