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Recently, while researching a different story, I asked a telecoms industry executive about the problems of building high performing networks at scale. Where, I asked, did the cloud providers and SaaS developers recruit their techies?

I’ve lived in Colorado, US for most of my adult life where it’s a common thing to hear “if you don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes and it will change.”

2015 will be a challenging year for wholesale carriers, as was 2014. Traditional services still supply most revenues but they are shrinking and how those services are sold, and to whom, is shifting. New services are taking hold, but not as fast as the hype nor as easily as managers had hoped. Still, clear trends exist that can help wholesale providers navigate 2015. Here are 10 things to count on…

The telecoms market ended 2014 with a bang. First, BT blindsided market experts by opting for EE rather than O2. The £12.5 billion deal with EE’s two owners Deutsche Telekom and Orange was one of the largest telecoms deals announced in 2014. Not to be outdone, Telstra then sneaked through a late $679 million bid for Pacnet, set to be its largest acquisition to date.

Mobile customers experience drives churn, but how can the service provider get a handle on something so utterly nebulous?

“Imagine this scenario: Officers of the local Stadtpolizei investigating a suspected leak to the press descend on Deutsche Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany. They serve a warrant to seize a bundle of private letters that a New York Times reporter is storing in a safe deposit box at a Deutsche Bank USA branch in Manhattan. The bank complies by ordering the New York branch manager to open the reporter’s box with a master key, rummage through it, and fax the private letters to the Stadtpolizei.”

Fraud – an ugly word for a painful and ever-lurking evil rampant in the telecoms industry – grows larger every year.

For developing economies, the internet is a springboard to connect their entrepreneurs, scientists and industry to the global economy and peers around the world.

Whether the requirement is internet connectivity for cloud-based applications or links to a private WAN, most organisations now recognise the importance of a carrier-neutral data centre. However, while the list of possible connections available may look compelling – some data centres boast hundreds of carriers – it is important to look beyond the top-line promises.

Only last month Google revealed that sharks had been caught on camera attacking its undersea cables.

The telecommunications industry has evolved with such gusto in the past few years that some businesses operating in the sector have buckled under the pressure and pace of demand.

Wholesale telecoms providers with small to medium-sized business (SMB) customers have a big opportunity to grow their sales exponentially utilising today’s mobile cloud solutions. Specifically, these smaller businesses, characterised by field teams who rely on door-to-door selling tactics, are now seeking cutting-edge ways to utilise their mobile devices to establish meaningful connections with customers and better influence purchasing decisions.