The Australian telecoms landscape of 2005 will be dominated by mega carriers that service an Asia-Pacific market, according to analysts. The queston is, who will be left standing?
This is the vision of Peter McIver, partner at consulting firm Deloitte Touch Tomatsu, who spoke at the Australian Telecommunications Users Group now2001 conference in Sydney.
Since the deregulation of the telecommunications industry throughout the 1990s, "growth has been quite astronomical," according to McIver.
There are currently over 70 registered telecoms carriers countrywide, with Telstra being the dominant incumbent of the top five.
One scenario of the future telecoms arena is that by 2005 things won't look much different from today, with incumbent carriers still dominating and the geographical market still being mainly national, according to McIver.
In this sort of scenario, "Telstra still plays the lead role and the other [carriers] are the supporting cast," McIver said.
McIver, however, described a very different version of the industry four years down the track - one that has seen smaller minnows swallowed up by bigger fry and which is dominated by mega telecommunications carriers.
These vertically integrated mega carriers will serve all market segments and the geographical market would be across a region, such as Asia Pacific, rather that just a country, according to McIver.
"The kings of consolidation would fight it out," he said.
"Incumbents will not necessarily be okay unless they've invaded someone else's turf."
McIver predicts that these mega carriers with be supported by some "niche players" that service specific market segments - such as retail or wholesale customers.
"The 2005 [telecoms] market will be very different and there are lots of possibilities," McIver said, pointing to other industry commentators that believe rationalisation will see at least one of the major carriers disappear "to make the market more buoyant for those remaining".
"This industry is one that's still developing, it's very dynamic," McIver conceded.
