In the past decade, Telcos have had to deal with a number of disruptive technologies. The pace of change is set to continue as Telcos transition towards a 5G and IoT enabled ecosystem.

As Telcos seek new revenue opportunities and a way to streamline operations, Blockchain is rapidly evolving to become one of the most promising emerging innovations for telecoms today.

About a decade ago, an anonymous individual or group using the pseudonym ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ invented a disruptive new technology called ‘Blockchain’ which enables peer-to-peer digital transactions without the need for a centralised intermediary. More recently, Blockchain has gained prominence as the underlying technology that drives cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. According to Gartner the business value add of Blockchain will grow to US$176bn by 2025 and will exceed US$3.1tn by 2030. While most of the initial focus of Blockchain has been in the financial services space, there is growing awareness across Telcos as multiple use cases in network security, 5G and IoT start to emerge. In this report, we discuss the value proposition of Blockchain, analyse its potential use cases in Telco, highlight Telco efforts in Blockchain and analyse some of the key challenges that Telcos will face on their path towards Blockchain adoption.