Are telecoms superpowers bad for business?

With a flurry of takeovers at the beginning of the year, Timico's director of mobile services, Andrew North, asks what this means for ordinary businesses

It’s been a period of huge transition for the telecoms industry this year already.

After news broke that Hutchison Whampoa, Three’s Hong Kong-based owners, had splashed out on £10.25bn to take over O2 in January – BT signed on the dotted line to acquire EE just a month later.

After flirting with buying O2 itself, BT’s £12.5bn deal to buy EE saw them take power of Britain’s largest mobile phone network and become the biggest single player in the UK telecoms market.

A once diverse industry, with four major players, was reduced to three almost overnight.

Both deals look set to be investigated by the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority, but Vittorio Colao, the chief executive of rival Vodafone, has said the deal required “more scrutiny”.

There’s no denying that as far as choice goes, a large portion of the market has been shaved off. When all is said and done, these deals are undoubtedly eye-catching moves indicative of a booming telecoms market. But what do they mean for the typical UK enterprise?

Much has been made of the “quad play” focus for these new entities – bundled packages of broadband, landline, mobile and pay-TV.

An interesting development – but not exactly one which is going to set the business world alight. We work in an age where consumer and business products often work side-by-side – but we’re still a long way from a world where Netflix is installed alongside Office 365.

These quad play intentions present the (very real) prospect of the industry investing billions in highly consumer-driven business models. Faced with this reality, it’s natural for some enterprise customers to feel a little restless about their place in the pecking order.

What’s more, the transitional phases as the buyouts take shape could lead to a period of unrest, service delivery adjustment and a pause on investment, innovation and product development.

So how can enterprise customers maintain excellent network coverage and also navigate these acquisitions with a provider which still has their enterprise needs at heart?

A distinct gap is developing and it’s one that independent providers and channel resellers should be poised to plug. To stay ahead in the mobile world, providers have to team consultancy with service – a quality offering underpinned by a quality network.

Mobile working has infiltrated business life on a massive scale in the last five or so years – with personal usage of social media sites also creeping into business use to the point where a company Facebook page or Twitter account almost comes as standard.

Instant Messaging is another example – once just reserved for BBM, it’s now a feature in many Unified Communications (UC) packages. But while borrowing elements from consumer life has its benefits, working with a business-only provider for your telecoms is starting to make more and more sense.

With no quad play distractions to contend with, business-only providers can focus on bringing together all of the elements which make for a successful UC solution. This means prioritising products that complement each other and innovations which are geared 100% towards enterprise requirements.

Many of these providers will be underpinned by one of the major networks anyway – which means the best of both worlds – first rate coverage and a tailored customer service provision.

The door is also open for multi-solution vendors or reseller partners – which find themselves in the enviable position of being able to offer a broad platform of products under one roof.

The next few months could potentially be a tricky time for the IT manager. The safety of sticking with a big-brand name is a little more uncertain now – especially as the focus on consumerisation from all of the ‘Big Three’ is common knowledge. The telecoms market has become smaller, but IT managers are now in a position where they need to think bigger.

Andrew North is director of mobile services at Timico