Matthias Linder, CTO of Magyar Telekom, emphasized that successful convergence in telecommunications primarily depends on consolidating people and processes rather than just technology. He outlined steps from their convergence project, highlighting that operational cost savings are the main objective, not just offering advanced services. The consolidation of teams is crucial to minimize costs, with potential for significant savings in maintenance and operations.

1. BBWF Highlights
Matthias Linder, CTO Magyar Telekom
Real World Convergence
Broadband World Forum
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© 2011 Alan Quayle Business and Service Development

2. BBWF Highlight: Matthias Linder, CTO Magyar Telekom
Real World Convergence
• Matthias gave a great, open and frank presentation on their experiences around
convergence (many suppliers/consultants call it business transformation to make it
sound more expensive.)
• The key to success in convergence isn’t about technology, its primarily about people
(organizations) and process. The objective of convergence isn’t fancy services (that’s
a by-product) its operational cost savings.
• The critical thing Magyar did was to consolidate the organizations and processes first,
before they focused on technology.
• In the following slides Matthias sets out the steps in their convergence project, a great
template for any operator looking at their failed business transformation project and
a $10m+ hole in their pocket.
The following slides are a clear and to the point explanation of a real-world convergence
project. Many use the term business transformation as it sounds more expensive. The
bottom-line is its about converging (consolidating) organizations, processes and networks.

3. This is the starting point, not technology, and the failure point in every convergence
(business transformation) project I’ve reviewed. It is not easy, but must be done to achieve
any savings.

4. The silo’ed nature of telcos means the transport network has multiple overlapping layers.
Without a consolidated team, people fight to keep their bit of the network running. By
consolidating the teams first, they then focus on how to minimize the effort and spend in
running the network.

5. The maintenance fees operators pay for their legacy OSS systems is 200-400% greater than
many other businesses. The consolidation shown here of 30-40% is only a step along the
way, they could achieve up to 80% consolidation.

6. A common core is essential, and should also be the target for the metro / aggregation part of
the network. IP / Ethernet dominates; gone is ATM, SDH, FR, and the many other telco
specials – the network has adopted IT technology.

7. As discussed in the IMS report I did several years ago, IMS is used in the core not the edge.

8. And finally once the organization and network is ready, the focus moves to services. This is
why so many converge services fail, because neither the organization or network could
support it in a way that was easy for the customer.