Australia - Analyses Telecoms Market - 2016

Synopsis

The Australian telecommunications market is continuing to see consolidation, as traditional services are being further commoditised and digital media companies are offering new communication services, free or at significantly lower cost. Thanks to new video streaming services such as Netflix, and an increased use of mobile broadband for a range of applications, people’s use of broadband has increased; however a squeeze on margins of services such as broadband access doesn’t mean that such increased usage of telecommunications also accounts for any significant increases in industry revenues.

The industry will still need to further transform itself in order to be able to handle the dynamics of the market, which include lower margins, commoditisation, new technologies and competition from outside the traditional market. The new billion dollar companies in the digital media are light on assets and light on staff; and their business models are based on transactions facilitated by their software-based services and done in an automated way by the users of their assets, using algorithms, big data, cloud computing and datacentres

There are plenty of new opportunities in the market. Now that the quality of broadband access is improving – albeit still rather slowly – new markets are opening up in healthcare, education, government services, smart grids, smart cities, connected homes, wearable technologies, IoT and M2M – the list goes on. Telecommunications companies should take a leadership role in these developments but so far the key developments in these areas come from other organisations. Telstra is an exception here, with the leadership role it plays in the development of the e-health market in Australia.

For the time being, however, cost-cutting, consolidation and mergers will continue to dominate the telco industry. At the same time an ongoing barrage of innovations, new technologies, new apps and new services will shape the telecoms market. It is an extremely dynamic market with lots of twists and turns, set to continue into 2016 and beyond.