Consumer Research Confirms Importance of Policy and Charging Control to Operators

Posted: February 3rd, 2011 | Author: Arnhild Schia | Filed under: Around the World, Events | Tags: , , , , | 5 Comments »

Mobile broadband has become a part of everyday life, and with so many people depending on—and demanding for—mobile connectivity, we at Comptel wanted to explore consumers’ evolving relationship with providers of mobile broadband services and their levels of satisfaction with operators’ service and price plans and flexibility.

Last month, we commissioned independent research firm Vanson Bourne to survey 2,000 consumers from across the United Kingdom, France, Germany and United States, and found that mobile broadband users are now ready and willing to pay for a higher quality of experience (QoE).  Seventy-four percent of respondents who are willing to pay for a higher QoE said that they are prepared to spend more money just for faster download speeds.

Which of the following would you be willing to pay more for?

And, 61 percent indicated that they want their CSPs to offer more personalized yet simpler service plans, such as having pricing based on individual usage habits while getting just one bill for all Internet and broadband services.

Would you like to see your CSP offer service and price plans that are simpler and bespoke?

Further to this, 87 percent of consumers see QoE as a key driver that will influence their allegiance to their CSP, and the majority of them would not only move but also pay more money for faster and personalized services.

Is a high QoE a key driver for you when it comes to changing CSPs?

In today’s highly competitive market, providing high QoE could be the most powerful mechanism for gaining or even just keeping customers—and the demand for a better mobile broadband experience presents a major revenue opportunity for CSPs.

Policy control and charging is key for operators to capitalize on consumers’ demand for faster download speeds and more personalized yet simpler service plans.  It can help them optimise QoE by smoothing data usage more evenly across their networks, while dynamically adapting and simplifying service bundles based on individual customers’ wants or needs, and introducing progressive pricing strategies that monetise this consumer demand.

Full copies of this research report will be available at the Comptel’s booth at Mobile World Congress (14-17 February in Barcelona ) in Hall 1 at Stand 1C06—be sure to stop by and say hello!


Management World Americas: OSS Consolidation & Operational Excellence

Posted: November 10th, 2010 | Author: Arnhild Schia | Filed under: Events | Tags: , , , , | 3 Comments »

Yesterday afternoon, I had the pleasure of stepping in for Gareth Senior and presenting with Emilio Rodriguez of Mexico’s Axtel as part of Management World Americas’ Operational Excellence Summit. We were a part of the “Back Office Simplification” track, which was among the first conference sessions of the day, and many of the themes from the keynote perspectives were explored in greater detail through case studies, such as Axtel’s as well as those from Comcast Cable and XO Communications.

To briefly summarize, Comptel and Axtel outlined how to do more with less. We worked with the communications service provider over an eight-month period to consolidate its five mediation and provisioning systems into a single, convergent platform—all to enable Axtel to roll out WiMAX and FTTH. And, in the end, we helped to not only deliver an on-time, on-budget project, but also prepare Axtel for next-generation network technologies, reduce its operational costs by 30 percent and improve its business agility.

Like Keith Willetts said, cost-cutting measures such as OSS consolidation are important for alleviating the squeeze on revenue and margins. It is also critical for improving efficiency (resulting in fewer processes) and taking friction out of operators’ businesses (leading to more flexible and responsive service development and improved customer support).

Comptel hopes that those in attendance at Management World Americas enjoyed our presentation and Operational Excellence Summit track. We invite you to leave a comment with any thoughts or questions.


What’s on at Management World 2010: Day 2 Highlights

Posted: May 20th, 2010 | Author: Arnhild Schia | Filed under: Events | Tags: , , | No Comments »

After a nice evening on the rooftop at the Le Meridien Hotel on the Nice seafront on Tuesday, the team on-site at Management World 2010 got started on another very busy day.

One highlight from the second day was a Revenue Management & Profitability Summit case study presentation from Telecom Personal, the mobile branch of Telecom Argentina with 14 million subscribers.

Among the market challenges the operator faced—Argentina is a saturated market with a 120% penetration rate, number portability and MVNOs are coming up in Latin America, and the region has seen high churn with the economic slowdown.

IT manager Leticia San Juan explained the service provider’s goal of delivering a multi-channel, self-service activation solution for pre-paid subscribers in seven months, with the hope of enhancing customer satisfaction.  She then described the pre-activation, validation and provisioning (where Comptel comes in) processes to meet this objective.

There were some positive results in the end.  Telecom Personal has improved customer satisfaction by reducing the time it takes between initial contact and all of the validations—all down to two or three minutes.  The operator was also able to reduce activation costs and better collect subscribers’ contact details with identity assurance.

Some important lessons learned as noted by Leticia—a pilot implementation is critical before launching innovative services, and don’t forget to continue focus on telco product innovation while undertaking such projects.


Q&A: Stratecast’s Karl Whitelock on Policy Control

Posted: May 17th, 2010 | Author: Arnhild Schia | Filed under: Telecom Trends | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

Policy control has become one of the hottest OSS/BSS topics.  As a recent Telecom Asia story aptly summarized:

“The sophistication of smartphones and netbooks, and the explosion of P2P, video and gaming applications that ride on top of those devices—not to mention the comfort people now feel with social networks—have created a serious dilemma for [communications] service providers [(CSPs)] trying to accommodate the exponential increases in the traffic over fixed and mobile networks.  Without a means to generate sustainable revenues that offset pressure to lower costs and improve customer experience—all while reining in operations costs—the huge demands on networks could prove disastrous.”

Comptel recently caught up with Karl Whitelock, senior consulting analyst for Stratecast’s OSS/BSS Global Competitive Strategies practice, and got his thoughts on this tug-of-war between data usage and customer satisfaction, and how CSPs can take charge of their services—and realize an acceptable level of profitability.

Q: How can operators achieve a balance between the business realities they face and the aspirations and needs of their customers?

A: Customers always want the most they can get for the least cost.  This applies to all things retail and wholesale.  With mobile plans, especially mobile data plans that offer unlimited usage for fixed amounts, customers think they are getting a great deal.  For the most part, they are. However, too many customers taking advantage of such plans with devices, such as laptops, dongles or the most advanced smartphones, usually creates service quality issues in various parts of the network.  This in turn often means the establishment of additional network capacity, which carries a price tag.  Customers can consume a lot of bandwidth and generate a lot of data that must be carried to whatever destination it is intended.  Now, I’m not advocating a severe thrashing of the customers that heavily use what they pay for, because they are doing what they are supposed to be doing—using the network.  Hence, it is important for CSPs to find ways to align that usage with realistic revenue goals.  This means that the day of “all-you-can-eat” data plans must be replaced with a strategy that is more balanced for all parties concerned.

Q: What steps should CSPs take to ensure that they get things right when it comes to customer-focused policy management?

A: Achieving the right balance between customer usage and the realities of increasing traffic volumes all CSPs now face requires innovation and the right tools.  Policy management is one of those tools, and can be coupled with a real-time rating and charging engine to allow customers to take control.  They can define how and when their services will be used.  It can have volume cap limits, financial limits and really any other “hard trigger”.  In addition, the customer needs to know when they are 50% towards a limit; this could be in minutes of use or capacity download volume, so they can make informed decisions.  Instituting policy control without customer involvement is the surest way to make customers unhappy.  While a CSP may not care that much about one individual consumer, what makes the “policy without involvement” approach so dangerous is the power one consumer can have by word of mouth through the social networking process.  Sharing just how bad their personal experience was with an operator in this manner can have huge unwanted consequences if posted to such places as YouTube or Facebook.  Again, the key is to give customers control on some things and inform them of when a usage change must be made if it looks like they are going to go over the designated limit and risk the consequences of being out of plan compliance.

Q: What impact do you see policy control having on OSS as a whole?

A: I relate OSS into two categories—the business support side (BSS) and the operations support side (OSS).  Policy control impacts both.  For the BSS side, it means integration with rating and charging, so the financial aspects of policy can be worked in properly.  It also requires the customer management side to give customers the information they need to make informed decisions about their mobile data and voice plan usage.  On the OSS side, if a CSP makes an upsell offer, say something like “for a small incremental amount, you can have a faster upload/download speed or be granted more download volume”, then the OSS, especially the inventory and activation functions, need to be able to allocate that capacity correctly.  This has a big impact on the fixed-line side, but even with mobile data, it means network capacity planning and utilization processes must be aware of customer actions.  In all cases, policy can be set for making an upgrade offer to a customer when a policy-defined threshold may be approaching.

For more on effective, customer-focused policy management, a Comptel-commissioned Stratecast whitepaper is available for download, and an on-demand TM Forum Webcast is available to play.