In a press meet, yesterday in Dhaka VimpelCom CEO Jean-Yves Charlier made some profound comments about the future of telecom industry and the future plans for his company VimpelCom and Banglalink.
Mr. Yves pointed that the telecom industry is going through an unprecedented change and data has already taken over the voice business in many parts of the world. In the coming years, telecom industry will be more like a digital service company and the messaging is going to be a key component in that future.
Mr. Yves observed the Telecom operators has largely two paths to choose: one is to become a platform where it gives the platform and third party service providers offer values and the another option is to morph into a digital pioneer.
Telecom industry worldwide is at a crossroads today and there are two natural paths to this industry. The first path is that telecom becomes a commodity like electricity or water where we are the provider of pipes and the value creation lies really with the Over the Top service providers (OTTs). The other option for the telecom industry is that it reinvents itself with a digital future through innovation once again.
VimpelCom and Banglalink aim to reinvent and be part of the digital future:
Fundamentally, we are positioning VimpelCom and Banglalink in that second camp- a company that believes in digital future. The future of telecom is not only SMS or voice. The future is much more around messaging. Most of the global operators have left messaging to the Silicon Valley OTTs. But, we believe we need to be in that space and I believe that we can make messaging more relevant than an OTT.
