Telecom carriers need to be able to support new services

Telecom carriers have to start changing their IT and service technologies into "IT and network factories" to support new services, according to Gartner.

The analyst predicts that half of the 20 largest carriers in 2012 will provide services which are barely related to telecommunications and at least 15 per cent of income will come from these sources.

"The evolution of networking and IT technologies toward online IT and the digital age creates significant opportunities for communications service providers (CSPs) but also poses huge challenges,” claimed Gartner research vice president, Jean-Claude Delcroix.

"Opportunities for new digital services range from extended transmission services to content services and IT services.

"The main challenges will be a much more competitive environment and a much more intense use of IT in the delivery of services by CSPs."

He specified that fixed-network operators will need to move faster than mobile operators to offer new services.

This is because those with fixed networks have to deal with the decline in their voice revenues, and he said they have less than five years in which to provide an infrastructure that will support the new services - otherwise they will just become utility bandwidth providers.