A new report from the Telco 2.0 Initiative suggests that telcos could lose up to $172bn from core revenues in five years if they don’t make dramatic improvements to their voice and messaging strategies.

However, the research goes on to show that telcos can fight to reduce this loss by $80bn through intelligent optimisation of prices and bundles, service enablement, exploiting new standards such as WebRTC and VoLTE, creative approaches to own brand OTT services, and a greater focus on enterprise communications:

“Perhaps the most surprising thing is how effective some telco strategies have been in defending against disruptive competitors like WhatsApp. Then again, there are some markets, such as Spain, where the combination of telco pricing and economic conditions have played right into the hands of the so-called ‘OTT Players’ (…)Equally, there are some great opportunities for telcos to build new value, particularly in the Enterprise market, where some of the more traditional technology companies like Cisco face increasingly disruptive competition from players like Google and Microsoft.”