BT, Orange, Singtel and AT&T are the “leaders” of the next-generation telecoms service providers in Asia Pacific, but there are plenty of challengers in the market.
This is according to an annual report by research firm IDC which also said these service providers “demonstrated a strong regional network presence, diverse portfolio of public, private, and hybrid cloud services, comprehensive suite of managed services offerings in the region, as well as a large base of mid and large-sized enterprises, multinational corporations (MNCs), and government clients across Asia Pacific.”
IDC further said this pack of leaders is closely followed by major players, including regional service providers, such as Telstra and NTT Communications, along with global service providers including Vodafone and Verizon.
“Most of the service providers today have responded well to address enterprise requirements for consistency, cost-effectiveness, and expansive coverage,” said Nikhil Batra, research manager for IDC’s Asia/Pacific telecom team.
“Regionally and globally, service providers have blanketed key markets and hubs with managed VPN and Ethernet access coverage. However, they differentiate themselves based on their focus and key strategic capabilities.”
IDC further said the service providers are rising to the challenge of meeting these complex enterprise demands, for secure networking, cloud, collaboration, and M2M/IoT solutions.
More importantly, service providers in the region have realized their role in driving 3rd Platform technologies (cloud, social, mobile and big data) in emerging markets and are helping enterprises in their transformation journey by acting as trusted advisors who understand their business.
Among all the telcos assessed, Australia-based Telstra was the best performer over the last year in terms of year-on-year movement, largely due to its Pacnet acquisition, which gives it additional SDN/NFVand data center capabilities, undersea cable network and a significant footprint in China market.
Other than Pacnet, it is Telstra’s industry specific solutions and cloud services (mainly in Australia) and Indonesia joint venture with Telkom Indonesia that helps in this upward push, IDC added.