Reaping the benefits of big data in telecom

We collect big data use cases for a representative sample of telecom companies worldwide and observe a wide and skewed distribution of big data returns, with a few companies reporting large impact for a long tail of telecom companies with limited returns. Using a joint model of adoption and returns to adoption, we find that the skewness of the distribution arises from a few telecom companies being able to follow key big data managerial and organizational practices. We also find that big data returns exhibit economies of scope, decreasing returns to scale, while big data talents are complementary to big data capex investments.