Over the past decade, the telecommunications industry has undergone tremendous transformation, driven primarily by deregulation, the increased demands of a "networked economy," the emergence of innovative services and business models that fueled competition, and, more recently, the industry downturn.

An illustrative example of this is the competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) market, which at its peak numbered 40 companies but saw consolidation to fewer than 20 players. Similarly in the wireline and wireless sectors, speculation about further consolidation of the industry abounds. With slowing subscriber growth and strong downward pressure on margins, mergers are perceived as a means of rationalizing the number of players in the fragmented and highly competitive landscape.

Currently, the telecommunications industry is facing two major challenges. As a sector that was one of the hardest hit by the economic downturn, telecommunications players are looking to return to profitable growth by focusing on their core business, slashing capital expenditures, and reducing operational costs. At the same time, to maintain their ability to successfully compete, operators need to lay the foundation for the next generation of networks and services by investing in new technologies and services, such as 3G, broadband, applications, content delivery, and hosting.

Telecommunications companies must address the many strategic and operational issues underlying these challenges. These pressing concerns include questions related to market entry and exit, vertical versus horizontal services focus, technology platforms, organic growth versus acquisitions and partnerships, increased competition from nontraditional sectors (e.g., cable).

Saggezza is a full-service IT firm for the communications and media industry, enabling communications carriers to quickly realize service goals and cost efficiencies through its portfolio of services. Today, many leading global carriers engage Saggezza l for IT and Network Consulting/Strategy, Application Development and Maintenance, and Business Process Outsourcing.

Saggezza is helping thought-leading communications and media companies in the designing, realization, and management of all, or critical, parts of their subscriber value chain. These parts include:

Next-generation Mobile Architecture strategies

OSS to BSS – Transactional Integration frameworks

Streamlined customer-, partner-, and content-management architectures

Strategic Business Process Outsourcing - economic audits through delivery

Deep package-application expertise – Siebel, Clarify, Oracle, BEA, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, i2

Billing operations and customer-care optimization – Convergys, Kenan, Portal

Market-leading Enterprise Application Frameworks – BEA, Tibco, WebMethods

BSS imperatives – Provisioning automation, fulfillment, SCM, and QoS Management

Mobile applications design, delivery, and management – Security, Portals, WAP, WML, iMode, MicroBrowsers

Mobile carrier imperatives - Mediation/Pre-paid, service integration, presentation-layer optimization, digital-rights management, content distribution, asset management

Legacy application migration and management – Mainframe, COBOL

Service/Product testing – Unit, Integration, and System Validation