Over the last two months, Sitetracker has surveyed business leaders across the telecom infrastructure ecosystem to examine the key challenges they are facing while also exploring how to find success in an increasingly competitive market. Sitetracker has also conducted a follow-up questionnaire to explore the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic across the industry and how different enterprises are adapting to face this global issue.
Who were the participants?
Sitetracker touched based with a wide range of telecom infrastructure professionals to find out about the challenges that 5G is presenting and what are the tools that those companies are using on their day-to-day activities among many other topics. 23% of the participants were tower owners, 21% were small cells providers and 19% MNO employees. Among them, almost 36% were managers, over 15% specialists and 13.7% C-level executives. Access the report for a full breakdown of participants.
Positively, for 53% of the respondents revenue is growing as expected and 21% of the total surveyed experienced faster growth than planned – and the primary source of that growth is to come from existing, rather than new, customers. 15% of respondents said growth was slower than expected and just 2% declaring no growth or a decline.
An exciting but competitive horizon
These are indeed exciting times to be in telecom infrastructure and the survey results highlight a trend that we have specifically identified across the tower industry for the last couple years: more and more companies are pushing out of their conform zone and expanding into new types of work and new verticals. Sitetracker’s reports rightly points out how towercos are now adding fibre to their offer while constructions firms are deploying, and some times owning, small-cells and DAS. Figure one shows that almost half the surveyed companies are diversifying their business model.
Diversification means increasing competition: 68% of the respondents stated that more firms entering new types of work (especially related to 5G), the arrival of new capital and the increasing levels of M&A all added up to increased competition. And 84% of participants anticipated more M&A deals in 2020.
Figure one: Is your company entering or considering entering into new verticals or types of work
How is COVID-19 impacting the business?
Only a few months back, nobody could have predicted the tremendous impact that the novel Coronavirus is having in our lives. Now, with millions of professionals working from home stimulating a global increase in data demand, the telecom infrastructure sector is proving both its importance and resilience in these challenging circumstances. Sitetracker has also inquired on how the industry is responding to COVID-19 on a follow-up questionnaire. Here are the key takeaways (see figure two):
- MNOs welcome demand increase:44% of the telcos anticipate an increase in demand, which given the critical role of operators in pushing the industry forward, can translate into good news and possibly more business for their infrastructure partners in the near-term. Contrarily, 40% of DAS providers, responsible for connectivity in dense office buildings and public spaces, anticipate a decrease in demand over the next few months.
- Work volumes are changing: with some testimonials from participants, Sitetracker’s survey concludes that COVID-19 is transforming work volumes across the industry, with the data demand increase possibly bringing more business (and headaches) to MNOs, towercos and the vendor community. However, changes in workloads, schedules and locations as well as ongoing permitting process pose a risk to project deadlines that can’t be ignored.
- 65% of the participants have been able to continue delivering good results from their improvised home offices. One participant said “we are doing everything remote, work, calls meetings. It’s working.”
In conclusion and in words of Sitetracker, the majority of respondents do not feel an immediate need to overhaul the way they execute processes in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating the industry’s resilience.
“We have implemented a daily video conference with the leadership to ensure accurate and timely messaging, we are also held accountable for daily interaction with all team members,” summed up one survey participant.
Figure two: How will the impacts of COVID-19 change demand for telecom infrastructure
Exploring current and upcoming challenges
Creating reports to communicate progress remains a considerable headache for those than do not have access to specific project management tools. In fact, many professionals cannot generate their own reports with the support of their IT divisions and 30% of the total poll are not confident about their reports’ data. Only 19% of respondents use specialised business intelligence and analytics reporting tools, with the same proportion reporting manually, and 38% still using existing tools including spreadsheets.
With 79% of the participants anticipating increases in work volume, and 34% of respondents spending over six hours per week running reports, the opportunities to improve the speed and accuracy of reporting are obvious – and doubtless accentuated in the remote working context many of us now find ourselves in.
With surveyed employees spending an average of 14.8 hours per week in meetings, it was perhaps not surprising that the top two ranked opportunities to improve company margins were “improving processes and workflows to more effectively use resources” and “better productivity-enhancing technology.”
5G has been the industry buzzword for a while now and 55% of those surveyed are already noticing the impact of 5G deployment on their business. Moreover, a further 40% of the total sample expects 5G to fully impact their business within the next couple of years. What are the main challenges that 5G poses?
1. Having quality people/contractors to do the work
2. Clients not having experienced managers
3. Contractors not paying vendors in a timely manner
4. Jurisdictions unable to respond in a timely manner
How does success look in the path to a 5G world?
Sitetracker’s survey emphasizes that telecom infrastructure remains an exciting and dynamic industry, with 5G presenting huge business opportunities in terms of increased and new revenues. However, how to seize and maximise that opportunity is still keeping industry leaders awake—and becomes an even more difficult question to answer amid the new challenges represented by COVID-19.
Operational excellence and efficiency will be critical in the current rapidly evolving scenario. Skilled professionals, efficient processes and productivity-enhancing technologies each play a critical role in the success of project delivery. Sitetacker’s solutions bet on the alignment of those three elements to achieve operational excellence as its platform enables telecom infrastructure leaders to optimise the entire asset lifecycle. Check the full report to find out more.
