When Did Telco Tech Innovation Become a Guilty Pleasure?

It’s not uncommon for mobile operators – alongside a supplier, or on their own – to announce, log or just shout about new network innovations. Sometimes they’re making a link between end-user services and network technologies. Often, it’s just a breakthrough of some sort. If you’ve ever attended a telco trade show, stopped by a demo and thought, “that’s cool” you probably enjoy reading these. 

Increasingly, however, I feel like they’re a guilty pleasure. Something to be embarrassed about. Like enjoying Paris Hilton’s musical oeuvre unironically. Except, where you might get a funny look when hosting a dinner party and your Spotify playlist belts out Stars Are Blind, there’s no shortage of pundits actively calling on telcos to stop “selling” technology and focus on delivering value. 

It's enough to make you second guess getting excited by the weekly telco tech “records” and “firsts.”

Of course, selling consumers on the value of 5G when it wasn’t delivering a significantly new experience quickly got old. But if you find yourself ragging on operators when they announce their tech innovations, ask yourself a few simple questions. 

• Is there a consumer angle? The end-user angle behind telco’s tech messaging isn’t always evident. Consider record-breaking wireless speeds that nobody can take advantage of thanks to spectrum choices which should be transparent to consumers. But it doesn’t take much abstraction to realize that even if the value for a single user may not be clear, the aggregate result is a better experience for everyone. This isn’t of course, suggesting that telcos are being altruistic with their R&D and tech priorities. Happy end-users are better for the bottom line.
• Is there a profitability angle? Do you know what’s also good for the bottom line? Operational efficiencies. This, in turn, gives birth to no shortage of messaging about less-than-sexy things like network automation, softwarization of networks, and energy efficiency. Sure, the telco’s customers may not care, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important.
• What’s Being Sold? Okay, this is the important one. Telling operators to stop talking about tech and focus on things that end-users want assumes that all messaging targets the same market. That’s just bonkers. A sub-set of consumers will likely pick up on the latest innovations from their operators. That doesn’t mean they’re the intended audience. There’s a big wide world of folks beyond end-users which a telco might target: shareholders, regulators, suppliers, hardworking engineers who need a morale boost. 

We all get it. Any operator focused on technology for the sake of technology vs. end-user wants and needs has its priorities out of whack. Severely. But random (and not so random) tech announcements don’t necessarily imply this. Dismissing telco-driven tech messaging out of hand, however, misses the mark. It’s a bit like an old man yelling at the wind: pointless, unclear on how wind actually works, yet with a sadly outsized impact due to connective amplification.