Dr. Karim Taga
Karim advises board members and CEOs to take effective decisions on the telco transformation journey.
Areas of Focus
Education
Vienna University of Technology, Austria
PhD, Mechanical Engineering and Analytical Chemistry
Webster University, Austria
MBA, International Business and Marketing
Polytech Orléans, France
MSc, Mechanical Engineering and Material Science, with a master’s thesis at UC Berkeley
Past Experience
Ericsson (before 1997)
Product Manager
University of Technology in Vienna
Assistant Professor (Univ. Ass.)
Karim is Managing Partner, Global Head of Functional Practices. Prior to that, Karim led the TIME practice globally for over 12 years since 2012. He has 30 years of experience with ADL in the telecommunication area and previously worked with a leading global telecom supplier.
In Arthur D. Little, Karim’s work focuses primarily on three functional areas:
- Growth strategies and business transformations
- Corporate Finance – Transaction support, mainly working with Private Equity firms and Banks
- Boardroom presentation and facilitation
Besides his management consulting assignments with clients in 4 industries:
- he acts as a Jury member for several Telecom & Media prize award ceremonies in Asia, Europe, and in the US.
- he supports several telecommunication councils and associations as well as governments and regulators in setting their (digital) agenda as an advisor
- he is chairing and facilitating top executive international events and conferences
Before joining ADL he worked for several years for Ericsson and was a research assistant professor at the University of Technology in Vienna. Furthermore, he enjoyed four different education systems: Tunisia (Lycée El Menzah V), France (Lycée JB Say/ESEM), the USA (UC Berkeley), and Austria (TU Wien).
Karim holds an MSc, MBA, and Ph.D.
Network APIs: Unlocking the Potential of Advanced Connectivity
WHAT ARE NETWORK APIs? WHY DO THEY MATTER?
Telcos: Outsource international voice!
Providing voice services is among the core functions of telcos. It may seem counterintuitive but outsourcing international voice services has the potential to create value and enhance service quality. In this Viewpoint, we summarize the options available for stand-alone telcos and small telco groups to manage the decline in international voice business and illuminate benefits they can gain from outsourcing international voice. We also highlight the outsourcing process and strategies to mitigate common challenges.
Embracing the telco productivity race
Improving productivity is a critical element of the journey telcos must take to become ambidextrous — and improving productivity is about going way beyond cost-cutting. In this Viewpoint, we discuss a transformative approach that we call the “Productivity RACE” (Radical, Accelerated, Continuous, and Effective). This framework sets out to improve and sustain business productivity, while addressing commonly observed challenges and barriers to successful execution of productivity measures.
State of the media market, 2022
Mobile network virtualization calls for operating model reconfiguration
VIRTUALIZATION ENTAILS CHANGES IN PROCUREMENT
Copper switch off: Opportunity to drive infrastructure convergence?
Time to accelerate growth
Broadcasters’ 5G evolvement within a hybrid environment
Network sharing in the 5G era
Virtualizing mobile networks
The race to gigabit fiber
Telecoms: Leveraging adversity to leapfrog into the future
The telecoms industry has been able to weather the COVID-19 storm better than many sectors, and has even increased its importance for communicating in a locked-down, socially distanced world. What will be the longer-term impacts for different parts of the sector? This article examines the current environment and explains how CXOs can prepare for the potential challenges and opportunities in a postcrisis world.
Telecom, media and technology – COVID-19 implications and medium-term recovery
Leading businesses through the COVID-19 crisis
Leading businesses through the COVID-19 crisis
First learnings from Asia and Italy
Is your city ready to go digital?
Today, cities face a multitude of challenges originating from societal and technological changes: population growth, urbanization, infrastructure provision, crime and cyber-crime, and environmental pollution. These challenges necessitate new digital use cases. A variety of use cases based on 5G, the next generation of mobile network technology, help to overcome these challenges and enhance economic development across industries.
Acing 5G pricing
Leading telcos have switched on their 5G networks and launched commercial offers to acquire early adopters. With the scale of investments required for 5G, the consumer pricing strategy becomes a critical lever for recouping these investments. In this viewpoint we aim to provide a framework for increasing customers’ willingness-to-pay for 5G services and B2C 5G pricing guidelines, in order to achieve optimal monetization.
Embracing the future
Beyond traditional network & IT organizations
With the onset of new technologies such as 5G, NFV and IoT, telecom executives are increasingly realizing that transformation of technology organization is imminent. The CTO office is at the center of this and needs to rethink its strategic roadmap and operating model. In this paper, we assess how a gradual transformation from traditional IT/network units to a more functional organization will address several of the legacy constraints in adopting new technologies.
Private Campus Networks
The demand for Private Campus Networks offers operators an opportunity for value generation – we estimate the global market size to be €60-70bn by 2025. If operators do not act now and prepare accordingly, they risk missing out. Enterprises have economically sensible use cases and technologically justified needs for private 5G or LTE technology on their premises. But, few operators to date have developed a strategic approach to satisfy demand, which is why enterprises have begun to fight for access to their own spectrum.
Digital infrastructure as a driver of competitiveness
Telecoms data monetization: Reality, not a mirage
Telecoms operators and startups: Rethink and reinvent
Telecoms operators around the world are already engaging with startups in an attempt to benefit from their agility, execution speed and disruptive power. However, realizing tangible benefits and value from these initiatives has been a persistent challenge. Fundamental changes to current approaches are required to truly harness the innovative power of startups, young companies and digital upstarts: operators must rethink their business and operating models, reinvent their engagement models, and refresh their processes, governance mechanisms and cultures.
The race to gigabit fiber
We increasingly see deployment of applications and services provisioned by underlying gigabit broadband. This is enabling people, machines, and applications to collaborate effectively and intelligently in order to enhance quality of life, improve our mobility, grow our economies and empower our decision-making.
5G deployment models are crystallizing
5G comes with the promise of unseen services and futuristic use cases. Telecom operators and other industry players are making big bets on next-generation services. 5G will bring new interactive and immersive experiences to customers.
Telecoms & Media executive breakfast event
On March 31, 2017, Arthur D. Little held in London the first of a series of launch events of the latest edition of its annual Telecoms & Media flagship report with an unprecedented attendance of global senior industry executives and key investors, including more than ten leading UK operators, multiple web-majors and OTTs, infrastructure companies, banks, several private equity firms and representatives of the vendor community and UK government advisory bodies.
Beyond the best network operations!
Current international industry trends predict mid-term reductions of profitability margins for telecom operators, in particularfor mature markets. This is a result of huge investments (GSMA estimates that telecom operators will invest $1.7 trillionon capex during 2014-2020) that are required to build next-generation networks in order to satisfy the data- demandexplosion and revenue reduction caused by mobile price wars and competition from OTT.
Major strategic choices ahead of TelCos: Reconfiguring for value
The telecom industry is not in a stable state. In fact, due to the increasingly large strategic and technical option space, we expect operators to become more diverse. Within the next five years, the structure of operators will likely have changed significantly. This makes evaluating them, and making strategic investment choices, much more difficult. In this report, we highlight the most relevant driving forces and opportunities in the telecom industry.
Smart Cities – Turning challenge into opportunity
The 100 largest cities in the world produce 25% of the planet’s wealth. To succeed more and more cities are going “Smart” in order to meet their biggest challenges and enrich the quality of their citizens’ lives. This unstoppable trend is driving double-digit growth in a trillion-dollar global market. What are the opportunities for telecom companies, utilities, financial institutions, transportation companies, software developers, equipment manufacturers and others in this market?
Race to Gigabit Fiber
1. Fiber (FTTH/B) investments are more common now than ever before
Fiber1 investments have become more common now than at any point in the past. Since we published the previous version of our Global Fiber Report in 2010 and 2013, the number of countries2 with more than 95% fiber coverage3 has increased from just one (in 2012) to seven countries (in 2016) and the number of households passed with fiber has increased by 20% percentage points since 2013 globally.
Exclusive Telco CEO & Private Equity Event
On May 23rd, 2016, Arthur D. Little hosted its 6th annual exclusive Telco CEO & Private Equity Event with an impressive attendance of telecom CEOs, investors and leading banks.
The age of collaboration
Technological adoption has never been as fast as today, and many corporates have already suffered from not being able to keep up with the pace of change. Over the past 10 years, an average of 45 companies joined the Fortune 500 every year compared to only 29 during 1986-1995. 65% of today’s Fortune 500 companies only joined within the last 20 years. Startups have played a key role in accelerating this change. Today’s well experienced, well-educated and well-funded startups are certainly here to stay. We will likely see some correction at the high-end range of valuations, but we do not expect any bubble to burst, as fundamentals are intact.
Telecommunications, Information technology, Media & Electronics (TIME), Energy, Utilities & Resources
Energize Telecoms
For several decades the prospect of energy utility and telco convergence has loomed, but with limited results. All of the above change factors, however, demonstrate a transformational shift in the energy sector and open new opportunities for telecom and technology operators. Global players have already been stepping up to the challenge.
5G: Closer than you think
While a global standard is yet to be defined, South Korea has already announced a 5G trial network for the Winter Olympic Games in 2018. From 2G to 4G, cellular wireless technologies have been evolving towards offering more speed, and each standard has been tagged with a handful of major attributes.
5G will embrace a significant leap forward in terms of performance targets, as it needs to offer new possibilities to connect not only people, but also objects such as cars, wearables, home appliances and industrial machines. In order to meet these targets, 5G technology will embrace end-to-end connections – not just the radio access part.
Telecom operators: Open Innovation with start-ups
The latest start-up activity cycle represents not only an accelerated disruption to existing business models but also serves as a renewed opportunity for telecom operators to tap into growth and innovation. At the same time, operators are currently far from being the partners of choice for start-ups, but are rather seen as slow-moving, inefficient, non-decision making and ultimately non-value creating partners.
Mobile payment
Mobile payment has been on the agenda of numerous players across industries for more than a decade. Now, with Apple Pay launched and the markets getting equipped, mobile payment may finally take off, also in developed markets. Most recent example underlining the potential for a final uptake, the German grocery chain ALDI, known as a rather traditional player, announced the introduction of mobile payment in Germany, a country with a current cash share of more than 80%.
Convergence of banking and telecoms
Telecom operators and retail banks have been converging for years. As remaining barriers vanish and extrinsic factors push further convergence, banks will see increasing competition from telecom operators, which will aggressively enter into financial services, especially in transactional lines of business. In this Viewpoint, we explore the opportunities for competition or co-opetition between these industries that are ready for cross-fertilization.
Looking Under the Hood of the Internet
Over the last decade, the nature of the traffic for which the Internet and its ecosystem was initially developed has fundamentally changed. Next-generation content and applications are being designed all the time, but there are some hidden bottlenecks preventing these from achieving their full value creation potential. The Internet has effectively become a new media platform as its usage has shifted to richer types of content, particularly streaming video.
Managed Services
The global market for Managed Services is expected to grow from USD 160 billion in 2014 to USD 286 billion in 2019. As such, while growth prospects in traditional connectivity are limited, Managed Services represent a very attractive alternative for Telecom operators. We believe that Telecom companies remain best positioned to play a major role in Managed Services as they possess all the capabilities and processes to manage their networks and assets.
Arthur D. Little - Exane BNP Paribas report 2014
The 13th edition of the joint annual report by Arthur D. Little and Exane BNP Paribas focuses on the investment in the telecoms industry. We held 118 meetings in the telecom-media-technology arena, across 24 countries.
From Silos to Layers
The industry dynamics of telecoms services has lead to an increasing disintermediation of the value chain and the emergence of new interfaces between operators and external partners. The “IP-ization” of networks requires telecoms operators to rethink their organizational design beyond the traditional Sales, Network and IT.
Karim is Managing Partner, Global Head of Functional Practices. Prior to that, Karim led the TIME practice globally for over 12 years since 2012. He has 30 years of experience with ADL in the telecommunication area and previously worked with a leading global telecom supplier.
In Arthur D. Little, Karim’s work focuses primarily on three functional areas:
- Growth strategies and business transformations
- Corporate Finance – Transaction support, mainly working with Private Equity firms and Banks
- Boardroom presentation and facilitation
Besides his management consulting assignments with clients in 4 industries:
- he acts as a Jury member for several Telecom & Media prize award ceremonies in Asia, Europe, and in the US.
- he supports several telecommunication councils and associations as well as governments and regulators in setting their (digital) agenda as an advisor
- he is chairing and facilitating top executive international events and conferences
Before joining ADL he worked for several years for Ericsson and was a research assistant professor at the University of Technology in Vienna. Furthermore, he enjoyed four different education systems: Tunisia (Lycée El Menzah V), France (Lycée JB Say/ESEM), the USA (UC Berkeley), and Austria (TU Wien).
Karim holds an MSc, MBA, and Ph.D.
Network APIs: Unlocking the Potential of Advanced Connectivity
WHAT ARE NETWORK APIs? WHY DO THEY MATTER?
Telcos: Outsource international voice!
Providing voice services is among the core functions of telcos. It may seem counterintuitive but outsourcing international voice services has the potential to create value and enhance service quality. In this Viewpoint, we summarize the options available for stand-alone telcos and small telco groups to manage the decline in international voice business and illuminate benefits they can gain from outsourcing international voice. We also highlight the outsourcing process and strategies to mitigate common challenges.
Embracing the telco productivity race
Improving productivity is a critical element of the journey telcos must take to become ambidextrous — and improving productivity is about going way beyond cost-cutting. In this Viewpoint, we discuss a transformative approach that we call the “Productivity RACE” (Radical, Accelerated, Continuous, and Effective). This framework sets out to improve and sustain business productivity, while addressing commonly observed challenges and barriers to successful execution of productivity measures.
State of the media market, 2022
Mobile network virtualization calls for operating model reconfiguration
VIRTUALIZATION ENTAILS CHANGES IN PROCUREMENT
Copper switch off: Opportunity to drive infrastructure convergence?
Time to accelerate growth
Broadcasters’ 5G evolvement within a hybrid environment
Network sharing in the 5G era
Virtualizing mobile networks
The race to gigabit fiber
Telecoms: Leveraging adversity to leapfrog into the future
The telecoms industry has been able to weather the COVID-19 storm better than many sectors, and has even increased its importance for communicating in a locked-down, socially distanced world. What will be the longer-term impacts for different parts of the sector? This article examines the current environment and explains how CXOs can prepare for the potential challenges and opportunities in a postcrisis world.
Telecom, media and technology – COVID-19 implications and medium-term recovery
Leading businesses through the COVID-19 crisis
Leading businesses through the COVID-19 crisis
First learnings from Asia and Italy
Is your city ready to go digital?
Today, cities face a multitude of challenges originating from societal and technological changes: population growth, urbanization, infrastructure provision, crime and cyber-crime, and environmental pollution. These challenges necessitate new digital use cases. A variety of use cases based on 5G, the next generation of mobile network technology, help to overcome these challenges and enhance economic development across industries.
Acing 5G pricing
Leading telcos have switched on their 5G networks and launched commercial offers to acquire early adopters. With the scale of investments required for 5G, the consumer pricing strategy becomes a critical lever for recouping these investments. In this viewpoint we aim to provide a framework for increasing customers’ willingness-to-pay for 5G services and B2C 5G pricing guidelines, in order to achieve optimal monetization.
Embracing the future
Beyond traditional network & IT organizations
With the onset of new technologies such as 5G, NFV and IoT, telecom executives are increasingly realizing that transformation of technology organization is imminent. The CTO office is at the center of this and needs to rethink its strategic roadmap and operating model. In this paper, we assess how a gradual transformation from traditional IT/network units to a more functional organization will address several of the legacy constraints in adopting new technologies.
Private Campus Networks
The demand for Private Campus Networks offers operators an opportunity for value generation – we estimate the global market size to be €60-70bn by 2025. If operators do not act now and prepare accordingly, they risk missing out. Enterprises have economically sensible use cases and technologically justified needs for private 5G or LTE technology on their premises. But, few operators to date have developed a strategic approach to satisfy demand, which is why enterprises have begun to fight for access to their own spectrum.
Digital infrastructure as a driver of competitiveness
Telecoms data monetization: Reality, not a mirage
Telecoms operators and startups: Rethink and reinvent
Telecoms operators around the world are already engaging with startups in an attempt to benefit from their agility, execution speed and disruptive power. However, realizing tangible benefits and value from these initiatives has been a persistent challenge. Fundamental changes to current approaches are required to truly harness the innovative power of startups, young companies and digital upstarts: operators must rethink their business and operating models, reinvent their engagement models, and refresh their processes, governance mechanisms and cultures.
The race to gigabit fiber
We increasingly see deployment of applications and services provisioned by underlying gigabit broadband. This is enabling people, machines, and applications to collaborate effectively and intelligently in order to enhance quality of life, improve our mobility, grow our economies and empower our decision-making.
5G deployment models are crystallizing
5G comes with the promise of unseen services and futuristic use cases. Telecom operators and other industry players are making big bets on next-generation services. 5G will bring new interactive and immersive experiences to customers.
Telecoms & Media executive breakfast event
On March 31, 2017, Arthur D. Little held in London the first of a series of launch events of the latest edition of its annual Telecoms & Media flagship report with an unprecedented attendance of global senior industry executives and key investors, including more than ten leading UK operators, multiple web-majors and OTTs, infrastructure companies, banks, several private equity firms and representatives of the vendor community and UK government advisory bodies.
Beyond the best network operations!
Current international industry trends predict mid-term reductions of profitability margins for telecom operators, in particularfor mature markets. This is a result of huge investments (GSMA estimates that telecom operators will invest $1.7 trillionon capex during 2014-2020) that are required to build next-generation networks in order to satisfy the data- demandexplosion and revenue reduction caused by mobile price wars and competition from OTT.
Major strategic choices ahead of TelCos: Reconfiguring for value
The telecom industry is not in a stable state. In fact, due to the increasingly large strategic and technical option space, we expect operators to become more diverse. Within the next five years, the structure of operators will likely have changed significantly. This makes evaluating them, and making strategic investment choices, much more difficult. In this report, we highlight the most relevant driving forces and opportunities in the telecom industry.
Smart Cities – Turning challenge into opportunity
The 100 largest cities in the world produce 25% of the planet’s wealth. To succeed more and more cities are going “Smart” in order to meet their biggest challenges and enrich the quality of their citizens’ lives. This unstoppable trend is driving double-digit growth in a trillion-dollar global market. What are the opportunities for telecom companies, utilities, financial institutions, transportation companies, software developers, equipment manufacturers and others in this market?
Race to Gigabit Fiber
1. Fiber (FTTH/B) investments are more common now than ever before
Fiber1 investments have become more common now than at any point in the past. Since we published the previous version of our Global Fiber Report in 2010 and 2013, the number of countries2 with more than 95% fiber coverage3 has increased from just one (in 2012) to seven countries (in 2016) and the number of households passed with fiber has increased by 20% percentage points since 2013 globally.
Exclusive Telco CEO & Private Equity Event
On May 23rd, 2016, Arthur D. Little hosted its 6th annual exclusive Telco CEO & Private Equity Event with an impressive attendance of telecom CEOs, investors and leading banks.
The age of collaboration
Technological adoption has never been as fast as today, and many corporates have already suffered from not being able to keep up with the pace of change. Over the past 10 years, an average of 45 companies joined the Fortune 500 every year compared to only 29 during 1986-1995. 65% of today’s Fortune 500 companies only joined within the last 20 years. Startups have played a key role in accelerating this change. Today’s well experienced, well-educated and well-funded startups are certainly here to stay. We will likely see some correction at the high-end range of valuations, but we do not expect any bubble to burst, as fundamentals are intact.
Telecommunications, Information technology, Media & Electronics (TIME), Energy, Utilities & Resources
Energize Telecoms
For several decades the prospect of energy utility and telco convergence has loomed, but with limited results. All of the above change factors, however, demonstrate a transformational shift in the energy sector and open new opportunities for telecom and technology operators. Global players have already been stepping up to the challenge.
5G: Closer than you think
While a global standard is yet to be defined, South Korea has already announced a 5G trial network for the Winter Olympic Games in 2018. From 2G to 4G, cellular wireless technologies have been evolving towards offering more speed, and each standard has been tagged with a handful of major attributes.
5G will embrace a significant leap forward in terms of performance targets, as it needs to offer new possibilities to connect not only people, but also objects such as cars, wearables, home appliances and industrial machines. In order to meet these targets, 5G technology will embrace end-to-end connections – not just the radio access part.
Telecom operators: Open Innovation with start-ups
The latest start-up activity cycle represents not only an accelerated disruption to existing business models but also serves as a renewed opportunity for telecom operators to tap into growth and innovation. At the same time, operators are currently far from being the partners of choice for start-ups, but are rather seen as slow-moving, inefficient, non-decision making and ultimately non-value creating partners.
Mobile payment
Mobile payment has been on the agenda of numerous players across industries for more than a decade. Now, with Apple Pay launched and the markets getting equipped, mobile payment may finally take off, also in developed markets. Most recent example underlining the potential for a final uptake, the German grocery chain ALDI, known as a rather traditional player, announced the introduction of mobile payment in Germany, a country with a current cash share of more than 80%.
Convergence of banking and telecoms
Telecom operators and retail banks have been converging for years. As remaining barriers vanish and extrinsic factors push further convergence, banks will see increasing competition from telecom operators, which will aggressively enter into financial services, especially in transactional lines of business. In this Viewpoint, we explore the opportunities for competition or co-opetition between these industries that are ready for cross-fertilization.
Looking Under the Hood of the Internet
Over the last decade, the nature of the traffic for which the Internet and its ecosystem was initially developed has fundamentally changed. Next-generation content and applications are being designed all the time, but there are some hidden bottlenecks preventing these from achieving their full value creation potential. The Internet has effectively become a new media platform as its usage has shifted to richer types of content, particularly streaming video.
Managed Services
The global market for Managed Services is expected to grow from USD 160 billion in 2014 to USD 286 billion in 2019. As such, while growth prospects in traditional connectivity are limited, Managed Services represent a very attractive alternative for Telecom operators. We believe that Telecom companies remain best positioned to play a major role in Managed Services as they possess all the capabilities and processes to manage their networks and assets.
Arthur D. Little - Exane BNP Paribas report 2014
The 13th edition of the joint annual report by Arthur D. Little and Exane BNP Paribas focuses on the investment in the telecoms industry. We held 118 meetings in the telecom-media-technology arena, across 24 countries.
From Silos to Layers
The industry dynamics of telecoms services has lead to an increasing disintermediation of the value chain and the emergence of new interfaces between operators and external partners. The “IP-ization” of networks requires telecoms operators to rethink their organizational design beyond the traditional Sales, Network and IT.
More About Karim
- Vienna University of Technology, AustriaPhD, Mechanical Engineering and Analytical Chemistry
- Webster University, AustriaMBA, International Business and Marketing
- Polytech Orléans, FranceMSc, Mechanical Engineering and Material Science, with a master’s thesis at UC Berkeley
- Ericsson (before 1997)Product Manager
- University of Technology in ViennaAssistant Professor (Univ. Ass.)