Staying alive: global survival strategies for the telecom recovery: competitive carrier CEOs across the world are emerging from the telecom firestorm a lot wiser. In this exclusive profile, compiled by telecom commentator and author Grahame Lynch, they tell Telecom Asia what they learned from the collapse, their fears for the future and new survival strategies - Cover Story - Industry Overview

Telecom Asia, Sept, 2002 by Grahame Lynch

"That's a trend that we think that will continue as the industry comes out of its dark days--the move from vertical to horizontal was something we saw in the computer industry, too."

ITXC also exploits the asymmetry of international Internet charging, by accessing the Internet in the US and avoiding the full cost of international transit--a cost impact borne generally by terminating and originating partners in foreign countries.

Indeed, ITXC caught the attention as a result of something unusual--it is one of the few competitive carriers in the world with a buoyant stock price. Although most competitive carriers aren't even eligible to list on NASDAQ's main board anymore as a result of their sheer worthlessness, ITXC's stock has doubled in value over the past ten months.

This buoyancy has helped it differentiate from the pack and attract and retain customers.

Proving credentials

In an age where bad publicity regarding the likes of WorldCom and Global Crossing has led to instant and damaging customer defections, it has become almost compulsory for competitive carriers to justify their financials to major carrier and corporate customers.

And that isn't the only challenge for competitive carriers. Once upon a time it may have been satisfactory to compete on factors such as price and installation time.

Now, gaining a customer's confidence requires not just proving one's own financial sustainability, but also one's ability to empathise with and solve their business problems.

"The days of a telecommunications company putting a product out and expecting people to buy it are well and truly over," says Peter Thomson, South Asia CEO of Macquarie Telecommunications, an aggressive competitive corporate carrier in Singapore.

"A CEO now must ask whether their telecommunications provider can meet their strategic vision. We're in a time of partnering. It's not just about what the customers want but what their strategic vision is and how are they going to get there."

Thomson says customer retention devices such as service level agreements are no longer enough.

"Service level agreements are great things to have, but you also need a customer engagement model where you understand the customer requirement," he says.

"You must understand where your customer's business is going, what their telecommunications objectives are and how you can meet those. That may mean bringing a competitor's product in and then managing the relationship. You can't always be all things to all people."

Indeed, not. Which is why our Melbourne CEO friend Bill Johan sparked a little from his slightly tipsy melancholy as he told me of his strategy to win in today's troubled environment.

"At the end of the day, the world is made up of lots of unique professional communities, cultures, cliques and scenes. We track about 30 of them and, let's be hones,t we know nothing about any of them. So we find the people who do know these communities--the systems integrators, the professional service providers and so on. And we sell our services on the back of their relationships.