Ericsson and Nokia, the number two and three suppliers, have their debt rated as junk. Verizon is selling, what should have been its future, their cloud business, to IBM. AT&T is loosing wireless subscribers every quarter. Telefonica, the innovation leader, is scaling back its IoT Smart City business. Telecom as an industry is getting to a crossroad. Whatever road they take will decide their future. The closest resemblance is the moment IBM discovered that PCs and servers were a commodity. They decided to become a services and software company. Competitors of them did not. These competitors might not be around for many more years. Communication has been commoditised. Calls and SMSes are dead. Long live WhatsApp and others! Even Twilio, the SMS and call disruptor, is having problems.
