Telco CEOs mull over hiring teenagers

What else could be in the minds of Telco CEOs in Asia?

According to Nomura Equity Research, telcos during the GSMA Mobile Expo, which was recently held in Shanghai, talked a great deal about “collaboration” to better manage costs as the telephony landscape is evolving rapidly and about their need to defy being just a dumb-pipe provider.

“Consumer demands have changed rapidly, and telcos are struggling/have struggled to keep up, so many CEOs talked about even hiring teenagers so they can keep pace with changing needs – “phone is not a phone anymore”,” said Nomura analyst Sachin Gupta noting that the PLDT CEO even presented a case-study on his 11-year-old grandson – Gabby – as an example of the new typical consumer.

Other key takeaways according to Nomura are as follows:

Bullish messages on TD-LTE – At the GSMA Mobile Asia Expo (and GTI conference) in Shanghai, most participants, including operators, presented a bullish view on the TD-LTE outlook and also highlighted various challenges still, such as handset ecosystem, frequency harmonization, networks and multi-mode devices/chipsets.

China Mobile stated that it has completed various successful trials on devices/networks/techniques (across 6 cities), which reaffirms their view that TD-LTE is ready for further deployment in China and globally. Similar messages were echoed by all other operators, including Bharti and Softbank, which also are key members of GTI (Global TD-LTE Initiative).

Mobile banking is coming – There was also a fair bit of discussion on mobile banking NFC (near-field communication) as a new revenue source in the largely untapped market of mobile banking or mobile wallet. China Mobile emphasized the importance of further collaboration with the banking industry in order to share the additional revenue stream. Bharti also emphasized the large potential of this market as less than 50% of Indians have bank accounts currently. GSMA estimates this could be a USD50bn market by 2016.