Telecommunications act as a global enabler for other industries and economic sectors. Moreover, communication technologies play an essential role in national security and welfare. The telecommunication market has experienced transformations both in technological and regulatory domains. It has transitioned from wired telephony to wireless services in the technological area and from state-owned telecom to a free market in the regulatory domain. The telecom industry is considered highly innovative; however, it is sometimes referred to as a “dumb pipe” due to a lack of business model innovation, regulatory settings and poor market performance. In this work, we focus on telecom vendors within cellular communications in order to understand how the emergence of open standards can be tackled with business model innovation. In this work, interviews and documents (e.g. white papers) were used as data sources. We relied on thematic data analysis to answer the research question. Our analysis confirmed the disruptive nature of open standards and identified the main steps needed to create and capture value by telecom vendors. Exploring the impact of all disruptive factors is not a trivial task that goes beyond the scope of this work as well as developing appropriate business models. Therefore, it is crucial to continue developing business models that would be able to cope with disruptive factors in order to remain competitive in the telecom market.