Vision
Communications and Entertainment Service Providers have evolved, exploring new business models within a dynamic interactive network. The era of subscriber acquisition driving exponential revenue growth is over, as is the ability to differentiate purely on network coverage and customer service. The successful service providers of the future must inspire subscriber loyalty while reducing their costs to grow revenue and increase profitability. Several trends will dictate how service providers achieve these objectives.
Developing New Business Models as Operator Networks Open
Not unlike the evolution of the Internet, operator networks must foster revenue growth amidst increasing openness and ubiquitous availability of content. For service providers, a controlled user experience, delivered by a closed network, is a thing of the past. Just as America Online’s initial success delivering managed content within a controlled, closed application and network was superceded by unmanaged content available through the Internet accessed using third-party applications, operators today must find new business models in the face of open networks.
The network operators’ role in the ecosystem is evolving as did that of the ISPs. Service providers deliver, first and foremost, dynamic interactive access to content; from a business perspective, the content and applications themselves are secondary. Quality of service (QoS) based on content type is a great example. Whether the consumer uses Voice over IP or video services from the service provider or uses those available through a third party, the service provider can develop new revenue streams by dynamically enabling a high quality experience.
| “I think we as an industry can learn a lot from Oil. Oil has been the number one ingredient of productivity over the last 50 years: oil, oil products, and the capabilities of them. Oil is an industry in and of itself, but it is also an ingredient of others. The same is true now for collaboration and communications. We are now becoming an integral part of somebody else’s business. This is the BT story.” - Ben Verwaayen, BT Group |
Industries are Converging
Boundaries that for years provided a definitive separation of numerous maturing industries are breaking down. Traditional wireless, wireline and cable service providers are positioned as enablers of services in the evolved “Convergence Industry”. Telecom has become more than an industry in and of itself; it is also an ingredient in other industries by enabling them to deliver services and an improved customer experience.
Whether delivering a money transfers service, advanced television and mobile advertising targeting capabilities, television and video-on-demand services over mobile devices, computers and televisions or integrating automotive navigation and entertainment systems with voice, data and entertainment services used at home and on-the-go, telecom services providers run the networks and enabling technologies to bring those services to market.
Delivering a Personalized Experience
The communications and entertainment customer experience has been improving over the last decade. These improvements started with simple “bundling” of services onto a single bill. Instead of purchasing each service – wireless, home phone, television and internet – from four separate companies, you could get them from just one or two. Next came blended services – integration of services at an application rather than a bill level. Being able to receive your mobile phone calls on your home phone to avoid challenges of poor “in-home wireless coverage” is one example.
But the most powerful improvements – personalized services tailored to the individual subscriber - are now emerging. Self-care portals to set usage and spending limits. Real-time alerts of service usage levels. Service- and subscriber-aware network resource allocation. Segment-specific loyalty programs. IN-session subscriber aware promotions. Flexible accounts structures to control family member or employee service usage.
Trends Create New Revenue Opportunities for Service Providers
Enabling the evolutionary shift in how service provides serve customers depends on a next generation infrastructure. More business models, services and applications are being deployed more quickly from more partners. Service providers must ensure they are able to monetize those services, deliver a personalized experience to consumers, control access to and allocation of network resources and gain business intelligence through visibility into the usage of their networks and services.
This set of abilities is known within the industry as “Dynamic Business Control”.
| “A new, dynamic “business control layer” should be capable of dynamically adapting network or service behavior at the customer level to improve operators’ transaction revenue and – at the same time – customers’ experiences.” – Yankee Group |
What is “Dynamic Business Control”?
Dynamic Business Control is perhaps best defined by the attributes that comprise it. They are the ability to:
- Deploy subscriber- and service-aware networks and services.
- Gain deep visibility into the usage of services and the network in order to generate business intelligence.
- Enable robust network capabilities such as Quality of Service (QoS) and bandwidth throttling that enhance service delivery.
- Control access to services and allocation of network resources during service sessions
- Provide flexible methods to monetize services including usage-based, monthly-recurring and tiered pricing models.
- Apply a high degree of personalization to services and applications.
Transactional Intelligence Delivers Dynamic Business Control
These objectives create the need for a more intelligent infrastructure that can manage the myriad transactions required to monetize and personalize services while gaining visibility into and control over network and service usage – to gain dynamic business control. Openet’s suite of Transactional Intelligence solutions – enabled by the best-in-class FusionWorks product suite – delivers this dynamic business control to the world’s largest and most innovative service providers.