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CONTENTS
New age charging systems
Do bill me, please!
by Ernest L. Cu, President and CEO, Globe Telecom, Inc.
3 5 7
3 13 25 35
5 15 27 39
7 18 29 42
10 22 32
Overcoming the mobile data traffic challenge The changing face of charging and billing
by Morten Brgger, CEO MACH
by Dave Labuda, Founder, CEO & CTO, MATRIXX Software
The road to multi-play success How service providers can optimize assets, increase profitability and boost customer satisfaction 10
by Lucas Skoczkowski, CEO, Redknee
Billing as a Service, billing as a Strategy

by Simon Muderack, CEO & Founder, Tribold by Nic Stirk, CEO, SLA Mobile
Product experience: leveraging enterprise product management to enhance the customer experince 13 Direct operator billing - A strategy to mitigate the OTT threat The rise of machines Total Convergence 15 18 22
by David Burks, VP for APAC and MEA, Orga Systems by Louis Hall, CEO, Cerillion Technologies
Customer is king
Connections
by Rebecca Copeland
The Power of One: Increasing customer loyalty with real-time, targeted offers
2 2 IFC 12 21 24 31 34 38 41 IBC OBC
by Yann Chevalier, CEO, Intersec
25
From the Editors desk Imprint
The Subscriber: The Overlooked Variable in the Policy Management and Enforcement Equation 27
by Dr Weiming Li, Vice President & General Manager, Comverse Asia Pacific
Advertisements
Newtec Cartes France Global Mining IT & Communication Summit 2012 MWC Luton Borough Council CTIA NAB ITU Ministry of Ontario BT
Using customer analytics to create new data plans and pricing models
by Rajesh Sharma, President Global Sales and Customer Operations, Astellia
29
Access technology affecting Billing
Seizing Revenue Opportunities with Fixed Wireless
by Roy Wittert, VP of Sales and Marketing for APAC, Cambium Networks
32
Managing the new mobile data network The challenge of deploying mobile broadband systems for profit 35
by Erwann Thomassain, Head of Regional Marketing for Asia Pacific, Amdocs
Telecommunications and Cable Convergence: Opportunity Knocks for India and China 39
by Ian Watterson, Vice President & Managing Director (Asia Pacific), CSG International
4G technology is not an evolution, its a disruption!
by Michael Lai, CEO, Packet One Networks (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd
42
CONNECTIONS
Connections
The evolution of Charging and Billing in APAC
As the gravity centre of broadband services is shifting from under the mobile operators towards the large OTT (Over The Top) players, and at the same time smart devices continue to generate ever increasing traffic volumes, the impact on the back office systems is devastating. Traditional patched up billing systems cannot cope with the number of transactions and with the varied modes of operating services. Requirements grow in three dimensions all at once vast scalability is needed, high speed of response for real-time usage monitoring and great agility and flexibility to support a growing range of features and business models. The Asia Pacific region is now seen as leading the world in the mobile data explosion, with the more developed countries in the region demanding greater sophistication, and the emerging large economies (China, India and Indonesia) clamouring for fast scalability (Ernest Cu, President & CEO Globe Telecom). Due to recent regulations and spectrum reclaiming, cable operators in India and China are now experiencing increased competition from OTT IPTV. Their response is to provide multi-device, multi-technology, multi-service packages that are designed to encourage loyalty. These multi-play services need to be supported by combined management systems. Unified billing has to go further than a single bill. To win customers, the merging of ordering, installing and charging for a wide range of services must appear easy and simple. This is not just about streamlining support systems to save costs it is a basic customer requirement. True convergence of the service catalogue, unified delivery processes and integrated user interaction portals are needed across the different access technologies, devices and applications, and a consistent experience from order to service activation. Not only must the system be converged, but also the operators whole organisation, its procedures and its culture. Integrated subscriber management is now in itself a leading edge service that helps operators win in this competitive climate. In parallel, traditional post-pay services are migrating to real-time, not for a payment method, but for enhanced session monitoring and for immediate usage and charging information. Real-time billing is no longer an option - it is the eye into everyday business trends and user behaviour. It is now required for all subscribers wishing to control their spending. The fear of bill-shock remains the main barriers to uptake of mobile data services, roaming or not. By providing clear information of consumption and charges, users will not switch off data services and would be willing to spend more (Morten Brgger, MACH) in increments that are more acceptable to them. Customer spending patterns, user behaviour trends and real-time reports are the operators great asset. It is important to merge all sources of user data to enable full analytics and appreciate the customer experience. Real-time monitoring generates Big Data that needs multi-dimensional analysis to filter and convert it into useful information, but the rewards are high: operators can provide well-tuned packages to specific subscriber segments, detect fraud promptly and understand demand shifts in further detail. With dynamic analytics, on-the-spot offers can be presented to users, which can stimulate usage, revive inactive accounts and prevent at risk customers from churning (Yann Chevalier, CEO, Intersec). Mobile Broadband support systems will soon need to manage millions of small cells that will be installed in order to increase air bandwidth capacity (Erwann Thomassain, Head of Regional Marketing for Asia Pacific, Amdocs). Such networks, whether using Fixed WiFi Access nodes or LTE microcells, need planning tools to optimise locating nodes and reduce interference. Like billing, network management is also gearing up to deal with versatility, scalability and real-time. The new billing system has further scope with more opportunities to operators. They may find new sources of revenues in offering Billing-as-a-Service in twosided models, addressing OTT and vertical markets upstream and subscribers and enterprises downstream (Nic Stirk, CEO, SLA Mobile). M2M (Machine to Machine) services provide a growth area that needs to be supported by real-time billing. Moreover, M2M solutions are now offered by non-Telecom industries like utilities, automotive and transportation. They need powerful real-time billing solutions, and the well-proven Telecom system is ideal for that (David Burks, VP for APAC, Orga Systems).
Rebecca Copeland, Executive Content Editor, Connect-World editor@connect-world.com
Editor-in-Chief: Fredric J. Morris fredric.morris@connect-world.com Publisher: David Nunes david.nunes@connect-world.com Editorial Department: editorial@connect-world.com Connect-World is published under licence by INFOCOMMS MEDIA LTD email: info@connect-world.com URL: www.connect-world.com Production Department: production@connect-world.com Sales Department: sales@connect-world.com Administration Department: admin@connect-world.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from the publishers. The content of this publication is-based on best knowledge and information available at the time of publication. No responsibility for any injury, death, loss, damage or delay, however caused, resulting from the use of the material can be accepted by the publishers or others associated with its preparation. The publishers neither accept responsibility for, nor necessarily agree with, the views expressed by contributors.
ISSN 1462-2939
2
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Asia-Pacific III 2012
Do bill me, please!

by Ernest L. Cu, President and CEO, Globe Telecom, Inc.
No one likes to be billed. It is especially irritating when you get several bills from the same company. Worse still, you may get a shock when spending far exceeds expectations. A realtime convergent billing system not only combines all charged services in one bill, but also indicate spending against budgets or credit in a timely fashion. In fact, real-timeliness of charging and billing is excellent credit control. A single bill is easier with fewer transactions and greener with fewer printed bills. With many more real-time features, customers may actually like it!
Ernest L. Cu is President and Chief Executive Officer of Globe Telecom, Inc. Ernest Cu became the President and Chief Executive Officer of Globe Telecom on April 2, 2009. He joined Globe as Deputy CEO in October 2008, helping to strengthen project executions and day-to-day operations. Today, Globe is in the midst of a paradigm transformation from regular public utility to service-centric company, driven by Ernests primary advocacy of Customer-First. He tirelessly advocates this mindset across the organization to stimulate better financial and operating performance, and ultimately to deliver superior customer experience that differentiates Globe from the competition. Ernest brings with him over two decades of general management and business development experience spanning multi-country operations, the most recent of which is his post as President and CEO of SPi Technologies. He has significant experience in the technological, marketing, and financial aspects of running businesses in the electronic publishing and database management industries. This year, Ernest earned international accolade as Best CEO of the Year by Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific. In 2010, he was adjudged best CEO by Finance Asia. He was moreover conferred the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) CEO EXCEL award for communication excellence in telecoms and IT. He was also voted as one of the Most Trusted Filipinos in a poll conducted by Readers Digest. In 2003, Ernest was awarded Ernst & Young ICT Entrepreneur of the Year. Ernest has a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Management Engineering from De La Salle University in Manila, and an M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University.
Generally people loathe getting their bills. In black and white, bills represent debt, and ultimately serve to pull hard-earned money from ones pocket. As if to rub salt in a debtors wounds, it happens often enough that a bill shocks the senses out of its recipient, with figures unbelievably higher than expected, or charging comes late and confuses Did I really buy this?! For a customer maintaining more than one account with the same merchant, separate bills are sent with separate due dates calling for separate modes of payment. The way we charge and bill such customers can radically improve their overall experience. These are common pain points in todays billing environment inaccuracy,
tardiness, and separate billing with the same merchant. As real as purchase and payment are in the world of commerce, so is its billing component. The onus is on the collecting entity to evolve billing and charging systems to encourage, or at the very least, simplify payment. Globe Telecom is an 84-year-old leading telecommunications company in the Philippines, serving consumers and businesses through a full communications suite of mobile, fixed, broadband, and data connection services. For the last three years, we have been driving holistic transformation across the company, wrapped around customer centricity. As a matter-of-fact, the topic at hand - the evolution of charging
and billing - is one that resonates with customers the most. In this article, we share a few salient points of our own companys experience in the billing arena that can serve as reliable guide posts for any other firms intention to evolve the way they charge and bill. In mobile telephony, for example, especially for the post-paid segment, billing emerges as an area of opportunity. Running in real-time Our old post-paid billing system applies a post-process to assign rates and to charge customers accordingly for their calls, text messages, and data usage. Latency, inherent to this process, runs the risk of breached credit limits since our system will only
recognize that a subscriber has already amassed call or text messaging charges beyond the assigned credit limit, after the fact. This tends to result in what is notoriously known as bill shock, where a customer will assert that, had timely notice been served, consumption could have been correspondingly curbed. Instead, our customer faces a billed amount beyond credit limit, more than budgeted, above what he or she is willing to pay. The billing system we have designed and are currently implementing runs in realtime. This presents a huge difference. For our customers, it means no more bill shock because they will get alerts the moment they breach decided credit limits. Customers can also access their most upto-date consumption data so they can plan future spend wisely. With such valuable current information, they can decide to personalize their post-paid plan to better suit actual usage. The timeliness, or shall we say, real-timeliness of charging and billing is excellent credit control for the buyer and for the seller. It brings accurate accounting and forecast for both parties, ushering in a
new sense of ease and comfort, previously lacking in a post-process system. Convergent and green Customers can subscribe to multiple services offered by the same company with independent fees. Of course, there are charges for a mobile phone service as there would be for internet-at-home, for instance. In our current billing system, these services are billed separately. Unfortunately, it is cumbersome and not environmentally friendly for our customers to make multiple transactions in order to settle these bills with us. Convergent billing is the capability to render a single bill for all services offered by a single service or product provider. Such practice gives customers the convenience of one-time settlement for several accounts, and sweeping budget control with the comprehensive view of multiple payments due to one entity. We have been using separate billing systems for mobile and broadband customers, and convergent billing is a promising opportunity. Again, from the customers point-ofview, a single settlement spells utmost
convenience and a holistic view of spend surfaces as an outstanding benefit. From our perspective, better collection and cash flow can be expected. There is also tremendous opportunity to improve cost management owing to the production and delivery of one bill instead of two. Plus, consuming less paper is obviously eco-friendly. We strongly believe that the impact of convergent billing will be highly positive, one that can dramatically improve and differentiate customer experience. Real-time convergent billing is undoubtedly a strategically-sound route to take, especially for telecommunication companies that are focused on customers and are determined to win the game. Billing and charging systems of old only exacerbate the all too commonly unpopular grudge against receiving bills. However, many value-add features for realtime convergent billing can somehow offer soothing comfort. Soon enough perhaps, as billing and charging systems evolve, consumers clamour will change from - Blast this bill! to - Do bill me, please! Well, maybe not exactly, but you get the picture. l
Overcoming the mobile data traffic challenge

by Dave Labuda, Founder, CEO & CTO, MATRIXX Software
Billing systems need great overhauling. Legacy billing cannot cope with new requirements. The developed countries in APAC lead the world in broadband services and they require smart billing solutions and higher sophistication. The developing economies (such as India and Indonesia) are facing massive increase of smart device penetration with low ARPU, thus needing fundamental scaling up of real-time billing systems. This new breed of billing systems must also cater for ecosystems and varied business models to accommodate OTT as well as Telcos. Trying to build all that into old Billing will not work - a new approach is required, including analytics for real-time customer insights.
Dave Labuda has co-founded Portal Software in 1994, creating the first real-time billing and revenue management solution for Internet and communications service providers. As CTO, he led the architectural design and product strategy of the company. After stepping into the CEO role in 2004, he successfully sold the company to Oracle in 2006. Dave then served as CTO of Oracles Communications Global Business Unit until February 2008, providing architectural vision for the new organization and acting as a key advisor on several strategic acquisitions. He started his career at Sun Microsystems working for eight years in the UNIX Operating Systems group. Dave also served as a board member for Aria Systems. Dave Labuda holds Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Computer Engineering from Case Western Reserve University and has 11 patents issued with several more pending.
The Asia-Pacific (APAC) market is viewed as a bellwether in terms of the adoption of new technologies, new mobile services and new patterns of consumer behaviour. Places such as Singapore and Hong Kong are driving the uptake of mobile broadband faster than anywhere else. As geographically dispersed as the APAC region is, it shares at least one thing in common with all other global markets: a spike in the uptake of new devices. Businesses and consumers are embracing Smartphones and tablets at a voracious pace. This has created a Supermobile generation of users who use their devices as a musthave companion to their lifestyles. Like everything else in their life, they want their mobile services to deliver instant interaction and gratification whatever they are doing, wherever they are.
This trend has led to an explosion in the amount of mobile broadband data traffic that Communications Service Providers (CSPs) must handle. Most people now own more than one device, use services such as mobile video and apps which require higher bandwidth, and rely on the devices as constant companions during their everyday life. At work, shopping, at play or at rest, the thumb tribes of Hong Kongs Mass Transit system have widened out into popular culture: wherever you look, everyones using their mobile device for something. It follows that APAC has the highest growth forecast for data traffic in the world, making it a global focus for innovative approaches to monetizing data traffic. Of the 7,000 annual Petabytes of mobile traffic that Cisco Systems
predicts in recent research - by 2015, about 40% of it will be generated in APAC. High device penetration, high subscriber numbers In developed APAC markets, such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, 3G and other mobile broadband technologies are commonplace. Here, there are very high penetration rates of Smartphones and tablets, relatively high Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and a highly competitive market. The result is a staggering increase in network traffic without a corresponding increase in revenue - a trend that cannot be sustained. CSPs need to move beyond flat-rate, or unlimited data usage plans, as they are becoming less profitable.
In developed APAC markets, the solution to this needs to include creative ways to break out of the flat-rate tariff model while creating mobile plans that make sense to the subscriber. CSPs could create more targeted packages around services such as video content, social networking and shopping and pair them with the right access speeds, to create a better customer experience. For example, offering Quality of Service (QoS) pricing for business and power users or for specific services, such as HD video. Packages should be shareable across multiple devices and not necessarily byte-based. This would provide a path to driving stable revenue growth, and in areas such as Hong Kong, such of plans are already starting to take hold. By contrast, developing markets such as Indonesia and India have very large populations and lower ARPU. Here, the rapid increase in Smartphone penetration, not higher usage, is what driving data traffic volumes on 3G networks. Innovative pricing and packaging is not top priority - their challenges are based on pure scalability, efficiency and operational cost structures. India is just introducing 3G, but has hundreds of millions of subscribers are upgrading to 3G devices. The move from 2G to 3G results in a 1030 times increase in data traffic per device. Pricing is also much more granular, and primarily prepaid, due to the cost sensitivity of most consumers. This adds pressure on CSPs to make their existing billing and charging systems scale to meet the increase in billing records and ensure consumption is tightly tracked and charged for in realtime. The cost of scaling existing systems is unaffordable in an environment with razorthin margins. The effect of LTE on the market Rollout of Long Term Evolution (LTE) across APAC in developed markets will magnify the growth in data traffic volumes and place further pressure on CSPs to find a solution to the data crunch. LTE has the power to bring mobile multimedia services to life, but CSPs risk unsatisfied customers unless new business models are developed, and new mobile plans created for subscribers. Imagine a subscriber who is limited to 2GB of data for a fixed price per month. Using a 3G network to stream video to the subscriber would offer them a choice of watching several movies, whereas with LTE, their allowance could literally be sapped
in minutes. This kind of bad consumer experience is the antithesis of what CSPs want to provide with LTE. Stuck in a systems rut So why do CSPs find themselves in this position? Its largely because their current billing systems have failed to keep up with the market. CSPs have not had cost-effective options to upgrade their billing systems to handle the new business models that come with faster networks and new devices. Legacy systems were designed for Voice, but cant track or charge effectively for data usage in real-time, especially under high traffic volumes. Even prepaid systems that handle relatively simple pricing models, are not capable of keeping up with growing data traffic - nor can they handle the more sophisticated pricing and charging models that come with 3G and 4G services. Trying to build new functionality and scalability into legacy systems is akin to increasing the size of a cars fuel tank and expecting greater fuel economy - its costly and based on a false premise. Evolving the back office for success So what does the ideal solution look like? First, it must deliver a whole new level of scalability. Consider that there are often tens of millions of subscribers on a network, and that a billable event can be something as small as beginning to type a word into Google search, and its clear that CSPs need to be able to process a vast number of events in parallel. Current systems can only process hundreds or a thousand transactions per second, and yet the requirement is for up to 100 times that. This must be accomplished on a small, efficient set of low cost hardware that is off the shelf and easy to maintain. Next, it has to be real-time. Whether providing charging for prepaid or post-paid accounts, the ideal solution must offer visibility and control over consumption to both the CSP and the mobile subscriber. With more businesses and families sharing plans, allowances and devices, this type of functionality is central to providing an outstanding and compelling experience. Providing accurate balance information and spending controls also cuts the number of calls to customer support-centres that originate through billing inquiries, bill shock and service reconnection calls. Additionally, by providing internal visibility
and control, the relationship with Over The Top (OTT) providers of content could be better monetized. By tracking subscriber trends in real-time, CSPs can build insight around data consumption patterns, and put a price on it. That way, instead of OTT players riding the network for free and relegating the CSP to a dumb pipe, the CSP could gain additional revenue from common applications such as YouTube, Spotify or Facebook browsing. Finally - it must provide both functional agility and reliable performance. New services, applications, third party providers, and advertisers bring new business models and marketing strategies. CSPs need a charging solution that easily fits into their existing systems while supporting these business models. The system must not experience any degradation in performance and latency or require additional capacity as charging and billing models become more sophisticated. Building strategies for the new mobile era Research shows that subscribers who are more informed about what they are purchasing beforehand are more likely to trust their CSP and make purchases in additional to their usual spend - about 15% more. This can be accelerated if CSPs build more creative, personalized pricing and bundling of data services based on real-time information from the charging system. Information about the average spend of the subscriber, their credit worthiness and historical services usage, for example, help build a picture for CSPs to offer unique offers to their subscribers. If sophisticated analytics are introduced, CSPs can better develop and target personalized offers and discounts. Subscribers can also set their own account preferences through integrated charging and policy management capabilities. So, although APAC has many markets which are developing at different rates, the underlying trend is the same. CSPs can overcome data volume challenges by monetizing their networks through creative pricing, personalization and real-time insight and by looking for solutions that are designed to efficiently scale for 4G networks and beyond. Combining high-performance, cost effective charging with new pricing strategies and business models will enable CSPs to meet the challenges of the new mobile broadband era. l
The changing face of charging and billing

by Morten Brgger, CEO MACH
The regions impressive growth of superphones and multi-device users is set to continue, far outstripping Europe and North America. Traditional billing models is simply untenable and cannot cope with the range of new business models, with true real-time spending control and with the unprecedented volumes of events to monitor. Complex pricing structures and fear of bill-shock remain the main barriers to mobile data uptake, and differential pricing by speed instead of megabytes is just as incomprehensible to customers. What is needed is microsegmentation, based on enhanced analytics, that allows, for example, roaming subscribers to select special tariff for a favourite social media service - i.e. service aware charging.
Morten Brgger was appointed Chief Executive Officer of MACH on 1st April 2011. Prior to this, he was Chief Commercial Officer, responsible for the companys global account management and marketing operations, including product marketing and marketing communications. Morten originally joined the organisation as Chief Operating Officer in November 2006 with global responsibility for client support, product management, marketing and pre-sales. Prior to joining MACH, Morten held the position of Chief Operating Officer of the Fixnet division at Sunrise in Switzerland. In this role, he was responsible for all sales, marketing and product management activities for the Fixnet division, as well as for Sunrises entire enterprise sales organisation. Before this, he was Senior Vice President at TDC Business responsible for all product management and marketing activities. Previously, he held the position of VP, Sales at the Scandinavian systems integrator Merkantildata. Morten has an MSE in International Marketing Management from the Aarhus Business School. He also completed a four month MBA program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
The smartphone revolution has fundamentally changed consumer behaviour. Just a few years ago, a top of the range smartphone was one that offered integrated email. In todays age of the superphone, high speed internet, a multitude of apps and video streaming capabilities come as standard. In this fastmoving, customer centric landscape, the onus is on operators to produce top of the range customer services. Mobile users now expect to be charged only for the services they use in a consumer friendly and transparent manner and in real-time. Transparent pricing options have become critical to a new generation of savvy consumers who expect to pay for exactly what they consume and nothing more. Additionally, the ability to offer flexibility in price plans and tariffs dependent
on consumption patterns, location or user preference, and even on different network connectivity options (3G, LTE, WiFI), has become paramount. People in all corners of the world have taken to owning multiple devices that would be categorised as mobile connections - mobile phones, tablets, connected notebooks and more - but the GSMA points to the Asia Pacific region as the driving force behind this explosive growth. According to their recent Asia Pacific Mobile Observatory 2011 report, the APAC region accounts for nearly half of all mobile connections globally. Asia Pacific is one of the worlds fastest-growing mobile markets, through an impressive combination of investment and innovation,
GSMA Chief Government and Regulatory Affairs Officer Tom Phillips stated. China alone currently has 940 million total mobile connections, exceeding the total number of connections in Europe and the US combined . The Asia Pacific region will also have the highest roaming revenue growth rate in the coming years, according to Informa Telecoms & Media. The regions total data roaming revenue (including SMS) is expected to grow at a CAGR of 19% between 2010 and 2015 . Figures from the GSMA and Machina Research support this and demonstrate that the growth of connected devices is booming in Asia Pacific. The region is expected to be the biggest market by 2020 with total over 11 billion connected devices, and within
that, almost 5.6 billion mobile connected devices, accounting for a 47 per cent market share and far outstripping Europe (19.1 per cent) and North America (9.4 per cent). This shift within the mobile industry makes traditional billing models and systems untenable. Now, more than ever, operators are under pressure to develop online charging systems with more features, more flexibility, more scalability and faster response times. Providing such services is not a simple or quick task, and significant investment is needed to ensure the billing system is able to fulfil its purpose. New developments in terms of customer experience management, online charging and policy control mitigate against traditional billing system models. Consumer satisfaction Central to changing how operators launch and charge for services, while enabling the level of differentiation that modern consumers require, is the idea of more consumer empowerment providing the end-customer with the flexibility to tailor services as his/her needs change. Providing a compelling service offering, enabling mobile data services regardless of location, subscription type, device or access type, combined with flexible pricing plan options, is the catalyst that can drive above average growth in usage and revenue as well as reduce subscriber churn rates. Informa research, published in 20111 , provides insights into expected MNO priorities during 2012. The most significant of these insights will be finding ways to enhance the enduser experience. This is the major focus for MNOs in every region. MNOs need to be able to understand their customers requirements and usage patterns, and respond with innovative and simplified service plans. Mobile data - growth for operators? We have witnessed unprecedented mobile data usage growth in recent years, fuelled by smartphone and tablet device deployments and a greater variety of feature-rich content available for such devices. Helped by new handset launches, high profile mobile applications and a shift in usage, MNOs have been successful in the push to encourage data usage on their networks. While this trend is encouraging, the results have not been without unintended sideeffects - the current overburdening of networks being the most notable example.
In addition, increased usage does not necessarily deliver linear revenue growth for MNOs. Cost, along with associated complex pricing structures, remains a significant barrier to the uptake of mobile data services. Subscribers continue to find ways to access data services outside of the MNOs network environment, resulting in reduced revenue potential. Monetization of mobile data The effective monetization of data services must be addressed. Originally, MNOs opted for simple mobile data pricing strategies to encourage take-up of data services, resulting in fixed-rate or flat-rate tariff plans. However, the combination of innovative mobile apps, new pricing expectations and the lower price points of feature-rich smartphones have combined to change user behaviour irreversibly. Flat-rate data tariffs have led to increasing network congestion, while the cost of service provisioning has become disassociated from accurate revenue models. Additionally, there has been a loss of control over the end user relationship, which is increasingly being forged at the application or handset level. The challenges in adapting to evolving user behaviour are also different between domestic and roaming markets, yet there is a need to maintain consistency in the user experience, regardless of issues such as network discovery or CAMEL3 support. The all-you-can-eat model for data consumption is unsustainable and operators will inevitably move towards tiered pricing. While new tariff structures based on measures of speed, rather than volume are being introduced, from a customer perspective this merely replaces one quite arbitrary basis for charging with another one. A tariff approach that aligns tariff with the type of service being provided would provide more transparency for a customer. Operators are also increasingly turning to offload technologies such as WiFi and small cells to prevent overloading of their network capacity. The challenge for operators offloading traffic onto Wi-Fi, is how to deliver seamless handover as well as maintain control and monitor subscriber usage off-net in the same way they do for on-net data traffic. In a roaming situation, the challenge in monetizing mobile data is further complicated, with concerns about Bill Shock preventing many users from switching on data services, when they are roaming.
MACHs own research indicates that an additional US$900 million global market could be created in mobile data roaming, by simply removing the fear of bill-shock. If data roaming is to be a success, MNOs not only need to reduce their costs, but also achieve a more granular view of subscriber roaming behaviour. More granular business intelligence techniques are required, as the market is adapting to micro-segmentation and targeted tariff strategies. Such microsegmentation could be as granular as supporting tariffs that allow roaming subscribers to select specific data rates on particular social network sites that they use more intensively than others. A further evolution lies in providing end users with greater visibility and control of the amount of data they are consuming. By introducing a pre-paid for post-paid (payas- you-go) approach to roaming, cost management can effectively be carried out by the subscriber via self-care applications, allowing them to self-provision services, monitor data usage, receive advice of charge notifications and use multiple payment options for re-charge. Online subscriber communication extends in other ways. One obvious opportunity to encourage mobile data usage lies with alleviating bill shock via the provision of alerts when a certain data threshold is reached. Such approaches are designed to enhance consumer confidence that the risk of bill shock has been removed - in this way subscribers are kept abreast of how much they are spending almost as they spend it in near real-time. Continuing progression customer demands and meeting
Customer experience innovation in terms of support for application-based and duration based data packages, user defined spend limits, and advanced self-care facilities can be integrated into a common service offering. It is important that service packs encompass flexibility and also provide an environment that offers ease of use and familiarity to the subscriber. For example, if a subscriber wishes to use a 24 hour Email Pack, then it is important to define exactly what that pack gives them, when it expires and also to provide pricing transparency, to encourage usage. Service pack innovation delivers part of the equation but can be used in conjunction with
other elements to help stimulate mobile data usage. One such area is the need for nonarbitrary policy control, allowing users to define custom policy controls to suit their requirements, obviously within broader limits defined by the MNO. In the case of enterprise users, this might be a set of policies defined by the telecoms manager of an enterprise in agreement with the MNOs enterprise sales team. The idea of user-defined policies is related to the need for self-service capabilities, an important element to help put the customer in charge of their own services, as well as helping them to reduce operator costs. Selfcare capabilities are also opportunities for the MNO to engage in interactive subscriber marketing, with real-time, personalised, targeted promotions for which accurate and timely information about individual subscribers is vital. In conclusion Requirements for the continued evolution of next-generation charging models comprise a range of elements, including an increasing
use of online charging to ensure real-time control of spend, combined with real-time policy to monitor volume and type of usage and ensure bill-shock prevention. Online charging and real-time policy management can be combined with the application of service aware charging, to set pricing based on a particular type of service or type of content. To enhance the customer experience the provision of seamless handover between on-net and off-net (Wi-Fi) activity ensures no service discontinuity and should also enhance the potential for revenue share options between MNOs and Wi-Fi service providers (WISPs). MNOs need to evolve their revenue management infrastructure to support increasing complexity in an increasingly real-time environment. This calls for new features, more flexibility, and lower response times, all delivered in a highly scalable charging and billing environment. From a customer perspective the need is for ease of use, consistency of experience and pricing transparency. Such requirements render traditional billing models and the systems that support them untenable. The time has
come for the charging models of old to evolve and adapt to the changing face of the mobile telecommunications industry. l
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Informa Industry Outlook - 2012
GSMA: Mobile Health Will Be a Major Driver of the Connected Life with a Market Opportunity in Asia Pacific of US$7 Billion by 2017 http://www.gsma.com/newsroom/asia-pacific-willdominate-the-connected-device-market-fuelled-byexplosive-growth-in-china-says-gsma/ Informa Telecoms and Media: Asia Pacific will have the highest roaming revenue growth rate in next few years. http://blogs.informatandm.com/4988/westerneuropean-roaming-set-to-be-hit-hard-by-roamingregulation-generating-49-less-revenues-thanthe-asia-pacific-region-by-2016-says-paul-merry-senior-analyst-informa-telecoms-and-media/
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The road to multi-play success How service providers can optimize assets, increase profitability and boost customer satisfaction
by Lucas Skoczkowski, CEO, Redknee
Offering multi-play necessitates integration of separate channels under one system. Trying to do that with the various parts of legacy systems will not work. It is like a restaurant offering a different menu depending on the chosen means of payment. The whole system should be now built for real-time, with pre-paid convenience enhancing the traditionally postpaid service. Real-time accounting can also discover fraud and revenue leaks immediately, instead of waiting for month end billing, thus reducing cost. Costs should also be tracked, since ARPU figures alone may be deceiving. With a unified system, carriers can combine data from all sources and gain deeper customer insight that allows proposing enticing offers. Such capabilities also allow Telcos to act as advertising aggregators, adding profitability.
Lucas Skoczkowski is the CEO of Redknee, a communications software company created in 1999 that provides business-critical billing and charging software and solutions for communications service providers around the world. Lucas is responsible for strategic planning and execution, during which Redknee has consistently met and exceeded its goals, including financial performance, profitability and business and customer growth. Lucas is driving the development of Redknees product portfolio, sales, and overall organizational performance. Due to his exceptional leadership, Lucas has received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and the Top 40-Under-40 Award for Canada. Prior to Redknee, Lucas worked at Nortel Networks and Clearnet in various roles of Product Management. Lucas serves on the Board of Directors for Redknee and 20-20 Technologies, the worlds leading software developer of interior design and manufacturing software, and is a member of the Deans Development Council for the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Lucas has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.
Over the years, service providers have pulled together various systems and solutions into their business and operational support systems (BSS/OSS), usually to solve a very specific problem or enable a very specific service. As a result, multiple applications for billing and customer care that were never designed to integrate efficiently collect in service providers back offices. Because of these separate, siloed systems, entire telecom departments have evolved working independently from each other. A multi-play service providers business often consists of four channels: mobile, high-speed Internet, IPTV and fixed voice. No one channel should operate alone. If efficiently coordinated and integrated, each channel will enhance all of the other channels. Greater inter-channel communication comes from integration, the ability to be agile and responsive, share useful
customer and market intelligence, to cross-sell services, to deliver relevant offers and to create a broad, coherent bundle of services that can be offered to all customers. Conversely, service providers who cannot integrate their multiple billing and reporting platforms are limited in what they can offer to customers. Multi-play capability is intended to provide synergies and greater economies of scope, allowing service providers to take advantage of lower marginal costs. Without that capability, operators are left to promote each channel individually. Creating a seamless user experience One of the most important aspects of infrastructure agility is the ability to support the broadest range of service delivery possible.
Consider this analogy: upon walking into a restaurant, the host asks whether you intend to pay cash or credit. Depending on your answer, he gives you a different menu, specific to your payment method. As strange as it sounds, thats precisely what most telecom companies do. Without a unified billing platform that cuts across pre-paid and post-paid services, these companies are left to offer customers a different set of services depending on their payment entry point. The penetration of smart phones continues to see rapid growth. For instance, GFK Retail Asia reported that smart phone adoption grew in South East Asia by 62 per cent in Q2 2012. With this growth, the wisdom of having combined delivery options becomes more apparent. In short, the virtues of real-time convergence are compelling. It provides a seamless, transparent and controllable service
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to your customers, while allowing service providers to react faster to market events and customer needs. For example, if you reach the bandwidth cap on your post-paid mobile Internet service, your service is cut off or throttled. Having a payments agnostic billing system would allow the service to continue through a pre-paid top-up or turbo button that can be activated by the subscriber. Adding prepaid convenience to a traditionally post-paid service gives the subscriber the service and the quality they want, and an immediate new revenue stream for the service provider. Tracking profitability, not just revenue Service providers consistently use ARPU as a measure of their business performance. However, profitability per user is more effective than ARPU in measuring a multi-play service providers performance. While most multi-play service providers are good at understanding usage patterns, they often do not have enough insight into the actual costs associated with individual users. Average revenue figures can be useful but deceiving. Unless you can drill down to the fine-grained costs, you may not discover that a customer generating US$200 per month is actually costing you US$250 per month in customer care calls. Revenue is only part of the story. Service providers need to have a highly granular, subscriber-level view that looks at costs - as well as revenue. Know your customer Where great analytics leads to better products and more useful customer segmentation, the next points of business leverage are personalization and cross-channel promotions. Marketing outreach needs to be sensitive to the subscribers channel, language and preferences - such as the desire to opt-in and receive outbound messages about specific services and content. This is especially important as content partnerships continue to grow and the service provider is leveraged as the advertising channel. The key is remaining contextually relevant: having the ability to send offers when they matter. Being relevant often means being realtime as well. You must be an agile marketer to support messages such as, I see that youve opened up your browser but dont have a data plan. Would you like to try one for the day/week for only US$5? Customer self-care Subscriber self-care is both a low-cost method of delivering support and a way for the customer to feel like he is truly in control. Customers appreciate fast activation, to review
their account balance and easily sign up for new services without having to go through a customer care agent. Service providers benefit as well. In fact, we conducted customer study and found that moving post-paid subscribers to a real-time environment significantly reduced revenue leaks. In this survey, service providers were able to reduce their bad debt losses and collection expenses from between 5-7% to 1-2% by identifying leaks more quickly. Fraud that would not have been identified until the month end bill cycle was flagged immediately with a real time system in place. The power of convergence If you truly want to transform you company into a marketing machine and differentiate yourself from your competitors, renewing your tools and systems is the first step. If billing systems and reporting systems are not integrated, it is difficult to fully explore customer data across the organization. You may be able to create highlevel reports by market or service channel, but it will be cumbersome and time consuming to dig down and analyze a particular customers usage across multiple channels. Convergence is also necessary when supporting rewards or loyalty programs as well as increasing your network and services visibility and allowing you to feed intelligence into your product design and customer acquisition/retention activities. The iTSCOM story iTSCOM is a leading Japanese provider of cable TV, broadband and digital telephony services, based in Tokyo. With the tremendous growth in Japan of broadband, in addition to other next generation services, strong competition and the high demand for advanced devices and the services they enable, iTSCOM saw the need to revise its business strategy to get ahead of these quickly changing dynamics, drive customer acquisition and retention and support new revenue streams. One of its key objectives was to attract and retain customers with new offerings, new services, and provide a more meaningful and responsive user experience. Its legacy solution was unable to support iTSCOMs aspirations for the types of services and offerings it wanted to launch to the market. Therefore, it decided it needed a billing and customer care solution that had the ability to consolidate all of the disparate systems to deliver a Tier 1 experience for its customers. One requirement that iTSCOM needed was a solution that provided the flexibility to set up multiple types of services. With this, it could then provide true value-add and turnkey
ease of the entire billing process to its future business interests, from provisioning and account activation to real-time charging, billing, customer care and invoicing, all accessed via the cloud. With such a converged billing solution, with its full suite of capabilities, iTSCOM can personalize each subscribers experience and differentiate it from its competitors through new innovative services and real-time cross-service promotions and bundles that it wants to deliver. Operating in one of the most active markets in the world, service providers such as iTSCOM always need to be thinking about how it can grow new revenue streams. iTSCOMs parent company signalled that wanted to expand into new areas such as security and financial services and launch Wi-Fi services in highly populated areas. Therefore, it needed to ensure that its billing solution was scalable and agile to fit these needs. Using a cloud-based solution, iTSCOM will be able to extend the new billing and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) capabilities beyond its cable company into these other business units and increase its efficiencies as well as provide a Tier 1 experience for its customers across the business. In addition, iTSCOM sees Japans dynamic cable industry as another route where it can develop new revenue streams. Currently, there are around 350 cable service companies in Japan, 90% of these companies have less than 100,000 customers. iTSCOM sees a market opportunity to consolidate this market by taking advantage of cloud-based ASP (Application Service Provider) service model, and offer robust Billing and CRM system capabilities to companies that otherwise may not have the resources to invest in themselves. Therefore, iTSCOMs investment in a next generation billing and customer care solution also needed to have the scalability and flexibility to support its aspirations to launch an ASP business model, elevate its multi-play cable service and the future support of its parent companys multiple business interests all on a single solution. In closing, what multi-play operators need to understand is that significant benefits can be achieved when supporting converged service offerings. But to make this happen, operators need to address their business support systems to ensure they have the right tools in place. With the right billing system in place, operators can achieve better economies of scale, increased business intelligence, a better customer experience, and the ability to support new services and technologies not only for today, but into the future. l
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Product experience: leveraging enterprise product management to enhance the customer experince
by Simon Muderack, CEO & Founder, Tribold
Customer experience is where Service Providers competitive edge lies. This experience is generated largely by the users interaction with the product throughout its life cycle. To stay competitive and deliver against customer expectations, the product portfolio must be managed, monitored and refreshed. These dynamic and complex products need to be managed through fragmented order-to-install stages. Since products are generated, changed and launched faster, automated approach is required. It may be hard to quantify loses from sub-optimal product experience but the benefits are clear - simplified and proactively managed product portfolio, lowers costs, streamlines offers, increases re-use of components and provides greater agility.
Simon Muderack is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) & Founder of Tribold. Prior to co-founding Tribold, Simon partnered closely with Communications enterprises from across the globe in Wireline, Wireless, Wholesale and Cable operations in structuring complex IT transformation programs during ten years with Accenture. He demonstrated his ability to engage the business together with IT and to identify and prove business value through technology led projects to the successful delivery of several large scale on and offshore solutions. Prior to Accenture, Simon worked in FMCG marketing for Del Monte foods in Europe and some time in Product Marketing for AT&T Global Information Solutions (NCR) based at European headquarters in the US.
The Communication Service Provider (CSP) industry is currently awash with talk about the importance of optimising the customer experience. The customer experience is considered to be a key area of differentiation, and delivering a good customer experience is essential for those CSPs who wish to retain existing customers and attract new ones from rivals. However, in order to truly optimise the customer experience, there is a vital dependency on optimising the product experience. The product experience is what underpins a satisfying customer experience. The products are what drive a customer to engage with a service provider. The diversity and attractiveness of offers and services are
what generate additional revenue, and the quality and consistency of the use of those products is what keeps the customer loyal. Ultimately, the customer experience is substantially defined by the customers interaction with the CSPs products, from purchase, to delivery, use and payment. At the same time, communications products and services are no longer static, long-lived or few in numbers. CSPs are increasingly defined by the products they offer, and to stay competitive and deliver against customer expectations they must manage and refresh a complex and dynamic product portfolio. To add further pressure, the increasingly competitive CSP market requires that service providers closely monitor how their products
are performing, so that they can make better commercial and strategic decisions, and continually evolve their product strategy. The business challenge behind the experience comes down to a basic premise: what should I be selling to my customers and what do I need to do to effectively deliver and manage that? The successful retailers who deliver on customer experience are the ones adept at product management and at understanding the relationship between customers wants and needs and the products designed to fulfil them. However, delivering on this targeted style of customer management on a large scale is only possible through an industrial (i.e. automated and scalable) approach to designing and managing products - not
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through the artisan (i.e. labour-intensive) approach that we commonly see throughout the industry. The central role of product in the customer experience When we consider what the customer experience actually involves, we quickly discover this is a rather more complex question than it first appears. It encompasses far more than just customer service or customer service channels, as important as these are to the customer experience. Rather it is defined by the sum of all the touch-points a customer has with a CSP. There are, in fact, a wide variety of touchpoints that together create the customer experience. The common element throughout an end-to-end experience, as Figure 1 shows, is the product: the product is being offered, sold, provisioned, used, billed for, or enquired about at a given touch-point. The lure of a particular product offer is often what attracts a customer to a CSP in the first place. How these products perform in terms of delivering against the customers evolving wants, needs or desires contributes substantially to customer satisfaction, retention, lifetime spending and support costs.
It is now broadly recognized that using a common reference of product information throughout the selecting, buying, using, paying and customer care phases holds the key to centralized control and effective management. With the product portfolio central to running the business itself, the requirements are obvious: a product management strategy that delivers simplification and accuracy; standardization with flexibility; reliability and low cost. Delivering this type of centralised product management not only optimises the product experience, but also increases operational efficiency in a wide range of processes and supports greater commercial agility. The benefits of delivering a better product experience Understanding, and ultimately managing, the key role that the product plays in the customer experience delivers a wide range of commercial, operational and customer benefits, as shown in Figure 2. Making the case for such an approach can be challenging, however, if trying to quantify the total losses as a result of a sub-optimal product experience. Direct losses (such as higher operational costs and billing errors) are spread over a number of operational areas, while indirect costs (such as opportunity costs or sub-optimal competitive positioning) are notoriously difficult to quantify. Alternatively, the upside of such an approach can be more easily quantified and even proven.
catalog, CSPs can deliver enormous benefits including lower costs, greater commercial and operational agility, and increased customer satisfaction. Investments aimed at improving the customer experience will be undermined if CSPs do not also invest in better product management, since the product experience is such an integral part of the customer experience. Likewise enhancing product management also complements investments made in business intelligence and analytics, as it supports a 360 view of products, enabling CSPs to monitor and optimise their performance. The importance of the product to a successful commercial strategy, and to the customer experience, means that CSPs now urgently need to consider how they manage their products so as not to risk undermining both their strategic goals and investments. Product Experience benefitting customer experience in the real world Gen-i is a division of Telecom New Zealand that brings together IT and communications services to provide converged ICT solutions (voice, data, mobile, cloud ICT and IT services) for businesses across New Zealand and Australia. Confronted by the duplication and redundancy across their product portfolio, with the high cost and low speed to market, the business rethought its entire approach to managing products. Gen-i identified poor product specification as one of the root causes. This was largely a result of inconsistent use of tools to support the concept-to-market process and this directly contributed to poor product performance, significant cost overruns and products being slow to market. Gen-i concluded it needed to select a single, centrally used product management tool to help resolve the central product management challenges. Having deployed a central product management tool, the product portfolio was rationalized to less than 50 in less than one year. Component reuse is fully enabled, contributing to a reduction of 6 months out of the 18 month concept to market process. Four different downstream systems now use a single, central product catalog for their product information requirements. l
Figure 1 The central role of the product in the customer experience
Why the product experience needs to be explicitly managed The central role of products in the customer experience makes it essential that CSPs have explicit control over the entire end-toend lifecycle of products, as well as having accurate and timely insight into how they are performing operationally, commercially and from the customers point-of-view. However, delivering this level of insight is often far from trivial, since the concept of product is fragmented throughout the order-to-install-to-cash-to-care process. Moreover, the proliferation of CSP products, the increasing velocity of product rollout, the speed of change and decreasing product lifespan mean that CSPs need to centrally and explicitly manage products.
Figure 2 Benefits derived from better product experience management
In summary By simplifying and explicitly managing the product in a single enterprise product
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Direct operator billing - A strategy to mitigate the OTT threat

by Nic Stirk, CEO, SLA Mobile
There is no denying that OTT players have shifted the centre of gravity of the mobile industry. Mobile operators can respond by adopting the two-sided model, facilitating merchants business on one side and driving it to the mass of consumers on the other. To do that, mobile operators need a Direct Operator Billing (DOB) system that exploits their biggest assets subscriber knowledge and operators trusted brand. They are best placed to deploy permission-based mobile marketing to gain consumers consent. DOB will build an ecosystem of downstream and upstream customers that can be further monetised when more consumer intelligence is utilized.
Nic Stirk is CEO of SLA Mobile. He is an entrepreneur, visionary and classic example of a transformational leader. He is responsible for transforming SLA Mobile from a professional services business to a solutions provider, which helps mobile operators across the globe monetise their network assets. Having gained a wealth of knowledge working with large Telcos in the past, Nic has led SLA Mobile to growth as a global Professional Services business and expand into APAC. Nic is a Chartered Director, graduate of the Stanford Business School and was awarded Member of the British Empire (MBE) status in 1995.
The mobile industry is seeing significant shifts in power and influence away from traditional Mobile Network Operators (MNO) such as SingTel, Axiata and Vodafone to Over the Top (OTT) players such as Apple, Facebook and Google, who have applied disruptive business and technology models that span a number of industries and sectors, not just mobile and telecoms. As technology has developed from first generation voice and text services to mobile data, mobile internet and Rich Communication Services power has shifted from the MNO who owns the network to businesses that have developed frameworks, technologies and services that give the consumer the ability to develop their own content, media and entertainment. In effect,
Facebook is a framework and a set of tools that allows users to input and build their own communication network. The challenge for MNOs is how to mitigate the growing threat from OTT players and how to stop themselves from becoming a dumb pipe, whereby their revenue is generated from declining voice, text and data transactions whilst real value is created from social media platforms and web companies that leverage the growing smart phone market. With an asset rich infrastructure, historical and real-time consumer personal data, it is argued that the MNO is ideally placed to mitigate the growing threat from OTT organisations by executing a strategy of monetising network and personal data assets.
Figure 1: The OTT Threat
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merchant engagement, but rather begins with an awareness campaign to the upstream customers. This will highlight the value that DOB can bring to their businesses as a trusted payment method, which can sit equally alongside more traditional methods such as cash and credit cards. Once engaged with the MNO, the merchant needs a seamless and easy way to access the platform. The MNOs DOB infrastructure needs to adopt a 2.0 / Amazon approach to merchant engagement after all most merchants are not technologists and they need to focus on their day jobs. Monetising the MNO billing platform assets through a DOB proposition should be a significant stepping stone to further monetisation of network and personal data assets. Executed successfully, DOB will build an ecosystem of downstream and upstream customers that can now be further monetised. With a scalable platform and a team that can culturally bridge the divide between the MNO and industry verticals, the MNO will be in a position to work with those verticals to identify propositions that bring sustainable new revenue streams to both sides of the ecosystem, whilst enhancing the customer experience. A leading operator in Indonesia who needs to collaborate with a global insurance provider is one such case. The case study centres on the operators objective of reducing churn in a predominantly prepaid market, focusing on the low-income segment, where insurance such as life cover is virtually non-existent. Using the Right Time, Right Place Marketing proposition the operator can detect in realtime when subscribers with the correct profile require a top-up and can incentivise them to top-up with a reward of free life insurance for a period of time. This use case satisfies the conditions of win-win-win of the two-sided business model, whilst at the same time enabling the operator to fulfil
Figure 2: Two-Sided Business Model
A word on Personal Data: The World Economic Forum (WEF) in their January 2011 publication, Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class1, have said that we are moving towards a web of the world in which mobile communications, social technologies and sensors are connecting people, the internet and the physical world into one interconnected network. In the same publication, the WEF believe that: personal data will be the new oil, and will emerge as a new asset class touching all aspects of society. Having worked with a number of leading mobile operators in the APAC region, this article suggests that the MNO should develop a two-sided business model for the monetisation of network assets, and that a quick win could be achieved by monetising the MNOs billing assets and introducing Direct Operator Billing (DOB) for upstream industry verticals, merchants and enterprises. It is also recommended that the MNO collaborate, and not compete head-on with the OTT players. The needs of the stakeholders in a two-sided business model that is focussed on DOB require the following: - The downstream customer and consumer of DOB require a service that is underpinned by trust in the relationship with their MNO, simplicity with how the transaction is made with both the Merchant and MNO, and a transaction that is financially secure. - The upstream customers, merchants and enterprises require a low cost implementation route to DOB and one that can form part of an overall m-commerce strategy - a business model that can compete with other payment options and ensures margins are maintained or increased, and finally a product and
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solution roadmap that can bring value-added propositions which can complement DOB. So assuming the MNO has recognised the sustained value in a two-sided business model, and decided to implement a strategy to monetise network and personal data assets, they need to start by asking themselves three questions: Do I recognise the threat from OTT players? Do I want to adopt a Smart Pipe strategy? Do I recognise the strategic value of DOB? Assuming the MNO answers yes, they now need to execute. The MNO may have their own DOB delivery capability, however if they do not they should explore a partnering approach that ensures their brand remains central to the DOB proposition that is presented to the merchant and enterprise. After all, the MNO brand is the biggest asset they have. Yes, the merchants brand owns the consumer, however it is recommended that the MNO and not an aggregator owns the merchant. The consumer also needs to continue to recognise that the MNO brings trust, simplicity, and security not a branded mediator such as an aggregator as currently exists within the Premium SMS market. The MNO wants a partner that can be an extension of their own business, not a branded third party that owns the merchant relationship. They will want a partner that sees DOB as one of a multitude of assets that can be used to increase consumer value, retention and sustainability. They also want a partner that can share the risk and reward through an innovative business model. Within their DOB launch plan, the MNO needs to develop a merchant engagement strategy that does not start with direct MNO-
Figure 4: The Five Areas to Unlock Consumer Data, (Source: Forrester Research, Inc)
http://www.weforum.org/issues/rethinking-personal-data An introduction to Permission Based Mobile Marketing, 3rd October 2011, Issued by the Mobile Marketing Association Personal Identity Management, by Fatemeh Khatibloo, Forrester, October 2011, p.7
n
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The MNO is facing significant challenges from the young, nimble, disruptive business models from OTT players such as Facebook, Apple and Google. However, they have a number of very significant assets, that if exploited via a well thought out and executed strategy can deliver a significant competitive advantage that the OTT players do not have. The future for charging and billing is in the exposure of appropriate billing MNO assets to trusted merchants and industry verticals, and in using DOB as the catalyst for further monetisation of other network and personal data assets. MNOs hold large volumes of consumer personal data relating to call records, location, spend and key relationships derived from calling patterns, as well as personal data related to search habits and social media usage. MNOs need to reflect hard on their ability to execute a strategy of monetising network assets, making best use of the technology and more importantly bridging over to the culture that the OTT players have. If not cannot do that, they need to find a partner quick. l
their corporate social responsibility role. As the MNO builds upon their DOB successes, leverages the ecosystem they have built that is monetising their network and personal data assets, they will need to consider the challenging area of permissions. Before an MNO can build upon their success from DOB and extend their strategy to further monetisation of their assets, they need to rebuild subscriber trust on how they use Personal Data. To do that they will need to develop and implement Permissions Technology that is trusted and transparent for the user. The Mobile Marketing Association ( MMA) defines permissions-based mobile
marketing as: The practice of gaining consent from consumers in advance of a continuing marketing dialogue that is taking place on mobile devices and in return for some kind of value exchange2 . The MMA also goes on to say that MNOs have the opportunity to gain on two broad counts through permission-based mobile marketing: They can increase customer satisfaction and also open up new revenue streams by partnering with content creators and advertisers. Forrester 3 believes that Marketers need to focus on five areas to unlock consumer data Privacy, Security, Transparency, Portability, Economy and Privacy, as outlined in figure 4.
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The rise of machines

by David Burks, VP for APAC and MEA, Orga Systems
The evolution of charging and billing in Telecom has enabled operators to move to realtime convergent technology and support machine to machine (M2M) communications. However, Connected Living impacts on other industries, like utilities, automotive and transportation, who are also implementing M2M solutions. The best billing solutions for them are those that were developed for the Telecom industry. The big challenge for these industries, which traditionally have not sought new features before, is to find further M2M services and entice customers through attractive offers. These services need to be monetised and add value while personalising the customer engagement. The new real-time billing machine is perfect for that.
David Burks is Orga Systems vice president (VP) for APAC. David Burks 25-year career includes broad experience within the software and services industries, both in the US and Internationally. He has held senior positions at IBM, Lucent and British Telecom, as well as several ISVs, especially those specialising in BSS and OSS domains, including Kenan, Metasolv, Vallent and Objective Systems Integrators. Having spent the past 20-years living and working in Singapore, David has a keen understanding of the regional markets and enjoys strong relationships with operators, ISVs and system integrators. As VP APAC and MEA, David is now responsible for Orga Systems regional growth strategy.
Introduction Living in a connected world has had an enormous impact on the telecom industry. Despite being given a cursory lick of next generation paint every year or so, legacy charging and billing models can no longer support the myriad of increasing complexities required by operators and subscribers. It is not just outmoded technologies fuelling demand for better services from telcos - its the way most operators run their businesses. They are still running all-you-can-eat flatrate tariffs to appease consumer demand for anytime-anyplace services. That has led to huge bandwidth and traffic handling issues for incumbent telcos and its driving down
profit margins while creating service issues for some of their subscribers. In the mobile space alone, leading analysts predict an eighteen-fold increase in broadband traffic between 2011 and 2016, reaching 10.8 exabytes per month by 2016. Thats a massive traffic and data management pain point, and many telco operators dont have the infrastructure to deal with it. Extrapolate that beyond mobile broadband and the figures are even more formidable. So where does this snapshot leave the telecom industry? - It is banking on the evolution of charging and billing, and the rise of machine to machine (M2M) communication to take hold.
Next generation real-time charging and billing Legacy payment models are being replaced by real-time charging and billing solutions, offering telco operators monetised services and scalable, customer-centric facilities designed to incentivise subscribers through flexible tiered payments, personalised engagement and value added services. These next generation charging and billing technologies would not be viable without M2M - the invaluable connective solution for telco operators which has exploded on the scene in our connected world. In fact, Cisco reports predict M2M connections
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will increase from 81.8 million in 2011 to almost 217.5 million in 2015. That makes M2M one of the biggest wireless growth sectors. The trajectory of M2M has left most future gazers polishing their crystal balls in bafflement. Thats because its being used in a disparate array of industries as a solution that no analysts had predicted. Why? Connected Living doesnt exist in a hermetically sealed telco vacuum - it has an impact on an eclectic array of industries including utilities, automotive and transportation. Now the worlds of telcos, utilities, automotive and transportation telematics have collided with M2M, creating a cross-industry convergence thats looking to real-time charging and billing to manage their diverse range of stakeholders. A convergence of factors has made the rise of M2M possible. We all know a smart mobile connected device is the communications platform du jour with most of us hooked up to smartphones and tablets for work and play. While its big now, its only going to get bigger. According to Machina Research, the number of devices connected to short range or wide area wireless networks worldwide will almost triple over the next ten years, from 9 billion in 2011 to 24 billion in 2020, with so many mobile connected devices to service, its only logical that the growth of mobile payment models will expand in tandem - and so it is. According to Smith Point Analytics, mobile payments for goods are expected to total over $750 billion worldwide by 2015 and will soon take over credit card sales. Those payment systems include everything from near-field communications (NFC) and QR (Quick Response) codes to mobile point of sale and the humble SMS, offering a payment pipeline to make M2M a viable economic reality. The success of Apple and Googles apps markets was a compelling catalyst, helping to jumpstart consumer demand for mobile payment models that are now rolling out and being tailored for these very different industries. M2M challenge As early adopters of M2M solutions, these collective industries traditionally dont know how to maximise the impact for their business strategies and their customer needs. Historically, utilities, transportation and automotive industries have never had to engage their stakeholders by developing relationships with their end-users. Aside from a bill through a door at the end of
every month for utilities companies, most of these industries simply didnt have any value added services because their businesses didnt need any. However, connected world M2M solutions have effectively turned these disparate industries to Communication Service Providers (CSPs) with an entirely new remit bolted on to their existing business models something most of those industries have to learn from scratch, on the fly. Like any business with a vested interest in M2M, these industries need to offer monetised services through maximised revenue streams. They need to design solutions that capitalise on M2M to give their customers services they wouldnt otherwise have. In such a competitive environment, adding real-time charging and billing models that use M2M are vital to keep investors and shareholders happy while keeping customers loyal. The big challenge then for these industries is how to adopt and manage M2M: How to provide the best use of added value through extra services; how to handle customer data better though real-time convergent charging and billing; and finally, how to incentivise offerings like personalised mobile marketing for connected solutions. Telcos answering the call This is where the telco industry steps in. While these industries are different, the business needs are the same as the telcos. Therefore, different industries have started to integrate real-time M2M charging and billing solutions, which are tried and tested telco technologies. Telcos have had a head start in the connected world. They are using real-time charging and billing with management of information and customer data to create better revenue streams through personalised services. These telco specific technologies also offer better scalability to deal with the vast amount of connected devices. They can deal with tiered tariffs and have a built in flexibility, offering these industries better services. Out of all telco stakeholders, its mobile operators that are uniquely placed to bring about connected life. They own and manage advanced mobile networks, have scalable customer relationship management (CRM) and billing systems, distribute and provision large numbers of devices and are accustomed to partnering with other companies. Thats why utilities, automotive
and transportation telematics companies are turning to mobile operators providers to deploy the same M2M charging and billing infrastructure that they have been using as proven and road-tested technologies. Mobile operators also have what it takes to deliver those services efficiently, securely and costeffectively. Thats because they offer an end-to-end package with network scalability, interoperability, real-time quality of service and the security of both the networks as well as devices attached to it. Utilities If utility industries want to make the most of their M2M services, they need IT-based networking solutions designed to help them overcome these challenges. In the utilities sector, M2M growth will be driven by demand for smart metering to help energy providers meet regulatory requirements by reducing carbon emissions. Using real-time M2M smart energy management systems, providers can regulate energy use for their consumers by helping them make decisions that store energy during peak times for use in off-peak times - at a stroke, creating a more cost-effective model for energy consumption. These systems break down customer usage information on a granular level, providing vital information for companies to manage users and services. However, utility companies also need to know how best to manage services, maximise revenue, look after huge volumes of data and traffic, and keep customers loyal. Thats why so many are turning to mobile operators to help them install M2M solutions. Real-time charging and billing from mobile operators becomes essential for utilities to handle smart meters and M2M deployment. They provide real-time data processing, dynamic tariff management and close customer interaction. Automotive The automotive industry has seen the rise of M2M though connected smart cars using intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Analysts claim that 90% of new cars in 2020 will have some form of in-vehicle connectivity, adding US$600 billion to the connected life economy. One of the biggest M2M uses will be revenue generation through areas like tracking logistics. Again, automotive organisations are turning to operators to map M2M solutions to their workflows. Some well-known luxury cars
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manufacturers have already signed up to include real-time billing and customer management information, which will include statistics about your car for driver self-care. Thanks to the evolution of real-time charging and billing, the automotive industry can now provide a host of M2M solutions, from in-car service innovations with media rich applications and mobility products like smart car rental schemes to on-board infotainment services. Transportation telematics Similarly, the transportation industry has been relying on telco providers to offer M2M telematics services, providing telco technology to charge, manage and monetise services. It is set to explode leading analysts claimed that transportation telematics will have the biggest growth rate for M2M applications, going from 90 million global connections in 2010 to 1.4 billion by the end of 2020. Thats bigger than any of the other nascent M2M industries and will set the benchmark for fully integrated telco provider solutions.
Not only have the solutions been used for real-time tracking and automated monitoring of fleets and value added services like road charging, M2M has also been used in GPS systems to track or charge vehicles by using real-time monitoring. Their customers include anyone from highway authorities and travel information services to government departments. Major global players in logistics, Sat Navs and car manufacturers, have already been trialling these M2M services and other big brands are signing up to roll the technology out. Conclusion The evolution of charging and billing has created some exciting new M2M applications and industries in our connected world. Were seeing technology from telco providers deployed in diverse areas that have been hard for analysts to predict. We cant wait to see where utility companies, the automotive industry and transportation telematics take the technology in the future. We cant wait to see how M2M is deployed by other industries looking for connected world solutions.
Whatever applications M2M has in different industries, they will be managed by real-time billing and charging telco technology. Using these converged telco platform is the most cost-efficient, scalable and flexible way to handle M2M communications. They provide monetised and value added services that arent possible on other platforms. More importantly, they help the new M2M industries build better services because they get a better understanding of their customers - the most valuable asset any business can have. l
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global Mining it & Communication summit 2012

~The Industry vision towards smart IT~
20 21 November 2012, Hilton London Kensington Hotel, London, united Kingdom
overvieW
Due to globalization and constant changing market dynamics, mining companies are facing financial challenges and pressures, leading to increased need for sustainable integrated information management systems. Mining companies are progressively becoming aware of the benefits offered by IT & Communication and are strategically working towards integrating advanced technology systems and solutions to manage day-to-day operational complexities and optimize corporate efficiency. Although mining companies are investing more in Information technology and development, there are key concern areas that need to be addressed.
kal ruberg, teck resources (Canada) Chief Information Officer Perry harris, Anglo American (united kingdom) Workplace & Collaboration Systems Manager Baldomero gutierrez, Fresnillo Plc (Mexico) Chief Information Officer evgeny Charkins, severstal (russia) Chief Information Officer strini Mudaly, gold Fields (south Africa) Vice President & Group Head of Information Technology gustavo Brancante, Alcoa (Brazil) Manager Innovation Technology Jorge garcia, newmont Mining Corporation (Peru) Service Delivery Manager Janade sewnarain, eastern Platinum (south Africa) Group IT Manager oscar Cueva, Ambatovy (Madagascar) Information Technology Manager
Mike Popham, Centre for strategic Cyberspace security science (CsCss) (uk) Chief Operation Officer Patrick Mcilwee, Centre for strategic Cyberspace security science (CsCss) (uk) Senior Vice President-Information Security dr. sean dessureault, university of Arizona (usA) Director of the Mine Intelligence Research Group and President of Mining Information Systems and Operations Management (MISOM) Consulting Services Inc eugenio kollmann, hochschild Mining (Peru) Chief Information Officer Pertti lamberg, lule university of technology (sweden) Professor in Geometallurgy speaker from MicroMine speaker from ventyx speaker from ge industrial Communications
distinguished sPeAkers
the Global Mining it & Communication summit will: Address key issues evolving in current IT Space. Explore way outs for Secured IT Highlight value added benefits of ERP across verticals. Discuss benefits of investing in IT Systems and evaluate ROI Showcase future mining technologies to enhance overall corporate performance Discover advance communication technologies to improve mine site connectivity Present real time case studies by industry leaders and experts.
Who should Attend?

CIO, COO, Group IT Managers, IT Managers, Heads of IT, Business development Managers, GIS Managers, IT Infrastructure specialist, Database Managers, Mine Operations Managers, IT Architects, Operations Managers, IT Business partners, Networking Engineers, Networking Administrators, Project Development Managers, Process Managers, Project Leaders, System Leads, Senior IT Managers, Global IT Heads, ITS Managers, System Analysts, GIS Analysts, GIS Managers, Network Managers, Software Developers, Software Engineers, Database Administrator, IS Superintendents, Mining Technology Managers, Program Managers, IST advisors, Mobile Equipment Analysts, Consultants, Solution Providers.
Philppe Cavrot, eramet (France) Deputy Chief Information Officer david Asher, great Panther silver limited (Canada) Vice President, Technology Services James ross, deBeers (Canada) Head of Information Technology dean stetson, rio tinto (usA) Information Technology Systems Lead
stephen Buchard, iAMgold (Canada) Information Technology Manager Jason kozar, hudbay Minerals (Canada) Information Technology Manager heather drews, Cliffs natural resources (usA) Information Technology Manager kobus Pienaar, Wesizwe Platinum (south Africa) Group Information Technology Manager
Advisory PAnel
Mining Partner:
Platinum Sponsor:
Principal Partner:
Silver Sponsor:
Lead Media Partner:
Intuitive Mining Solutions
Total Convergence
by Louis Hall, CEO, Cerillion Technologies
BSS has already gone through convergence -Fixed-Mobile, Voice-Data and Pre/Post pay, but carriers are still hamstrung by inadequate systems. This is due to lack coherent modular infrastructure, business cases that relied purely on cost shaving and failure to converge the organisation culture and processes. These challenges can be overcome by a converged architecture that provides for a separation of transport from the applications and can support new services and new revenues. This practical framework, which is derived from the TMF Application Framework, is dubbed Total Convergence Architecture. It allows operators to implement it in different ways at different times. It encompasses marketing, policy and customer management as well as billing and it allows the organisation to gradually converge their mindset too.
Louis Hall is the CEO of Cerillion Technologies. Louis led the Management Buyout of Cerillion from Logica in 1999 and has led the successful development of the business over the last 13 years. Prior to this, he led Logicas in-house customer care and billing product group. Louis has worked in the telecoms industry for over 20 years, primarily in the BSS/OSS space.
Convergent Billing, as we know it, has undergone several major evolutions over the past 20 years. First, we had fixedmobile convergence - the ability to bill for both fixed and mobile services on a single platform. Then came voice-datacontent convergence - being able to bill for all these types of service on one system. Most recently, there has been paymentmethod convergence - also known as convergent charging or pre-paid-post-paid convergence. Despite much of the hype surrounding these flavours of convergence, there are still many Communications Services Providers (CSPs) in the Asia-Pacific
region, and the rest of the world, who are hamstrung by limitations in their Business Support Systems (BSS) infrastructure, which are not able to support these three dimensions. Whilst CSPs prevaricate over the ownership of the charging infrastructure and their relative business priorities, OverThe-Top (OTT) service providers are happily eating away at their revenues and stealing the hearts, minds and wallets of the end customers. So what is going wrong? With most vendors claiming to have introduced these convergent features many years ago, why are there so few successful deployments around the world? We firmly believe that
take-up of convergent billing has been slow not specifically due to technical constraints, but due to a combination of poorly built business cases and lack of a coherent infrastructure or methodology for implementing such solutions. In the past, many of the business cases for convergent BSS were based solely on the perceived benefits of removing duplicated functions in separate systems. The logic was: less systems equals less cost, and less systems equals faster time-to-market, as offerings can be developed in one central place. But, and this is a really big but, there was an enormous obstacle to be cleared first - namely the cost and risk
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of moving everything onto one super-size system. This is where the business case usually fell down. Without a solid business case that also delivers revenue growth or customer retention, very few CSPs have been prepared to make such an investment. If we look specifically at convergent charging technology, the 3GPP standards have evolved tremendously and formed a very solid foundation upon which to build the appropriate technical capabilities. However, these technical capabilities are not the end of the story, they are the means by which a CSP can re-invent its business model to monetise new services and create a more compelling customer experience. Of course, convergence also poses business as well as technical challenges - building organisational convergence is essential for the successful deployment of the technical solution. Some new 4G licensees will have the luxury of building a completely new systems architecture, perhaps taking advantage of emerging cloud-based solutions. The critical question for established CSPs is, and always has been, how to transform their BSS architecture from where they are today to the convergent world they so desperately need? As with all issues in the BSS/OSS space, the concepts can appear straightforward but delivering a successful implementation requires clear understanding of strategic objectives, ability to react quickly in order to address problems as they arise, and experience of complex businesstransformation projects. CSPs can today be optimistic that these challenges can be overcome thanks to the evolution of network architecture and a clear separation of transport from the applications and services. This is leading to a layered BSS/ OSS model with common functions shared by multiple services. The TM Forum Application Framework (TAM) provides a functional model within which BSS and OSS applications can be aligned, using a common set of terminology and functional mapping. From this we can derive the practical building blocks required to deliver a fully convergent solution, and in doing so, help CSPs identify what they want to achieve from convergence and provide a structure to enable them to accomplish these goals. At Cerillion, we call this the Total Convergence Architecture (TCA).
Critically, its not just about having a single charging engine for all services. Each layer in this architectural framework has a set of functions which need to be tackled. However, CSPs may not need to implement the complete model to achieve their desired level of convergence. The framework recognises that every business situation is different and aims to provide an architecture within which a variety of approaches can be followed at different levels of the model. For example, at the customer management level, moving customer care and self-care onto a unified platform enables a common level of service to be delivered to all customers, irrespective of how they choose to pay, while service level convergence allows CSPs to offer hybrid services that sometimes behave according to post-paid rules and sometimes operate in pre-paid mode. In the simplest case, a voice service could be defined as post-paid, charged to a business account during office hours, and pre-paid from a personal wallet during out-of-office hours. Whatever options are taken, with the emergence of the TCA framework, prospects for the successful transformation to a convergent BSS / OSS architecture have become much brighter, bringing the opportunity for CSPs in Asia-Pacific to rationalise systems, grow revenues and offer a convergent experience to their customers.
The TCA framework can help deliver the maximum value from a CSPs existing investments whilst addressing the complete lifecycle of customers, products, service and revenues. Critically, it also takes into account that CSPs may not implement convergence in the same way, or at the same time, so there will always be exceptions which must be catered for without resorting to the addition of new system stacks to support a particular customer or service segment. CSPs also need to recognise that convergence is not just a one-off project that can be completed and then forgotten about. It must become a way of working and a culture by which CSPs conduct their whole businesses. Only when this mindset is achieved will the true value of convergence be delivered. The current economic climate and intense competitive pressures mean that total convergence simply has to move from being a target system environment for the future, to a business imperative for the here and now. l
Figure 1 - Total Convergence Architecture
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Customer is king
The Power of One: Increasing customer loyalty with real-time, targeted offers
by Yann Chevalier, CEO, Intersec
Customer Base Management (CBM) is the system that helps marketing departments to produce highly targeted campaigns to reduce churn, engender loyalty and improve customer experience. CBM must cope with high volume of event-based information to glean insightful information from Big Data. It must operate in real-time for timely activation of incentives and offers. It is especially effective for stimulating usage, reviving inactive accounts, preventing at risk customers churning and up-selling renewals. CBM must empower the marketing team to analyse data, create meaningful segments, launch campaigns and evaluate results without seeking help from the IT department.
Brian Troesch is the Senior VP of Sales and Marketing, and Business Development at Arbinet Corporation; he also serves as the Senior Vice President, Global Sales, Marketing & Product Development. Previously, Mr Troesch held the position of Sr. Vice President, Product & Business Development. Mr Troesch brings Arbinet more than 14 years of management experience in sales, network and product development in fixed and mobile telecommunications. Before joining Arbinet, Mr Troesch served as Regional Vice President, Americas for Belgacom ICS, S.A. Mr Troesch previously held various positions at Edge2Net, Inc., BellSouth Long Distance, Inc., Pacific Gateway Exchange, Inc. and U.S. Long Distance, Inc. Brian Troesch is a graduate of the University of Texas at San Antonio.
The mobile market is an increasingly competitive environment and the rise of new entrants such as OTT (Over The Top) players is changing the rules of the game by bypassing the operators and striking up direct relationships with subscribers. High smartphone penetration rates and 3G service consumption are today an established trend in mature mobile markets, while high market volatility and price wars are undeniable factors in emerging markets. Indeed, operators are under considerable pressure to find new and innovative ways to engage with customers, ensure ROI (Return On Investment) and reduce churn. While the Asia-Pacific region is composed of both mobile market extremes, two common trends are driving the regional telco industry: the push for cost optimization and tailored customer service. Consequently, operators need to find new ways to increase the value of their customer base by offering highly personalised and targeted offers, in real-
time, based on subscribers actual behaviour. Harnessing these behaviour patterns to create tailored marketing propositions is a powerful way in which mobile operators can dramatically improve their customer loyalty and engagement and strengthen their relationship with subscribers through customer knowledge enrichment. Today Customer Base Management solutions exist that can effectively fulfil this function and such technology is already installed in many emerging market countries by both Tier One and recently launched operators. The technology has proven particularly effective in targeting the pre-paid user community, where operators hold scant information, enabling them to make timely offers to encourage top ups and gain greater loyalty from subscribers switching between multiple SIMs. In these highly competitive emerging markets, this type of technology has been proven to increase ARPU by 5-9 per cent per annum. Surprisingly, operators in APAC still
have a lower adoption rate of such solution compared to other regional markets. The purpose of this article is to examine the merits of the latest Customer Base Management Solutions and share examples of how operators have deployed them to best effect. Defining a customer base management solution Firstly, let us start by defining what we mean by a Customer Base Management (CBM) Solution. Frequently confused with Customer Relationship Management (CRM), a CBM is an end-to-end solution that provides marketing teams with comprehensive information to analyse and segment users, based on their behaviour and creates tailored campaigns to meet the individuals specific needs in real-time. The aim of these solutions is to deliver highly targeted campaigns to reduce churn, engender loyalty and improve customer experience.
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Customer is king
Traditional CRM solutions are not capable of processing the high volume of event-based information that an operator generates through the day-to-day activities of its consumer base, including all Call Data Records (CDRs), but instead focuses on providing in-depth analysis of smaller volumes of data. In a world obsessed with Big Data, nowhere is the thirst for insightful customer information more sought after than in the Telco sector and operators equipped with a CBM solution avoid facing risky decision-making based on assumptions or unrelated data. Customer Base Management solutions sit in the network core collecting meta data about all network events concerning the type and pattern of usage of both voice and data traffic and building up a valuable profile of the individual, their preferences, habits and lifestyles. The CBM is also integrated into the organizations billing, Intelligent Network, Data Warehousing and CRM systems offering three key advantages: customer knowledge, contextual data to ensure optimal timing and targeting, all of which help to arrive at the age-old marketing mantra of providing the right products, to the right people at the right time. Real-time reporting is vital to increasing an operators reactivity and identifying new consumption patterns rapidly, ahead of competitors. Making an impact in emerging markets In todays world, the mobile device is no longer seen as a luxury item but is widely viewed as a commodity. Mobile penetration is approaching, even exceeding 100 per cent. In this climate, the emphasis for all operators, even in emerging countries, has long since moved from customer acquisition to focus on increasing customer usage and loyalty and reducing churn. To this end, CBMs have been used very effectively in the pre-paid environment where aggressive price wars have served simply to cut operator margins and the Holy Grail has long since moved from price-cutting to delivering extra value. One of the main challenges operators face in these markets is the lack of accurate and reliable subscriber consumption data, limiting considerably their effectiveness in implementing an effective customer loyalty programme. A Loyalty Management system would prove particularly effective for operators who want to increase usage of their service in a market typified by users with two or more SIM cards. Such users alternate between operators to use the same operator as their friend or family member to reduce call charges. To counter this tendency
the operator offered incentives based on the number of calls received to encourage them to keep their SIM in the phone longer. Being able to identify the normal pattern of topups for users and sending a timely reminder just before their credit expires can be useful for consumers. This offers operators an early warning that someone may be considering changing to another operator, thus prompting a more enticing incentive. The results of such loyalty strategy have been shown to successfully increase annual Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) by 5-9 per cent per year and decrease churn by between ten and 20 per cent annually, enabling reaching ROI within three to nine months. Nonetheless, the relevance of behaviourbased solutions is not only limited to emerging countries or pre-paid environments. Mature markets pose their own set of challenges and the recent trend for All-You-Can-Eat bundles has resulted in the operators losing touch with how consumers are using their services. This lack of visibility has itself created difficulties in knowing the optimal timing to offer incentives such as a handset renewal or a service migration. Top-ups themselves are another service where timing is critical. There are a number of applications where CBMs have proven to be particularly effective. These include: usage stimulation, inactive account revival, securing At Risk customers, offering migrations or up-selling and handset renewals. Equally there are a range of offers that have been proven to be effective in achieving these goals such as: Incoming call bonuses, Opt-ins to gain bonuses and service subscription incentives where subscribers - who for example are using Ring Tones - might be incentivised to try Ring Back Tones in return for a particular offer. In-House vs off-the-shelf Whilst the wisdom of deploying Customer Base Management Solutions can offer excellent rewards for operators, its worth considering carefully the different approaches to obtaining such a system. Firstly, there is the choice between developing such a solution in-house versus a customisable offthe-shelf alternative. Secondly, when you opt for the latter - what criteria should you consider in choosing between the various solutions available on the market? Lets deal with the choice of custombuilt or off-the-shelf. Developing such a sophisticated system from scratch would take years and entail a major investment
of both time and money. Outsourcing the task to a company, whose core business is developing such solutions, who possesses extensive experience and knowledge in this specialist market area seems much less risky. However, before going down this route, it would be wise to evaluate the range of customisable solutions available which can be integrated and fully deployed within a 3-4 month timeframe. Operators need to ensure that their chosen solution is able to process effectively high volumes of data in order to facilitate real-time offers and ensure it has the ability to quickly analyse trends in usage or competitors activity and instantly respond with a tailored campaign. Another key requirement is the ease of use. A key prerequisite of CBMs is the ability to empower the marketing team to analyse data, create meaningful segments, launch campaigns and evaluate results without relying on the IT department. An intuitive and easy-to-use solution will optimize internal processes, increasing marketing professionals autonomy and saving precious resources. Another point worth remembering is to ensure that your chosen solution is able to deal with fixed, mobile and CDMA traffic using multiple channels and multiple screens. These are important factors for operators and are the reason why it is generally advisable to work with a specialist provider of these solutions as it not only reduces the Time To Market (TTM) but the technology is now widely recognised and has been specifically developed to address the telco industry demands. Winning the hearts and minds of customers So returning once again to the original premise for this article in examining how understanding and dissecting actual usage patterns and behaviour can allow operators to create highly segmented, personalised offers to individuals or groups of subscribers, we should not forget the consumers perspective. In todays market OTT competitors like Google and Apple are battling with incumbents and new operators for the hearts and minds of the mobile consumer, while margins are under attack like never before. The ability to create individually tailored services based on a customers known preferences and behaviour at the optimal time, via the channel they are most engaged with, will have an equally favourably impact on the customer experience. Operators around the globe, both in the emerging territories and the mature markets, are now truly realizing the Power of One and opting to deliver tailored propositions to delight and engage their customer base. l
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Customer is king
The Subscriber: The Overlooked Variable in the Policy Management and Enforcement Equation
by Dr Weiming Li, Vice President & General Manager, Comverse Asia Pacific
LTE alone will not resolve all the current networks challenges. A customer-centric solution to marketing, policy and charging is needed. This Subscriber-and-Network-Aware approach is based on unified information, unified functionality, and a single service creation point. It offers advanced policy, multi-channel and real-time-anywhere capabilities. CSPs can transform customer data into actionable marketing-oriented information based on analytics of both real-time and historic information. This can be used for generating creative offers, e.g. bundling M2M and Enterprise Cloud Computing services with personal communications services or bundling multi-device in data services packages. Advanced systems can also facilitate revenue sharing with OTT. CSPs could even offer targeted marketing to 3rd party advertisers, OTT and retailer partners.
Dr Weiming Li is currently the Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific at Comverse Technology Inc. Weiming brings to Comverse over 20 years of distinguished career in the IT and telecom industry, especially in sales of complex software systems and consulting services to leading communications service providers in the region. Prior to Comverse, Weiming was the vice president and general manager of Oracles Communications Global Business Unit in Asia Pacific and Japan. Before joining Oracle, Weiming worked for Narus as its vice president and general manager in Asia Pacific. Narus is a Silicon Valley based start-up specializing in carrier-class security software for the worlds largest IP networks. Weiming single handedly built its APAC team and contributed more than 50% of companys new sales during his tenure there. Earlier, Weiming was the vice president of sales, APAC Division of Amdocs, a leading software vendor for billing and customer management solutions. He was instrumental in establishing the Amdocs brand in Asia Pacific and won several sales awards in recognition of his strong leadership and his understanding of the APAC market. Prior to that, Weiming was the vice president and general manager of eBusiness Solutions of Nortel Networks, where he achieved steady growth under very tough economic conditions in the early 2000s. For the previous seven years, Weiming was the founder and CEO of Info Power (Aust) Pty Ltd, a consulting company delivering IT business solutions to small and medium enterprises (SME) in Australia. Weiming is a graduate from the East China Normal University with a Bachelor of Science degree, and holds a Masters degree and PhD from the University of New South Wales in Australia.
New Connected Opportunities Call for the Tight Linkage of Network and IT Elements to Uncover Advanced Charging, Billing & Customer Management As the telecommunications landscape continued to evolve over the past few years smart devices, consumers expectations for on-demand access to a bevy of data intensive services, including over-the-top (OTT) services, and new business models, such as M2M (Machine to Machine) and Enterprise Cloud Computing, all have compounded the effects on the CSP (Communication Service Provider) network capacity and performance. At the same time, new challenges have surfaced in monetization, marketing, competition, and customer management. Given the recent update of the GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association) to their Long Term Evolution (LTE) growth forecast - 150 commercial LTE network in 64 countries by end of 2012 - it is evident that CSPs are focusing on the network aspects, counting on LTE network technologies to remedy
network capacity and performance concerns in light of skyrocketing data consumption. However, LTE investments will not remedy the other challenges. CSPs should apply lessons learned from flat-rate pricing/offering schemes for 3G bandwidth access - which led to skyrocketing data usage and flat/declining data revenues and paved the way for OTT players to reap the profits. In fact these challenges, specifically monetization, will only be amplified by LTE networks (note video is being called the defining service of LTE) and even more so with Voice-over LTE based networks where subscribers can access multiple services simultaneously - for instance video calling and perform on-demand content downloads, with seamless service continuity across devices and networks. Hence, to extract value from network investments in the connected world, BSS should not be an afterthought. CSPs will need to be able to combine subscriber profile information and network knowledge
while sharing this information across the organization to capture the value of the connectivity being provided in the most efficient, customer-centric manner. Subscriber-and-Network-Aware Charging Policy &
The essence of such an approach is tying together all aspects of the customer relationship, network resource management and monetization when defining and enforcing traffic and pricing schemes. A subscriber-and-network-aware approach manages and enforces traffic and charging policies based on any combination of service, application, content, website, network condition or device type - taking into account quality of service and the customers profile and history further bolstered by an ability to monitor usage and take real-time actions on thresholds and quotas. This will ensure that pricing for services will not only reflect network-focused dimensions like speed but also be reflective of perceived subscriber value in terms of an enhanced
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Customer is king
experience. The ability to leverage subscriber/ account information when managing and enforcing traffic and charging policies will also be essential for M2M and Enterprise Cloud Computing services where meeting guaranteed levels of service are contractual. Bringing such an approach to the realm of reality will require CSPs to take stock of their current supporting infrastructure. If the current ecosystem is a patch-work of disparate siloed systems, the required single and complete view of customer/account information will not be attainable. Take Stock of Supporting Infrastructure BSS (Business Support System including CRM - Customer Relationship Management) directly enables and impacts: end-customer experience (including end-customer aspects of policy management), monetization capabilities, and service offering and bundling. It also directly impacts the CSP experience and efficiency, as well as the real-time marketing and promotions capabilities of an operator. Of course, BSS data is an important business intelligence data source. As a result, a modular BSS system is needed, which unifies critical business functions from Policy (management & enforcement) to Telcospecific CRM, to charging and billing - around a single data model and single service-agnostic and marketing-focused product catalog. This will allow CSPs to uncover a gold mine of opportunities, by exposing the full potential of their two most valuable assets: customer data and their networks. When planning a move towards a comprehensive end-to-end solution, look for solutions that provide: A Unified Information Base: Complete, current and consistent customer and product information available at every interaction Unified Functionality: Combined policy management, enforcement (including DPI Deep Packet Inspection) and comprehensive BSS functionality spanning critical business functions (CRM, ordering, customer management (including self-service), real-time rating and charging, and billing) Single Service Creation Point: A single service creation and provisioning point for all services (specifically data) and their underlying policies. Such a system provides CSPs with the following essential business benefits required to succeed in the world of new connected possibilities: Advanced Policy-Enabled Monetization for Any Service or Business Model - through the enforcement of traffic and charging policies that are subscriber and networkaware to ensure that dimensions such as type of device and application, usage patterns, QoS and priority level and value per bit are being considered as part of offers, plans and bundles Automated & Consistent Multi-Channel Customer Management and Marketing through the sharing of complete real-time
customer information and activity, across Telco-specific CRM and customer care channels (including social media) Real-time Everywhere - even into Traditional Post-paid Environments - through the extension of real-time rating and charging to meet regulatory bill shock requirements, limit postpaid credit risk and promote personalization, even for postpaid subscribers. Now lets examine further how a subscriberand-network-aware BSS solution can empower new revenue-stimulating models. New Revenue Models New revenue models in the connected world, especially in light of LTE, call for bundling and partnership strategies to ensure success. Yet again, CSPs must not forget about the customer experience as this will be key to differentiation and long-term success as noted in the following new revenue models. Partnering with OTT players The current dilemma with OTT players is that they offer services, which are typically data intensive, over CSPs networks but CSPs are NOT profiting from these services. To bridge this gap, CSPs should partner with OTT players by securing revenue share agreements whereby CSPs would offer guaranteed quality of service levels to support an enhanced user experience across OTT partners services. With higher bandwidth LTE networks, it becomes feasible to offer quality of service levels that optimize bandwidth for OTT services - hence these types of revenue share partnerships between CSPs and OTT players would become a win-win for both sides. Communications & OTT Content/M2M / Cloud services bundles As an extension to the above, CSPs could bundle OTT content services with personal communications services, for instance bundling voice, messaging and data which would allow unlimited video streaming from OTT partners service catalog. Such plans involve revenue share with OTT players while at the same time promote offering segmentation which translates into increased subscriber stickiness. Bundling M2M and Enterprise Cloud Computing services with personal communications services can also be profitable. Offering Enterprise Cloud services and communication services as a bundle to the SMB segment with a guaranteed level of service end-to-end including the `last-mile connectivity is a key differentiator for CSPs against OTT providers. While offering M2M services and communications services as a bundle to the Residential market can enable the `Connected Home. Multi-Device data bundles As an extension to the above, as LTE promises to advance subscribers ability
to seamlessly transition their service experience across devices, CSPs will be wise to offer bundled data plans that address the connectivity requirements of individual personal communication devices (handsets, tablets, laptops, etc.). CSPs can also leverage multi-device data bundles for personal communications and M2M service bundles. By leveraging a subscriber-and-networkaware approach, CPSs can configure and enforce the appropriate device-specific policies as part of the shared bundled data plan. These can include assigning priority, setting specific data allocation and differential charging for each device. By introducing such bundled data plans, CSPs can secure additional data revenues via capturing more wallet share under one plan. From a customers perspective, such bundles would enhance convenience as they can manage multiple devices from a single data plan in addition to enabling a level of cost control as all services pull from a common data balance. Personalization Returning to customer experience, it is important to note that these revenue models can all be enhanced with personalized marketing capabilities. With a subscriberand-network-aware unified BSS system, CSPs can transform customer data into actionable marketing-oriented information based on analytics of both real-time and historic information. Actionable marketing information can drive segmentation even across the bundled offerings described above. For instance a certain customer continually accessing an OTT partners services can receive an upsell campaign to upgrade to a communications and content bundle that offers unlimited access to that OTT partners services with guaranteed quality of service level. CSPs can automate campaigns and real-time promotions across any channel (including social media) as these can be triggered by any number of subscriber or network related event for instance usage, financial status, time of day, site being accessed, and so on. As in the example above, CSPs can leverage this not only to enhance their own marketing practices but also to offer targeted marketing to advertisers, OTT and retailer partners. Equating Success The new equation for advanced charging and billing needs to include the subscriber: subscriber factor + network factor = policy action (policy management x policy enforcement). This will only be achievable with a BSS system that unifies critical business functions from CRM to policy around a single data model and a single service agnostic product catalog will allow CSPs to uncover a gold mine of opportunities by exposing the full potential of their two most valuable assets: customer data and their networks. l
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Customer is king
Using customer analytics to create new data plans and pricing models
by Rajesh Sharma, President Global Sales and Customer Operations, Astellia
While the pressure of mobile data services is set to grow, operators are still in the dark, seeking different business models and ways of monetizing network services. They need to perform multi-dimensional usage analysis to identify which data volumes are consumed by what customer segment on which devices. As competition intensifies, they must ensure the quality of their customers experience by fine-tuning the network according to network monitoring intelligence via DPI. To enhance their understanding of customer behaviour and react quickly when problems occur, mobile operators can use probe-based monitoring solutions which can detect, analyse, correlate, report and troubleshoot issues in real-time.
Mr Rajesh Sharma is President of Global Sales and Customer Operations in Astellia. He has more than 15 years of successful international sales and business development experience in the Telecommunications industry with companies like Telstra, Lucent Technologies, Citrix, Nortel and the Tata Group. Since joining Astellia in May 2011, Rajesh Sharma has been directly responsible for the worldwide revenue generation efforts as well as the day-to-day operations of the companys sales business unit including sales, customer operations, customer care and marketing departments. He manages the development and implementation of Astellias commercial strategy. Since 2006, he has been a member of Executive career panel for Corporate Entrepreneurship elective for MBA program at INSEAD, Fontainebleau. Mr Rajesh Sharma holds a Masters degree in Engineering from IIT Kanpur, an MBA from the Asian Institute of Management and has completed Executive Programs from Wharton Business School and London Business School.
Fuelled by the booming demand for mobile broadband services, mobile network operators have to be flexible when it comes to data plans by adapting these plans to groups of subscribers with the same usage patterns and similar expectations. Therefore, it is fundamental to have a better understanding of services, customer behaviour and bandwidth usage through mobile network monitoring, in order to provide high-quality services to an increased number of consumers. This should lead to innovative pricing models generating maximized revenues and increased customer loyalty.
Operators challenges The intensity of competition in the telecom industry is extreme, with each country counts on average three mobile network operators and often several MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators). This rivalry leads to pricing pressure and consequently falling ARPUs. Therefore, it is essential that competing companies come up with a new and innovative product range and pricing structure which allows them to develop a close and long-term relationship with their customers.
Smartphone sales grew by 78% across the seven key markets in the region - Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines - according to the latest results from GfK Asia. The rapid uptake of mobile broadband due to the always connected way of life of mobile subscribers poses new challenges for operators, especially because data usage is rising much faster than the revenues it is generating. The recently released Mobile Content and Applications Forecasts report from Informa Telecoms predicts that in 2016, mobile phone users will, on average, consume 6.5 times as much video, eight times
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Customer is king
as much music and nearly ten times as much games as in 2011. For example, nearly half of Singaporeans and one-third of Australians are already watching video on their smartphones. Effectively managing this pressure, while monetizing the network, becomes crucial. Telecom service providers continue upgrading their networks, and many mobile network operators in the APAC region are already preparing their networks for next generation 4G service deployment. The implementation is requiring large scale infrastructure investments. This high capital expenditure is difficult in a time where voice revenue continues to flatten and data revenue struggles to make up the shortfall. For many years now, operators have sought to develop new services and revenue streams, but revenues are still mainly generated by core services like voice, basic data access and messaging services. In the meantime applications offered by OTT (Over The Top) players and content providers have exploded. These new players are making huge profits by using operators infrastructure without compensating them for this. Operators should try to find out what their place is in this new apps ecosystem and whether joining forces (rather than fighting them) can help them avoid revenue cannibalisation by becoming a dumb pipe and rather generate incremental earnings. Mobile network operators are faced with the complex challenge of delivering the best possible quality of experience (QoE) to their subscribers in order to reduce churn while managing the traffic surge. They have to come up with transparent and fair data plans taking into account the quality of service (QoS) delivered to their subscribers. Operators answer In order to meet these various challenges, operators are approaching pricing from different angles: pre-paid versus post-paid, truly unlimited data plans (without data throttling or capping) versus capped data plans, based on fair usage of applications versus shared data plans that allow customers to pay for a single pool of data and share it across multiple smartphones, tablets and laptops. Operators are still in the dark as to what exactly is the best business model. Different
strategies are adopted by various operators. For example, in the Philippines, Smart focuses on data allowance while Globe sells on speed and unlimited usage. In the USA, we see, for instance, that the Big two (AT&T and Verizon) are focussing on tiered data plans whilst Sprint, MetroPCS and T-Mobile are offering unlimited data to get their piece of the pie. By helping mobile network operators understand better behaviour patterns and their impact on the network, operators can create new usage-based data plans, avoid churn and increase ARPU. A marketing department needs to perform multidimensional data service usage analysis to identify which data volume consumption and applications any particular customer segment is using. They need, for instance, to identify the most popular handset models generating the most traffic and tailor their data plans and service offerings accordingly. Deciphering usage patterns is also an important input for optimizing network performance in order to improve the quality experienced by the subscriber. Consumers are buying on the basis of the overall value that the operator gives them. However, customers attach different levels of value to different types of data sessions, which can vary according to the type of device they are using, the quality of network they are accessing, where they are, the time of day and also, how much urgency there is for them to do something. For instance, if youre desperately trying to download a document onto your phone while in a meeting, youre likely to attach high value to that. Another example may be that subscribers are willing to pay a premium to watch an HD movie (on 4G network) instead of watching a standard quality movie (on 3G network). Therefore, operators need to understand quickly the types of sessions that are being used in order to propose targeted upsell and cross-sell campaigns. This knowledge is also very useful when verifying the relevancy of pricing policies. Operators means: Network monitoring & customer analytics Understanding what services are being used, when and where they are being used and how this impacts network bandwidth consumption is critical to ensure that mobile networks provide reliable services to an ever more demanding customer base. Probebased, network performance monitoring is an important tool in providing this traffic
visibility in order to maintain QoS and monetize network investments. Intelligent Deep Packet Classification helps in classifying data traffic and in identifying the various applications used for every session such as YouTube, Facebook and Skype. This information enables mobile network operators to improve customer experience and thereby generate additional revenue on high value data services. Because operators offer essentially the same types of services and network facilities, network optimization and QoE (Quality of Experience) improvements are becoming key differentiators and strategic tools. Therefore, mobile operators need probebased monitoring solutions which can detect, analyse, correlate, report and troubleshoot issues which are linked to network and handset performance in order to deliver the best user experience. Network optimisation teams can also detect service quality degradations that their customers are experiencing. Examples include intrusive latency encountered by gamers playing online, or the time taken to download a web page being unacceptably long or, as detected at one South Asian operator, 1.5m activation rejections due to IP Pool congestion. The teams investigate problem root causes, fine tune radio access that is responsible for bottlenecks in 80% of cases, and identify low-performing equipment in the core network. A global end-to-end view of the network is therefore crucial. Subscribers experiencing poor service quality often think that it is due to the mobile network. In many cases, it is caused by faulty or wrongly configured handsets. Network monitoring can pinpoint devices preventing subscribers to access data services, causing quality degradation, network equipment inefficiencies or even spreading viruses across the network. For instance, at a major Indian operator we noticed that over ten thousand unique customers were having wrongly configured SMSC numbers initiating over a 0.25m SMS requests/week. In short, mobile services are a fundamental part of daily living and customers are expecting a multitude of high quality services from mobile operators anytime, anywhere, on any device at a fair price. Therefore, operators must improve their ability to offer a segmented customer experience with new data plans and pricing models. l
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Seizing Revenue Opportunities with Fixed Wireless

by Roy Wittert, VP of Sales and Marketing for APAC, Cambium Networks
Asian IPTV is advancing faster than the rest of the world, raising demand for broadband coverage. While LTE starting to roll, cheaper Wi-Fi is already in use for offloading congested mobile traffic, for enterprise premises and for hotspots fixed access. Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), with its point-to-point and point-to-multipoint capability is a complementary technology that typically relies on outdoor equipment, increasing reliability and reducing signal loss. Unlike Wi-Fi, FWA can provide coverage across large service areas. It can be installed with speed and ease with FWA points perched on existing mobile towers. This is particularly useful for extending reach without having to lay cables, enhancing under-served areas but can also to expand wireless capacity for enterprises in congested areas and for backhaul of mobile traffic.
Roy Wittert is Vice President of Sales and Marketing for APAC in Cambium Networks, Melbourne Australia. Roy has 20+ years experience in the IT and Communications industry including distribution, channel development and management, carrier sales, managed services and video conferencing. Roys previous vendor experience encompasses SynOptics, Wellfleet, Bay Networks in South Africa and Nortel and Motorola Solutions in Australia, before joining Cambium Networks in Oct 2011. After immigrating to Australia in 1998, he worked for Nortel Network for five years and then in Sales Management roles with 3D Networks, Volante and Vantage Systems, a video conferencing service provider. Roy spent the past two years at Motorola Solutions as the ANZ sales lead for Wireless Network Solutions, developing the reseller, distributor and wireless service provider channels. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering and a Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg South Africa. Roy also completed a Certificate in Marketing and Industrial Marketing and an Executive Development Program from the same University.
With the introduction of intelligent mobile technology, such as Smartphones and tabletbased devices, demand for high-speed and always-on Internet access has never been greater, both in the business world and consumer sector. Furthermore, judging from reports that show that global broadband access looks set to increase from US$274 billion in 2010 to US$416 billion in 2012 (which is an increase of 52 per cent in revenue terms) - global broadband adoption is shifting to the fixed wireless domain. The true potential of wireless broadband is being recognised throughout the telecoms market, particularly as fixed wireless deployments begin to gain significant momentum. With vast new opportunities awaiting mobile broadband providers, the next few years will be critical as interest in fixed wireless broadband continues to grow to meet the escalating demand. Those players that make
the right strategic moves today will be well positioned to become future market leaders. Meeting the bandwidth demand The growth in mobile devices has driven the use of mobile broadband and applications, such as Facebook and Skype, with the majority of Internet users using mobile technologies to access online content and information . As mobile devices and demand to access online content from mobile proliferate, so does the need for increased bandwidth. With mobile devices permeating consumers lives and the workplace, the need for increased capacity and speeds has subsequently never been greater. Moreover, the fact that IPTV, which is the most demanding application for high-speed broadband, now has 65.5 million subscribers and is expected to catapult over the next five years, places further demand for increased
bandwidth. Interestingly, its also been reported by broadband analyst firm Point Topic that the Asian market is advancing the fastest, with China alone adding over three times as many IPTV subscribers in the first quarter of 2012 than any other country. This is likely to increase even further with countries such as France and the US also reporting strong numbers and accelerated growth in the same report period. Whats out there? Currently, mobile broadband and the promise of LTE is a hot topic in the wireless industry, particularly as there seems to be strong agreement that LTE is a must in order to deliver high-speed data and meet the increasing demand on bandwidth capacity. U.S. LTE Android Smartphone customers use more data on over-the-top (OTT) applications, such as Netflix and Hulu, than their non-LTE
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peers, according to a new research report, giving credence to the notion that subscribers with a faster connection and lower latency will consume more data. The study, conducted by Informa Telecoms and Media and Mobidia, a mobile data solutions vendor, found that most customers using the applications - Dropbox, Hulu, Netflix and YouTube - did so using WiFi connections. However, the overall data consumption from these apps was consistently higher among LTE subscribers than non-LTE customers. Mobile broadband is a major revenue source for mobile (wireless) service providers and we will continue to see the demand for these service growth from year to year. Looking at the market as a whole, we are also seeing the popularity rising for fixed broadband services over xDSL and fibre and Wi-Fi hotspots. WiFi, which initially provided mobility inside homes and offices, and in many instances is still viewed as the standard home operating environment, is now also being widely deployed as Wi-Fi hotspots, to provide broadband access in parks, restaurants, public places and as an offload for oversubscribed 3G networks. Despite all the recent attention given to LTE and Wi-Fi Offload, mobile broadband providers should strongly consider the option of deploying Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) systems for a number of reasons. Mobile providers are often deploying infrastructures in areas that lack fibre optic cable, xDSL, or cable television lines. Mobile service providers can now utilise the same transmission towers that are used for both 2/3G and emerging 4G LTE services. Fixed Wireless does not typically need the same density of towers as the mobile networks as the service typically relies on outdoor CPE, increasing reliability while reducing the possibility of signal loss. The advantages of fixed wireless include the ability to connect with users in remote areas without the need for laying new cables and the capacity for broad bandwidth that is unimpeded by fibre or cable capacities. FWA is also less complex and cheaper than LTE, where LTE would be considered as a fixed wireless solution. Wireless service providers have already been providing mostly residential, and some enterprise Internet services across the world via fixed wireless solutions, of which Canopy, developed by Motorola and now part of the Cambium Networks portfolio, was a major contributor. The technology for wireless broadband access networks supports high-
speed Internet access, video surveillance, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), streaming video and VoIP applications. These carrier grade last mile solutions provide wireless access connectivity to build fibre, cable and DSL network extensions to reach underserved areas, or expand business and corporate networks. In addition to offering both residential, enterprise and government fixed services in remote areas, providers can also offer enhanced enterprise services in metro areas to complement their mobile offerings. They can also deploy wireless hotspots for consumer business and use the fixed wireless infrastructure for backhaul. With fierce competition in the global marketplace and the insatiable appetite for next-generation services, there is added pressure on mobile broadband providers to act now rather than later. Otherwise they run the risk of being left behind and will undoubtedly have to fight for customers. Seizing the opportunity The challenge for the industry has been to develop solutions that are spectrally efficient and provide high bandwidth, while being cost-effective and easy to implement. In order to succeed, keep competition at bay and feed bandwidth-hungry mobile devices, mobile broadband providers need to take a collaborative approach going forward - they need to utilise both mobile broadband (LTE) and fixed wireless solutions. FWA should be used as a complementary solution to xDSL, fibre or cable. Since fibre is expensive to deploy, and xDSL and cable cannot reach all businesses and homes, FWA is a costeffective solution that has the capability to meet bandwidth demands. The FWA solutions offer the same high performance and spectral efficiency offer by LTE. New revenue opportunities will arise by combining these services, which providers can maximize. For instance, they can charge a premium but use the same (and existing) mobile broadband infrastructures to deliver FWA systems. Deploying FWA points on the same mobile broadband towers utilises them for a less expensive spectrum (or maybe even free `class licensed range) and provides an entirely new opportunity for the mobile broadband provider to generate revenue for fixed access services, supporting voice, video and data-rich media. With the right solutions, FWA can provide coverage across large service areas and long distances which
can be installed with speed and ease. The Point-to-Point (PTP) and Point-to-Multipoint (PMP) networks will provide reliable, rapidly deployable, cost-effective wireless distribution and access to information. The PMP networks offer a broad range of wireless connectivity solutions that help enhance productivity, improve security and reduce operating costs. This also enables providers to consider bundling such services with their mobile broadband service offerings. The Philippines leading wireless service provider, Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart), has been deploying various solutions throughout the region for the past seven years. This service provider, who has 49 million subscribers on its GSM network, wanted to create new revenue opportunities by rapidly expanding their network to offer data connectivity to locations where such services did not yet exist. With wireless PMP solutions, Smart successfully achieved the worlds largest unlicensed wireless broadband deployment, which involved connecting 25 cities in less than a year. With zero footprint installation, rapid deployment and low TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), Smart quickly broke open new revenue streams and increased its scalability for the future. Similarly, Digicel in Papa New Guinea is complimenting its mobile services with an expanding FWA service offering, providing high performance Internet and VPN services to enterprises and government entities in central and remote areas alike. Final thoughts To meet market demand for next-generation services, more mobile broadband providers need to realise that it is possible to improve customer loyalty and grow their customer base while deploying profitable fixed wireless solutions. By using FWA systems as a complementary solution, providers will reap the financial rewards by taking advantage of the untapped revenue opportunities that arise. In addition, the fact that FWA systems are scalable and can be deployed quickly with incremental capital investment, offers further ROI benefits. The continued escalation of global broadband adoption and the need for increased speed and capacity opens up the possibility for fixed wireless to become the dominant technology in the industry. Those service providers who lead the way in the market today and act now, will be at the forefront of the industry tomorrow. l
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Managing the new mobile data network The challenge of deploying mobile broadband systems for profit
by Erwann Thomassain, Head of Regional Marketing for Asia Pacific, Amdocs
To close the gap between demand and availability of spectrum, millions of small cells will be installed. They will support a variety of air interfaces and spectrum bands, including outdoors WiFi. A Rethink survey shows that 80% of the surveyed carriers expect to have ten times more cells within five years, which will include small cells and microcells as well as macrocells. Additional tools will be required to benefit from the small cell roll-outs, primarily to chart out their optimal locations and reduce interference. Cellcos will have to rely on sophisticated planning approaches to maximize efficiency and automation, and to map capacity to returns on investment.
Erwann Thomassain is Head of Regional Marketing APAC in Amdocs. He joined Amdocs in 2006 as Director of Marketing with the objective to establish and run marketing activities for Europe and LATAM. Since then, he took on the responsibility to establish regional marketing functions throughout emerging markets. Erwann now manages the marketing strategy and operations for the Asia Pacific region at Amdocs. Erwann started his career as freelance consultant for a London-based Management Consultancy specialized in commercial due diligence for Mergers & Acquisitions operations. For the next 13 years, he held a number of senior sales & marketing positions at Telecommunication operators (Interoute Telecommunications and The Cloud Networks), Network Equipment Vendor (Lucent Technologies) and Independent Software Vendors (Kenan Systems Corporation, Openet Telecom and Amdocs) in EMEA and Asia. He was engaged in marketing in B2C and B2B industries, with major accounts such as British Telecom, O2, Vodafone, Grupo Carso, Telefonica, Nintendo, Mc Donalds, The British Library, BAA and Crowne Plaza hotels. Erwann has a degree in Tourism Management from Rennes University (France), a BA in Business Administration from Westminster University in England and an Executive Diploma in Strategy and Innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT Sloan School of Management). He is a French national who has been living for the past 15 years in foreign countries and now resides in Singapore.
There is a growing gap between the amount of spectrum and network capacity available today, and the amount required to carry rising levels of mobile data worldwide. Mobile data traffic, dominated by video growth, will increase at least 20 times in volume between 2012 and 2017, creating huge traffic and signalling burdens for the wireless networks. Traditional methods of increasing network capacity - upgrading the air interface and adding new base stations and spectrum will be wholly inadequate to meet these
challenges. In many cases, those remedies will deliver less than a third of the required additional capacity. While the introduction of LTE and the allocation of new spectrum licences are important, most of the capacity increase will come from a radical rethink of the network structure. In particular, this will involve the use of millions of small cells to increase capacity and coverage to relieve the strain on the macro network. In future, these will evolve into heterogeneous networks, which will
combine different layers of cells, supporting a variety of air interfaces and spectrum bands. According to a recent survey of mobile carriers worldwide, conducted by Rethink Technology Research for Amdocs, over 80% of operators globally believe that small cells will be the first or second most important factor in meeting their capacity objectives between 2012 and 2017. However, despite their many advantages, these new approaches will also introduce a wide range of challenges in planning, managing and optimizing the
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network. Despite rising levels of automation, carriers know that, to get the full business and performance benefits, they will need to invest in innovative tools and intelligence. The survey covered 21 carriers from Asia Pacific, 22 from Europe, eight from the Caribbean and Latin America, eight from Europe, the Middle East and Africa and seven from North America. The results of the survey also shows that Asia Pacific will be the largest LTE market by 2017 but will be slower to adopt LTE-A. Furthermore, in Asia Pacific small cells are more reliant on LTE. Across Asia Pacific, there is big variation in carrier strategies related to small cells roll-out. With that being said, by 2017, Asia Pacific will be the biggest driver of large-scale, small cell roll-outs with 80% of carriers surveyed expecting to have ten times more cells than in 2012. Almost half of those carriers surveyed regard small cell logistics as the main challenge although this varies regionally across the globe. However, the largest markets in terms of carrier numbers, Asia Pacific and Europe, are focussed on cell issues. The rise of the small cell Small cells started as indoor, private devices but are now starting to be introduced into the carriers public networks, indoors or outdoors. The first to be deployed are typically single-mode - 3G or Wi-Fi to start with. From 2013, there will be rising availability of, and trust in, multimode small cells, which can reduce cost and allow for integration and migration between 3G and 4G without swapping out the cells. Increasingly, Wi-Fi will also be integrated in many units as a standard feature. In its simplest form, a multimode cell just combines multiple radios and offers standard interfaces to the carrier network. However, to use multimode products efficiently, new management capabilities will be introduced including enhanced scheduling, interference and power control, SON and intelligent mobility management, all taking the different available air interfaces into account for optimal performance. Further out, cognitive radio technologies may add to the cells flexibility and responsiveness, but for now, most of these smarts are achieved in software. Many carriers will opt for a heterogeneous network, in which a macro layer provides wide umbrella coverage, and a separate layer of small cells, often in a different band, offers capacity hot zones. The traditional microcell
is somewhat squeezed out of this picture over time. By 2017, no carrier expects to have a data network with microcells making up 50% or more of the total sites. By contrast, 15% will still have networks which are at least 50% composed of macrocells, but that figure will have been overtaken by systems with at least 50% small cells. The latter will be the case at one in five cellcos. There are still, however, many operators who are cautious about widespread small cell roll-outs, and by 2017 the most common topology will be a network with between 30% and 50% small cells, 20% to 30% microcells, and 20% to 50% macrocells. Another important cell site issue is the integration of Wi-Fi into the base station. As well as moving rapidly towards networks which have a large component of small 3G/4G cells, operators are also deploying carrier Wi-Fi, either as separate access points or integrated into cellular base stations, often as part of a HetNet. By 2017, only 12% expect to have no Wi-Fi integrated into their cellular networks, while 29% will have it incorporated in up to one-fifth of base stations, mainly small cells. About 40% think they will have Wi-Fi integrated between 20% and 50% of cells by 2017. Maximizing the benefits of the new networks With almost two-thirds of carriers expecting to see at least a tenfold increase in cell site numbers by 2017, they will face unprecedented challenges in terms of planning, performance measurement and management. They must ensure they do not just deliver additional capacity in an untargeted fashion, but in a way that delivers optimal cost/performance and supports key business objectives. The capabilities to plan and manage small cell networks will be enhanced as the standards evolve, but the standards will provide only a subset of the tools operators will require. Traditionally, carriers would add capacity and speed to their networks by upgrading the air interface, and adding new spectrum and/or macrocell sites. Network planning to ensure greatest coverage and efficiency was complex but one-off, since RANs were not dynamic. Back end tools to analyze and prioritize different types of traffic or subscriber were in their infancy. In the mobile broadband era, a far wider range of techniques is necessary. While hardware and spectrum updates remain important, there will be a far greater emphasis
on intelligence throughout the network to maximize capacity, efficiency and quality of service. This intelligence will be necessary to manage networks which are increasingly complex in terms of: Range of air interfaces and spectrum bands supported within one system Number and variety of cell sites Number and variety of backhaul connections Wide range of types of data traffic being handled Constantly varying levels of activity according to application, location and time of day Varying levels of quality of service according to application or subscription type. As traditional voice and messaging revenue streams decline, operators need a new profit model for data. A flexible, multi-technology network which can be managed in real time will be necessary to boost capacity while keeping costs down. It will need to support a wide range of new charging plans and applications, in order to retain customers, and to introduce new revenue streams like machine-to-machine. All this will require a rethink of how the network is planned and managed, and how to harness a whole range of tools and services. Key planning and performance challenges Operators have identified a range of planning challenges which will affect the performance and business returns of the new network. While some of these will be addressed to some extent by extensions to the standards, especially in LTE-Advanced, standards-based methods will address only part of the issue and additional tools will be required to gain optimal benefit from the small cell roll-outs. The challenges can be broadly grouped into the following categories: finding sites in the right position and planning their location relative to each other sites and other networks backhaul reporting effectively to support intelligent data delivery integration with the macro and core networks without interference. As the graph in Figure1 shows, in the carrier survey, the five factors which were most commonly cited as the most crucial planning challenge all relate to cell sites, except one (integration with the core network).
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hikes which they enjoyed when deploying previous network upgrades. OPEX targets are even more rigorous, with many carriers investing in new topologies precisely to save on running costs. Lower unit costs for cell sites and backhaul will only address part of the challenge, especially with the huge numbers envisaged. Instead, operators will have to rely on sophisticated and flexible planning approaches to maximize efficiency and automation, and to map capacity to returns on investment. l
Figure 1: Carrier ratings of the top planning challenges associated with small cells, in terms of impact on the business targets
Securing sites in the best locations was rated as the most urgent challenge by 24% of respondents, followed by core integration (21%), the cost of acquiring small cell sites (19.5%) and the logistics of identifying and acquiring the sites (17%). Close behind came backhaul for small cell sites, cited by 12% as their most pressing challenge. The single most decisive issue in ensuring that a small cell network delivers optimal benefits is the location of the cell sites. A recent study by Orange indicates that in operators tests, the optimal distance from the macrocell is about 200 meters, with a small cell radius of about 30 meters. That can support 100% capacity gain for the macrocell, as well as improved quality of experience, while distances of under 50 meters add little capacity but plenty of interference. Other issues include the small cells proximity to its neighbours and to cells run by other operators and mapping the cells position as accurately as possible to peak areas of data usage. The situation may be further complicated when several operators have cells in the same neighbourhood, with resulting interference risks. All these considerations will create major planning challenges and several interrelated developments need to happen to instil full confidence about massive small cell roll-outs, according to the survey. The most commonly cited are: Planning and dimensioning tools specifically geared to small cells Mature self-organizing and selfoptimizing network (SON) tools Standards for SON Affordable small cell backhaul options Legal framework for leasing small cell sites.
As a result of all these concerns, 45% of operators expect to invest in new tools and services which are specifically optimized for small cell networks over the next four years. The new topology of the RANs will be a catalyst for new techniques, and for a shift in how networks are planned and measured, with a focus on methods that deliver high degrees of local accuracy, such as RNC data feeds. Cost efficiencies Another key factor is that operators need to increase their RAN and backhaul capacity massively - by more than 50 times according to almost one-quarter of cellcos - but with CAPEX and OPEX budgets that are under intense pressure. The typical operator will have only a 5-10% increase in its backhaul CAPEX budget, and up to 20% in the RAN, while OPEX constraints will be even tighter. These factors will make it essential to the business case that the new networks can be managed flexibly and efficiently, to deliver the greatest possible capacity where it is needed, and with a high level of automation - hence the intense interest in tools to reduce the manual overhead of running networks and to allocate capacity more efficiently. Indeed, a substantial number of operators are looking for an actual reduction in OPEX bills by using more modern technologies. Some 18% believe this is achievable in the RAN and 24% in backhaul. While 30% of carriers aim to keep their site OPEX stable and 18% to reduce it, only 6% expect to spend more than 20% a year extra on RAN OPEX. Conclusion Carriers budgets are under intense pressure and few will have the same kind of CAPEX
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Telecommunications and Cable Convergence: Opportunity Knocks for India and China
by Ian Watterson, Vice President & Managing Director (Asia Pacific), CSG International
Huge opportunities are opened in both India and China, due to recent regulation that encourages cable and telecommunications convergence. Cable Operators see revenues leaking to OTT while Fixed Line Telcos market IPTV aggressively, competing on their traditional playground. While transforming analogue TV to digital to free up spectrum, these operators also gain the opportunity to offer communications in multi-play deals. As a recent survey shows, in emerging markets consumers are even more likely to view TV on other devices. Hybrid accounts, enabling pre-pay for some services and post-pay for others can win customers with their flexibility. All this needs multi-device, multi-technology packages that are designed to encourage loyalty, and a powerful billing system that can follow the marketing departments whims.
Ian Watterson is the Vice President & Managing Director (Asia Pacific) CSG International. He was appointed VP and Managing Director APAC in March 2011. He joined CSG International in February 2006 as CFO, Americas, was appointed VP Caribbean and Latin America in January 2008 and VP Americas in October 2008. During his tenure he grew the Americas to be half of CSGs revenue base and was responsible for numerous strategic initiatives and new customer acquisitions. Ians experience spans regional operational management, corporate strategy, finance and marketing, having held senior management roles at various companies including BSkyB and Ernst & Young. Ian has over 15 years experience in technology and telecommunications management. He has a BA in Banking and Finance, an MBA in international finance and is a UK Chartered Accountant.
These days, even the most casual telecom and cable industry observer is acutely aware of the evolution of the delivery and consumption of content. Not only is every market experiencing growth in content consumption, but dramatic changes are afoot in the way in which it is consumed. Nowhere is this more true than in emerging markets, with the largest of these in our region - China and India - leading the way. According to analyst firm Canalys, China accounted for 27 per cent of global smart phone shipments in the second quarter of 2012, with 42 million devices reaching the market. By comparison, the US accounted for 16 per cent of the 158 million smart phones shipped during the period. Additionally,
the Chinese smart phone market grew 199 per cent year-on-year and 32 per cent compared to the previous quarter. Consumption growth and device variation have significant implications for both Communications Service Providers (CSPs) and cable operators alike. In the cases of both China and India, there are major regulatory changes that have even more major impact, with triple- and quad-play services becoming a reality, along with TV Anywhere. At the same time, the over-thetop (OTT) players pose a major threat. This brings us to charging and billing. To respond to the huge opportunities and significant threats, CSPs will need to
ensure that their charging and billing does evolve to meet the new challenges and opportunities, by enabling bundling, realtime and prepaid charging for content and cable, shared data plans etc. Globally, cable and mobile operators are facing challenges from over-the-top players. For CSPs, Google, Apple and other content providers are competing for consumers cash, while using the networks that the operators have invested in and built. Similarly, cable companies see their core revenues coming under threat as they lose market share to OTT content providers and fixed line operators aggressively marketing IPTV services bundled with their voice and data services.
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CSPs and cable companies also have something in common on the regulatory front. For CSPs, bill shock and roaming regulations have cut margins, and regulatory uncertainty in countries like India has stalled investment. In the cable world, the emerging market giants, India and China, are at an interesting phase, thanks to regulatory changes which enable cable operators to deliver telecommunications services, moving from analogue to digital cable by 2014. However, all is not doom and gloom. In the telecommunications sector, favourable demographics such as a rapidly expanding - and increasingly affluent - middle class in emerging markets have led to impressive growth. In China, 3G continues to be the main focus for mobile operators particularly in urban markets. Networks are being updated and a wide range of mobile devices being introduced to cater to different market segments. For example, the percentage of users accessing the internet via a mobile handset increased to 69.3 per cent this year (BMI, China Telecommunications Report Q3 2012). In India, the cable industry is seeing dramatic growth as a result of rapid changes in consumers digital consumption behaviour. The two sectors, in both India and China, are growing much closer than would previously have been thought possible, thanks mainly to legislation. In China, cable operators have been unable to deliver telecommunications services alongside their core video offerings. Now, with the Chinese governments blessing, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television ( SARFT ) is paving the way for cable TV operators to enter the telecoms market. In India, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is enforcing the move from analogue to digital cable across the entire country by 2014. Digitizing the cable platform allows the release of spectrum for hundreds of channels, enables multi-play services and stimulates services such as pay-per-view, subscription and interactive television - and not just from existing cable companies. So, CSPs and cable companies in both China and India are knocking on the door of a huge opportunity, but they will need to rise to the challenge and transform the way in which they offer new services and support customers, indeed, transform their business models. In support of this
transformation, operational and business support systems (O/BSS) will need to step up to the plate to support the new business models, new services and new convergent offerings. They will require upgrading existing cable and wireless networks, developing and manufacturing universal set-top boxes, and acquiring content delivery platforms and electronic programme guide databases. Importantly, charging and billing will play a crucial role in the monetization of the new services. CSPs and cable operators will need to move quickly to take advantage of the opportunity. In China, for example, despite the governments tight control of broadcasting policy that will most likely see mobile TV services adopted fairly late in the game, technical and commercial trials of triple-play services will take place over the next two years across 12 Chinese cities. Effectively packaging and charging for bundles is not easy, as a recent Accenture survey discovered: 60% of surveyed CSPs cited billing for bundled services as a major concern. To move from todays analogue video services to a digital television offering with voice and data services, Indias next generation cable operators will need to create a whole host of new tiered bandwidth, high speed data and content offerings to accommodate a wide variance in customer usage patterns and preferences. Such initiatives must be backed by technology, with charging and billing again at the forefront. It is vital that charging and billing can support diverse subscription models, set-top box subsidies, triple and quad-play bundles and OTT content delivery models. The good news is that operators in emerging countries such as China and India have an opportunity to learn from, and then leapfrog, those in more developed countries. Consider Comcast, for example: it is the largest cable TV provider in the USA who has recently embraced the model of delivering video to its customers onto their iPads. In order to keep viewers, Comcast must deliver content on the devices its customers are demanding, with TV Anywhere becoming a stock phrase. A Global TV Replacement Study released recently by NPD DisplaySearch found that consumers in emerging markets were even more likely to use other devices, such as smart phones and tablets, to view television content.
Therefore, operators who can manage their charging and billing as well as content delivery networks and digital locker technology have an opportunity to provide content - in a wide variety of formats on a wide variety of devices - to a hungry audience. Moves like Comcasts enhance consumer loyalty and encourage them to adopt an ever-increasing range of services. It is extremely important to make it easier to select from that broad range of services. Enabling these offerings is not easy. For charging and billing, the ability to charge for any event, regardless of source or format, is of course critical. Charging algorithms need to be flexible enough to adapt to new business models - and the whims of the marketing department. Bundling is vital, as is the ease of understanding the bill - or self-care display - by the consumer. Real-time charging will become increasingly important in the cable space as it is already in the telecommunications sector. Pre-paid and pay-per-view offerings, as part of a package designed to encourage loyalty amongst consumers that are regarded as least likely to be loyal, are likely to become common. Hybrid accounts, enabling prepay for some services and post-pay for others, are likely to be used to entice the wealthier consumers who nevertheless are concerned about budgetary control. Policy management will also play a key role in charging and billing, enabling parental control over both content and spend. Both China and India have been opened to the opportunities offered by the convergence of cable and telecommunications by legislation of their respective governments. It will be fascinating in the near future to see which service providers grasp these opportunities. With charging and billing evolving to meet the demands of new business models, new services and new consumers, it will be equally fascinating to see how flexible charging can be used to fully grasp these opportunities. l
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4G technology is not an evolution, its a disruption!

by Michael Lai, CEO, Packet One Networks (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd
Conventional telco charging used to be by Time and Distance - now charging is quite different. In fact we all changed our behaviour - more reading/typing than speaking. In Japan, Data ARPU has now exceeded Voice ARPU, despite the many free services. Operators who opted for 4G technology early with WiMAX, can support explosive data consumption which would crash a 3G network in no time. Now they are progressing to upgrade WiMAX to TD-LTE, ahead of the region, which is gearing up for 4G, with TD-LTE rolling out in Japan and in China. Unlike Voice networks that can be dimensioned reliably, the ability of Data network to withstand huge volumes is anybodys guess, so no one knows the effect of migrating to 4G.
Michael Lai is the CEO of Packet One Networks (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd (P1). He passionately believes in enriching lives through the power of high-quality, high-performance 4G broadband connectivity. He is a pioneering member of Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) and a WiMAX Forum Board Member, with over 20 years of ICT industry experience. The Peak Magazine dubbed him the Wizard of Wireless and Mobile World calls him Malaysias Mr. Broadband for his efforts is pushing the boundaries of 4G broadband penetration. Michael leads one of the worlds leading 4G telecommunications companies - P1, with the challenge to develop the startup right from ground zero. Today, with Michael at helm, P1 has grown from zero to RM1.3 billion (US$371 million) in market capitalisation, with close to 400, 000 subscribers and over 50% population coverage in less than four years. P1 is now the global Malaysian Brand, the worlds largest 802.16e 2.3GHz 4G WiMAX network, outside Korea. Prior to joining P1, Michael was the CEO of TMNet, the regions largest Internet service provider during his tenure. Under his dynamic leadership, TMNet was transformed into a billion-dollar enterprise with over 1 million subscribers within only 18 months. Michael was also previously Senior Vice President of Branding and Market Development for Celcom, and Marketing Director for Oracle Malaysia. He is an Electrical Engineer by training with a Masters degree in Business Administration.
If the seven billion people on Planet Earth start calling each other concurrently using the mobile phone, traditional telcos will know how exactly to dimension the network. However, if the seven billion people go online at the same time, no one will have a clue on how to go about it. How does a conventional telco make money? It is based on two fundamental aspects - Time and Distance. Still, remember how we used to get charged when calling our relatives next door or to other states? For a domestic call, the further the distance, the more expensive it is. For international calls, apart from distance, charges differ according to the duration of your call, plus during peak or non-peak hours.
That is how conventional telcos profit from the voice business. Research firm Ovum indicates that consumers increasing use of IP-based social messaging services on their smartphones cost telecom operator US$8.7 billion losses in SMS revenue in 2010 and US$13.9 billion in 2011. Change is in the air. Technology advancement brings us amazing benefits such as free online communication tools. Applications like Whatsapp, Viber, Skype, Google Talk and many more, offer us cheap or even free instant messaging and voice calls. These free applications are threatening telecom operators bread and butter.
1 2
After the launch of 3G in 2005, I noted the phenomenon that we spend more time reading than talking on our phone. I am a typical example of this change - heavy instant messaging and data user. About 90% of my mobile phone usage is on reading and typing. Only a fraction of the time is used for talking on the phone. US research house, Senzafili Consulting pointed out that Softbank, the third largest mobile operator in Japan by number of subscribers, became the first operator worldwide to have Data ARPU (average revenue per user) higher than its Voice ARPU in 20101. Conventional telcos are well aware
http://www.senzafiliconsulting.com/Blog/tabid/64/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/69/TDD-innovation-in-the-RAN.aspx http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=218787&
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of the necessary changes that must take place. However, decision makers are sceptic between when and which strategy to reinvent the business model. Take an example of a local green-field operator who started up directly from an all-IP (Internet Protocol) technology, using WiMAX. Its business case differs from the 3G incumbents, which still uses circuitbased technology. This telcos 4G WiMAX network is designed to provide high-speed and high-capacity broadband from the start. On average, every one of its users consumes 17GB of data per month. This would crash a 3G network at any point in time because it is not designed to withstand such massive loads of data transmission - unlike 4G network architecture. This local telcos existing business model is being tested and modified since its inception to cope with the explosive data consumption by customers. In other words, rolling out WiMAX gives the Company lead time in All-IP data management. In a media showcase in April 2011, the Company has successfully demonstrated the ability to transition a WiMAX network to a TD-
LTE network in just 30 minutes via a mere software upgrade. On the devices front, the telcos parent company is developing TD-LTE devices. Globally, the momentum for TD-LTE devices proliferation is quickly taking shape. GTI (Global TD-LTE Initiative) has over thirty devices developed and tested. They range from USB dongles, mobile routers, tablets, MIFIs and even smart robots. TD-LTE will be the springboard for the local telco company to tap into true mobile broadband, as well as the Machine to Machine communications market, a new, virtually limitless, level playing field for everyone. It is now just a matter of time for the whole ecosystem to ramp up and that is happening very soon. This is a fact - Softbank has already commercially launched its TD-LTE network in Japan, China Mobile having trial in six major cities in China, Reliance in India just firmed up its technology partner and many more deployments are expected in the pipeline. LTE will bring true super high-speed 4G broadband. The technology is ready to show off its capability and operators must be ready to take up the challenge. Regulators
are playing a crucial role where the policies will have a direct effect on the operators business model. As I always say, if the 7 billion people on this planet start calling each other concurrently, traditional telcos will know how to handle the network. However, if the 7 billion people go online at the same time, no one will know how exactly to dimension the network. This is simply because the users may access to multitudes of applications and content sources from the Internet on multi-devices. One classic example is the new iPad which supports LTE in the US. Operators in America such as AT&T and Verizon are now facing a challenge of the surge of data that will potentially crash their LTE network2. Therefore, is 3G to 4G an evolution? More likely its a Disruption! So, are we ready for the future? As Ronald Reagan once said, You aint seen nothing yet. Broadband is not a privilege, its a right for all - Michael Lai. l
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Were there for you

TeChnologies ThaT help you go furTher

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Discover more @ http://newproducts.newtec.eu

All articles are available for download at www.connect-world.com

by Dave Labuda, Founder, CEO & CTO, MATRIXX Software

Billing as a Service, billing as a Strategy

From the Editors desk Imprint

by Rajesh Sharma, President Global Sales and Customer Operations, Astellia

Access technology affecting Billing

Seizing Revenue Opportunities with Fixed Wireless

by Roy Wittert, VP of Sales and Marketing for APAC, Cambium Networks

4G technology is not an evolution, its a disruption!

by Michael Lai, CEO, Packet One Networks (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd

Rebecca Copeland, Executive Content Editor, Connect-World editor@connect-world.com

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New age charging systems

Do bill me, please!

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Overcoming the mobile data traffic challenge

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Informa Industry Outlook - 2012

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Asia-Pacific III 2012

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Asia-Pacific III 2012

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Asia-Pacific III 2012

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Direct operator billing - A strategy to mitigate the OTT threat

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