Turning Around Large-Scale Telecom Businesses: Sequencing, Not Volume

Nicholas Chamansingh

Telecom turnarounds rarely fail from a lack of effort. The real challenge is almost always focus — and the order in which things get done. In most underperforming businesses, commercial activity is already high. Teams are working at pace. Multiple initiatives are underway. The problem is not energy — it is what that energy is directed toward, and in what sequence.

Two Markets, One Pattern

I've led turnaround efforts across two distinct environments — different markets, different competitive dynamics, but a strikingly similar underlying challenge: growth initiatives were not consistently translating into sustainable commercial outcomes. The first was a ~$350M consumer business in Jamaica with consecutive years of revenue decline. The second was a ~$250M consumer business in Trinidad & Tobago with over four years of sustained underperformance. Different contexts. The same core problem.

The Instinct to Accelerate — and Why It Backfires

In both cases, the natural organizational response to declining performance was to increase activity: more campaigns, more promotions, greater sales pressure. Understandable — but risky. That approach led to margin compression, portfolio complexity, and diluted strategic focus rather than recovery.

"Execution volume can create momentum. But sequencing and clarity create outcomes."

What Was Prioritized Instead

Rather than expanding the scope of initiatives, the approach narrowed to a small number of structural levers — each directly tied to commercial performance. 1. Pricing and portfolio reset Product structures across prepaid, postpaid, and broadband were simplified. Price/volume trade-offs were rebalanced to stabilize ARPU while protecting margin, shifting away from reactive promotions toward structured, deliberate offers. 2. Distribution and sales architecture Channel roles were redesigned across retail, digital, dealers, and telesales. More targeted commission structures were introduced, aligned to product priorities. Improved sales-to-installation processes drove a material increase in conversion — including approximately 120% sales growth in one market. 3. Customer value management and targeting Structured segmentation frameworks were introduced, with data and predictive models used to align offers with actual customer behaviour — reducing subsidy leakage while improving both retention and lifetime value. 4. Capital and execution discipline OPEX and CAPEX decisions were aligned directly to commercial outcomes. Strategic PMO governance was strengthened to ensure initiatives were measurable and linked explicitly to revenue or EBITDA impact.

Operating Alongside Real Constraints

These changes did not happen in a vacuum. Both environments required simultaneous management of customer experience challenges, network and infrastructure limitations, competitive pricing pressure, and significant internal change management. The actual work was holding both tensions at once — protecting short-term stabilization while making deliberate progress on medium-term structural improvement. That balance is not a footnote to turnaround work. It is the work.

Outcomes Across Both Markets

While timelines and conditions differed, the pattern of outcomes was consistent across both markets. In Jamaica: a return to positive year-on-year growth — the first positive growth trajectory after eight consecutive years of decline. In Trinidad & Tobago: the strongest performance in over four years — revenue and EBITDA recovery, with improved sales efficiency and market competitiveness. Across both: ARPU trajectories improved, EBITDA strengthened, and sales efficiency rose alongside market competitiveness.

A Practical Leadership Takeaway

Large-scale turnarounds are rarely driven by transformation programs alone. They tend to result from a small number of high-impact levers, executed with discipline, with consistent alignment across commercial, operational, and financial decisions. In complex, competitive markets, the question is not whether to act aggressively. It is where to focus, in what order, and with what level of discipline. Turnarounds at scale are not won through volume of effort. They are won through clarity of focus, sequencing of priorities, and the discipline to stay the course — even when the pressure to do more is constant.

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