LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE 360-MIDDLE EAST: Telecom operators are suffering from “disengagement with the changing customer mindset”, as they are slow to adapt to the evolving telecoms marketplace, Saad Al Kahtani (pictured), member of the UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development, warned this morning.

“There is a complete failure to shift the business model from minutes to bytes. We are used to ARPU, AMPU, unlimited packages. Many initiatives have been produced, but it’s not yet materialised on the side of the financial KPIs,” he said.

“There is disengagement with the changing customer mindset. We have to understand that the consumers are totally different from what they were like in 2011. Unfortunately the telecom operators, including the mobile operators at this moment, are not in tune with these changes,” he warned.

Following yesterday’s focus on the need for partnerships in the industry, Al Kahtani said that this alone is not enough, and that operators need to be flexible in the approach they take.

“To tell you the truth, I have not seen any successful partnership in the region. We’ve seen some initiatives, but there isn’t anything that drives the value. But I am sure that the telecoms operators will come to the point where they are forced to do smart partnerships,” he said.

“The problem is that telecom operators think it has to be a revenue share model, and it has to be 50/50. Sometimes the telecoms company might only get 20 per cent or 10 per cent. They are not used to these things, so they need to change their mindsets”, he continued.

Despite these warnings, there are some positives for operators to exploit. “The telecom operators have a tremendous treasure of data, but they are not using it. We need more business intelligence, more analytical tools, even more staff to analyse this huge goldmine that we have in our core network,” Al Kahtani said.

“What telecom operators need to know is which playground today they are in, and not what was the playground 10 years back. If they can understand the game today, I think they can do much better than they have done in the past,” he observed.