The era of 5G is now upon us. While 5G penetration will depend largely on regional rollouts, the global average is set to grow from 13% in 2022 to more than 60% in 2030. It presents telecommunications companies with an unprecedented opportunity for growth by tapping into an enterprise market that is crying out for ways to monetize 5G services. 5G promises lightning-fast speeds, ultra-low latency and robust connectivity, including unique opportunities for optimizing bandwidth with techniques like network slicing. Simply put, 5G is a game-changer for businesses across all industries. However, to fully capitalize on this potential and help enterprises achieve real revenue growth, telecom operators must overcome a critical challenge: partner onboarding.
The telco industry is now at a major turning point, with many evolving from communication service providers (CSPs) to digital service providers, a fundamental change in customer expectations. However, charting that course in a way that increases subscribers, boosts subscriber spending and unlocks new revenue streams can only be achieved with help. Only recently, onboarding partners, such as solutions providers, systems integrators and application developers, has been a time-intensive and resource-heavy process. Establishing partnerships, integrating systems that play well together and managing the resulting complex workflows are significant barriers to achieving the speed and agility promised by 5G.
The importance of partner onboarding
To capitalize on the monetization opportunities associated with 5G, telcos must look beyond basic network coverage and support more advanced use cases. One of the biggest hurdles telcos need to overcome is that 5G is designed for entirely different purposes than 4G and previous generations of mobile networks, which put human-centric applications at the fore. The enhanced connectivity of 5G can facilitate a seemingly infinite number of use cases beyond voice calls and human-centric data traffic — from sensor-based building management and smart cities to virtual surgeries or biometric patient monitoring in healthcare.
Today’s enterprises typically operate on Wi-Fi, LTE or a combination of both. However, 5G will transform these networks by supporting more advanced technologies such as machine-to-machine communication, IoT, AR/VR, AI, robotics and countless others. The question is, are telcos ready to help enterprise customers leverage this technology, and how do they monetize it? Can they redefine and elevate their brands into these new markets?
They cannot do it — at least not at scale — without partners. Partner onboarding in the telco world is not new. Typically, a telco will partner with a third-party hardware or software supplier, such as a mobile phone manufacturer or streaming platform, and “bundle” their services to create better value propositions for customers. Integrating one partner to make a service offering more appealing to network subscribers is one thing. Still, in the world of 5G and the numerous use cases it provides, telcos will need to bring in multiple partners to scale their services, target different verticals and remain competitive. This is where zero-touch onboarding can make a difference.
Zero-touch for faster onboarding
Zero-touch partner onboarding leverages automation, artificial intelligence and self-service capabilities to simplify and accelerate the entire partner onboarding journey. By enabling partners to seamlessly integrate their solutions and services into the telco’s 5G infrastructure, it eliminates the need for cumbersome manual interactions and accelerates time-to-value for both parties involved. In our digital world, speed is a key measure of success.
One of the critical benefits of zero-touch partner onboarding is its ability to foster collaboration and innovation. Telcos can rapidly expand their partner ecosystem, enabling them to offer a wide array of 5G-enabled enterprise solutions and services by providing a standardized, automated onboarding framework. The easier and more seamless the onboarding framework is, the more partners telcos can attract — each with unique offerings and areas of expertise.
The imperative to onboard new partners is so acute for telcos that many want to partner with third parties with an established base of onboarded partners. We’re also seeing the rise of third-party aggregators occupying the middle ground, bringing partners together to create a kind of “partner marketplace” within the ecosystem. These approaches are viable, but if telcos are to get the most out of 5G and monetize effectively, they need to be able to seek out the most suitable partners for their needs and onboard them in a smooth, high speed and frictionless fashion. Zero-touch partner onboarding enables telcos to create a marketplace-like environment of their own, where partners can showcase their solutions as proof-of-concept to potential customers, boosting visibility and driving business growth.
Security concerns and time-to-revenue
When it comes to partner onboarding, there is more to consider than applied use cases and monetization. There are multiple security questions that telcos will need to answer around data privacy and compliance, as well as controlling which partners can push new services to market. Aggregators might bring all the required layers for integration, but telcos would still have a contract with the end partner with agreed terms and conditions. That’s important for data security, as different regions will have different rules and regulations, such as GDPR in Europe or CCPA in the U.S. This should be a consideration when it comes to zero-touch onboarding, particularly when dealing with third-party partner aggregators.
When measuring the success of any zero-touch partner onboarding initiative, time-to-revenue is the golden metric. How quickly can a service be integrated, published and ready for subscribers to start paying for? Each telco will devise its strategy regarding what comes first — bring in more partners to attract customers or build out the customer base to attract partners. In either case, time-to-revenue will be the underlying key performance indicator (KPI) when making a business case for new partner onboarding strategies.
What’s next?
We’re likely to see aggregators and the “partner marketplace” ecosystem develop at pace in the coming years, where the “inside world” of telcos and the “outside world” of partners can communicate and integrate with far less friction. How this ecosystem is managed from a security, performance and monetization perspective will depend largely on zero-touch onboarding and how easily telcos can integrate new third-party services.
The world of telecom operators and third-party partners is heading for decentralization, and how that decentralization is handled will make or break 5G monetization for communication service providers. Handle it well; telcos will be the true catalysts of 5G innovation and digital transformation across all industries.
