Future Forward Insights: Is Carrier Business Consolidating?
The Telecom industry has survived what could have been the biggest blow by a pandemic and is armed with the learnings of the past two years, ready to scale new heights- now looking forward to opportunities and challenges in a controlled, reactive, demanding, and dynamic environment.
Throughout the pandemic the industry has tried it’s best to keep up with the introduction of new networks, services, and applications. There were constant efforts made to ensure augmentation of network capacity with additional fiber and wireless deployments aligned with the demand for better and higher-speed networks. Companies have opened up about the need to be more aware and keeping the competitive edge alive while dealing with the new demands of the industry. This is seen to bea chance to have firsthand access at the untapped new markets vis new networks, innovative offerings, unparallel services. These efforts shows that the telecom sector is eager to offer even more powerful higher-speed networks in 2022. But this is only possible when an even more powerful carrier network supports the business.
Bankai Group has managed to consistently monitor the traffic on their wholesale ring to ensure that connected VoIP carriers, whether via unilateral or bilateral agreements, are offered the highest quality of wholesale carrier services. This enables Bankai Group to deliver on their promise of innovative, scalable solutions and continue to be the pioneers in the carrier business. In a recent conversation with Rohan Barot – Vice President of Carrier Business (Americas) at the Bankai Group, we had the privilege to have an insight into what he calls “Carrier Business is Consolidating”- an open discussion/debate. Rohan Barot has built his expertise off Bankai’s dealings in multiple domains of Telecommunications including services and technology solutions surrounding Voice, SMS, Top Up, Data and Fintech. And here is a peek into what the carrier business is moving towards as per Rohan.
Q: How Would You Want the World to Look at Carrier Business?
Rohan Barot: Many will argue that Carrier Business has no charm left with most of the business taken over by the OTT. But that’s the story from the 2010s. This is 2022 and this decade has made a lot of corrections overall. Sure, the traffic is distributed but at the same time, the number of unimportant carriers has also gone down drastically. At one point in time, the entry barrier in the Carrier industry was considered not a controlling factor, and we saw an emergence of plenty of Carriers between 2008 to 2015.
I remember that from a survey we conducted with about 10,000 T2 carriers present in/around 2012. But today if you see we can only find less than four thousand or even lower serious carriers present and still there is a decline in the number of Carriers. No No!!! don’t get me wrong. The decline in the number of carriers doesn’t show a decline in the business or industry, it only indicates the increased number of quality players. The telcos in the past have been hit heavily by relying on new entrants and to make short-term profits have interconnected with them. But today they have recognized the need to work with limited carriers again which was the trend pre-2008.
Q: Where are we in the Post-Covid Global Wholesale Voice Carrier Market’s Journey?
Rohan Barot: The global wholesale voice carrier market has seen a lot since 2020. The way the industry dealt with the pandemic and its phases was nothing but resilience in a form we were yet to see. Today where we stand, I see
- Entry Barrier to Carrier Industry is back
- Subscribers are looking for reliable connectivity
- Data Penetration is still a challenge in developing countries which is a reason for voice calls still being prevalent
- OTTs/SMs took a pie from voice business from 2008 to 2015 but the growth has now stabilized for them
- Carrier business consolidation has been a boon for serious market players
Q: What are Your Views on the Current State of Carrier Business?
Rohan Barot: In contrast to the popular belief that the Carrier Business is declining, I can say that it’s the right time to invest in this business. This is the period of Consolidation. The business curve is not falling, but it is getting ready for another big leap, but this time with a whole lot of carrier consolidations.
The entry barrier today has become high and relies only on grey routes which most of these small-time carriers did in the past has also gone down drastically. The Telcos have not only stopped entertaining non-serious carriers, but also have invested heavily in upgrading technology solutions to help them monitor business automatically. At Bankai, we are working with over 150 Mobile Operators out of which at least 70% are working purely with 4-5 Carriers like ourselves and focusing on growing the retail business through various plans. They are investing in technologies like Fraud Management/Revenue Assurance and Real-time prepaid cut-off technologies to control the international business. We have deployed telecom solutions at over 60+ telcos globally to help them automate their processes and work on controlling the fraud whilst channeling the Voice/SMS business through our highly secured networks.
Q: How Would you Decode the Incremental Trajectory of the Business?
Rohan Barot: What has happened in the past 2 years has become the deciding factor in the incremental trajectory of the business. We have seen:
- Rise in demand for large capacity telephony services across businesses ecosystems.
- Outsourced managed services demand.
- Transmission switching technology.
- Focus on development of advanced fraud management and interconnect billing solutions and services.
- Rising telecom frauds.
- Augmenting subscriptions for VoIP services and robust commercial network infrastructure.
Q: What Should we Watch out for Over the Next Few Years?
Rohan Barot: Keep your eyes on these growth numbers
- Total international voice to be at 310 billion minutes by 2024
- Out of this, total wholesale voice traffic to be at 248 billion minutes by 2024
- Total international voice revenue to be at $8.6 billion by 2024
- Out of this, total wholesale voice revenue to be at $7.3 billion by 2024
These numbers are phenomenal if we handle them right and work towards quality and ensure our industry remains consolidated.
The Trend of TDM Interconnects or having dedicated links is coming back as well. Pure SIP interconnects with tunneling are becoming extremely popular. Moreover, a lot of large telcos have stopped international voice business and outsourced their entire business to a single carrier. This further shows another example of pure consolidation of business. Consolidation will improve quality and quality finally leading to a growing Voice business.
Business Game Plan for Telcos:
Q: Share your Views on International Voice
Rohan Barot: The Future of International Voice has it all. What I mean to say is that in the future
- Services like Data provisioning, HLR Lookup, and IoT SIM ordering to be included in digital portals and APIs
- Back to the future with TDM Interconnects
- New-age technology solutions automated business monitoring
- Fraud Management, Revenue Assurance and Real-time prepaid cut-off technologies to control the International Business
- Achieving Consolidation through Outsourcing
Q: What are your Top Tips for Carriers?
Rohan Barot: Cultivate perseverance as serious carriers timing is back. My success mantras for telcos is –
Consolidate and Become a Service Hub:
Today customer acquisition and maintenance costs are extremely high when you want to impart the right treatment. Customers now want to sign up when you can fulfill all their needs and not shop around differently for Voice/SMS/Top-up/DIDs.
Automate:
Carriers need to invest in the automation of services. Amazon and other E-Commerce portals have made us used to shopping online and today clients prefer the comfort of dealing with telecom services at their preferred time and minimal human intervention also saving resource costs for the carriers.
Go Digital:
Digitalization of entire business flow and not only payments is the next big thing and will prevail going forth. You will be astonished to see how zero-touch digitalization will impact our lives in the future. The money saved from resources cost should heavily be invested to create a digital presence and make the business flows digital.
Pliability:
This Pandemic has taught the global companies to adapt to pliability. Pliability is a simple word that reflects the ability to recover quickly from setbacks. Carriers must instill Pliability at the core of their business planning and processes.
What started as a topic of debate/discussion, turned out to be a session of deep knowledge sharing and an insightful peek into Mr. Barot’s thoughts based on his experience of over 16 years in the wonderful engrossing world of the Telecommunications and Carrier Industry.
Q: Tell us Something about Bankai
Rohan Barot: In an age of ever-evolving competition to provide the best of services, Bankai has become more than a telecom company, we have turned it into an experience. Bankai has 150+ direct operators, 2500+ carrier relationships, 40000 + enterprise customers and 1.5mn app subscribers with 140+ deployments in 40+ countries. The company offers Class 4 and 5 enterprise retail switches and convergent interconnect billing solutions, secured and comprehensive fraud management and revenue assurance solution, digital banking & mobile financial solutions with the help of 500+ employees.
Contributing Writer: Lotipa is a Senior Content Writer at Panamax. Inc. An electrical engineer by education, she has been following her passion for technology and corporate strategy via writing for the past 10 years. Her current area of focus is the scope of equality and inclusion. Away from the keyboard, she can be found either exploring her culinary skills or lost in the mountains with her two rescued dogs.
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Rohan Barot
