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CSP Opportunities in the Post-Pandemic World

Estimated Reading Time: 4 Minutes

Telecoms After COVID: An Overview

Now that physical interactions are slowly returning to our daily routines, it's easier to assess the long-term impact that COVID-19 has had on our lives. The Great Resignation. Facemasks being part of our wardrobe (even if we’re just carrying them in our pockets). Preferring open-air spaces to crowded rooms. Bumping elbows instead of shaking hands. Having thousands of apps to order take-out. The pandemic has clearly changed the way we socialize and interact. But it also changed the way telecoms work.
Coronavirus greatly accelerated the adoption of work-from-home for businesses and public offices worldwide. As physical distancing became the status quo, the virus forced most industries to go full-digital. From e-commerce to videoconferencing, and from contactless payments to COVID-warning apps, we all had a sneak peek at the positive results this digital transformation could bring to telecoms. No wonder the research firm Gartner recently listed COVID as one of the three most important reasons for business acceleration. (The other two were costs/ operations and results, in case you are wondering.)

New Technologies for CSPs

As we have previously discussed in this blog, automation, agile methodologies and virtualization have completely changed the way Communications Service Providers (CSPs) work. But we should also mention that the advent of low-code development for telecoms has brought huge new advantages to CSPs, such as:
  1. Flexibility to innovate and easily modify, enhance and create new services that expand the product portfolio without the need for programming knowledge.
  2. Individualization of solutions, tailored to the specific needs of users, to achieve higher customer retention and lower churn.
  3. Reductions as high as 80% in programming effort compared to traditional coding.
As low-code platforms make programming more accessible through drag-and-drop building blocks, they open the door to a new kind of developer—the citizen developer. Citizen developers are product managers, account managers and businesspeople who are sensitive to the needs of their customers, but who were previously unable to build applications or contribute directly to their development because of their lack of programming knowledge.

A Huge Investment Needs Huge Ideas

According to expert forecasts, worldwide 5G network infrastructure revenue will grow 21% to total USD 23 billion in 2022, up from USD 19 billion in 2021. CSPs have already spent trillions on 5G, edge computing and many other things to keep ahead in the technology race. But they will also need unique value-added services and products that will allow them to stand out from the rest. For that, they will need innovative services. And low code could be the enabler of innovation they have been looking for.
With low-code, citizen developers take the lead on personalization, enhancement and even the creation of new services for specific audiences, while professional programmers can devote their time and skills to creating new building blocks. These new building blocks will allow citizen developers to further enhance and individualize apps and microservices that resonate with their customers. Programmers can keep creating more and more new blocks that expand the portfolio. Citizen developers can use those new blocks to offer innovative and unique services to customers. It’s a virtuous cycle that benefits from different minds using tools differently. Or, as the technology news outlet VentureBeat puts it: "Professional coders are the Bachs and Beethovens of the enterprise, orchestrating complex lines of code to build the sort of sophisticated functions and algorithms that result from years of dedication and formal training. [Citizen developers] are our Lennons and McCartneys, creating beautiful and important applications that can change the world, but which are comparatively easier to build."

Advantages of Using Telecoms Low-Code

Even if innovation is a great sales pitch by itself, there are many more interesting long-term advantages that can come from leveraging low-code in telecoms. These include being able to quickly respond to (and win) detailed and complex municipal tenders, provide highly individualized solutions for specific customers in short periods of time, migrate end-of-life bare-metal services, and virtualize modules that can be scaled up and down according to the needs of users. Many CSPs are already using low code to achieve better business outcomes.
With our Telecoms Low-Code Application Platform, we at ECT work together with CSPs around the world to create the building blocks that can help them achieve their goals. If you are interested in learning more about how low code can help you overcome your company's business challenges, please get in touch with us.
Author:
ECT Editorial Team
ebook cover bringing low code to telecoms

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