08 December 2021

#  The cost of anti-agility

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This last year of unprecedented uncertainty has caused most organisations to re-assess their business. Tier 1 telecoms providers have been shaken more than most and in order to survive they need to overcome deep-rooted ‘anti-agile’ thinking. Read the first of our trilogy of reports on how to overcome ‘anti-agility’.

The role of an international voice wholesaler should be a simple proposition – take a call from a service provider and terminate it via another service provider with high quality and realistic costs. It’s something that the telecoms industry has been doing for more than 50 years. But, for many reasons, the complexity has continued to grow, and some in the industry are falling behind newer, more agile competitors.

## Tier 1 carriers need to adapt to embrace complexity and change

While volumes are now almost back to normal levels, the high early peaks in telephone traffic and internet usage during the pandemic caused many providers to scramble for incremental capacity. But the organisational impact and lessons remain – the industry is now aware that its reaction to complexity and the ability to handle volatility needs to be baked into all its plans. Agility is the order of the day.

Tier 1 providers, in particular, face a number of challenges when it comes to creating an agile business. First, they are often constrained by complex, expensive and inflexible systems and processes. At the same time, in an industry that creates $11 billion in revenue every year, there is little room to shave costs further in what is already a low-margin business. On top of all that, customer demand for ‘better, cheaper and more’ continues unabated.

We are therefore entering a phase in the business where international carriers require approaches that combine the surety of historical methods, with the flexibility to handle rapidly changing needs. Modern carriers must be agile in all things: technology, intelligence and processes.

## Overcoming ”Anti-Agility”

But, many Tier 1 operators’ historic conservative approach and a deeply entrenched concept of ‘network ownership’ are almost the opposite of agile. As a result, a growing number of Tier 2 and 3 carriers have been able to utilise and benefit from the rapid technical and operational advances – notably, virtualisation and cloudification – in recent years to save cost and generate new revenue.

So, to a large extent, Tier 1 carriers are perhaps the opposite of agile. They are closer to the definition of what we have termed “Anti-Agile”. This has a significant cost on their business, not only in terms of missed financial and operation efficiency, but also in terms of missed revenue generation and innovation.

As Digitalk’s CTO, Neil French, confirms “Tier 1 carriers certainly recognise the operational agility and flexibility of newer entrants in the industry, but they struggle to adapt. Nevertheless, with the right tools and deployment models, there is absolutely no reason why Tier 1s cannot benefit from the same levels of agility.”

To find out more about how Tier 1 providers can shake off this ‘anti-agility’ moniker visit the [Digitalk resource library](https://www.digitalk.com/resource-library) to download free the first article in our trilogy of ‘Anti-Agility’ reports.

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