T he liberalisation of Europe's telecommunications market has provided one of the most exciting and challenging business opportunities to telecoms incumbents and newcomers alike. Now, however, they are facing new challengers, who are aggressively making the transition from toying with enticing ideas on paper to implementing real, tangible operations. The race for market share is indeed intensifying.
Time is the key.
Companies have to rise to the challenge that new technology brings, with new types of infrastructure and bigger-capacity networks to allow them to, for example, locate and fix faults faster than ever before. Only those with reliable facts and information at their fingertips can make reliable and effective business decisions. This industry is one of the most appealing sectors for integrators and vendors, because the competitive advantages that GIS can bring are perhaps greater than in any other field of technology. Culture shock Introducing telecoms companies to GIS is not always easy. So many attempts to implement a system have previously failed because few organisations have invested enough time in documenting their network infrastructure.