Reflections on LTE Advanced – Part Two

In my last post, I touched on what LTE-A is and the benefits we can expect from it, including much more bandwidth. However, there is some room for improvement with this technology.

The Price Issue

First and foremost, there are cost issues related to the massive performance increase. For instance, if you have a mobile broadband bundle with a capacity of 2 GB, this could quickly be consumed in roughly 15-20 seconds. If you’re a heavy user today and spend about 30 GB a month, at maximum capacity, it would not last long in LTE-A. Depending on how the service is put to market, consumers could end up paying a fortune for its speed—hindering adoption and prolonging the transition to LTE-A.

So why will it be so pricey? There are a few fundamental reasons. First, the cell in LTE-A is smaller but much faster than those found in previous generations. So this means that we will have more cells (think of these as the roadside ‘towers’), but they will most likely be built into streetlight poles and other facilities in addition to physical towers. Here’s where the price comes into play—each cell has a cost. In addition, each of those cells needs to be connected to the core network somehow (typically microwave radio or optic cable), and with more cells comes more cables and more complex networks.

Also, each cell needs to transport more data as bandwidth grows. Thus, the infrastructure to support such bandwidth requires major investments by communications service providers (CSPs), including in new technologies like small cell devices for more specific locations. We can also expect more fibre rollouts, which will need to be connected to all kinds of routers, switches and repeaters in the telecom network. These will all need to be planned, installed and operated. While we assume that efficiency increases in hardware over time (smaller space and faster speed) and power consumption decreases, all this infrastructure will have a major impact when it comes to cost. In addition to the purchase and operations, the cost of labour for actually digging up the ground, laying the cables and filling the ground can really add up.

What about Vendors?

This means a lot of various things for software vendors like Comptel and others in the OSS/BSS and Service Provider IT (SPIT) field? We believe the infrastructure rollout will need to be as automated as possible to drive the need for an excellent fulfillment process, logical network connections and efficient resource management. This will, in turn, reduce wasted time and money. The increase in bandwidth will likely drive more customer offerings and drive the need for service orchestration and catalog-driven order management. The complexity of the service must be conveyed in a way that makes sense for customer segments using the network capacity, and various service bundles should be prepared and proposed.

One may, however, discover that there are so many different ways to bundle these services that they completely avoid it and allow customers to self-personalise their subscriptions in advance or just in time. CSPs will naturally want to charge and control this usage and the bandwidth that customers are getting, such as services without quota restrictions like music streaming with a fixed monthly fee. Perhaps they can consider time-, location- or service-specific profiles of policies that enable customers to enjoy the vast capacity at full speed.

With this in mind, we already enjoy a degree of granularity like watching a TV series at full capacity, while others view it at a lesser quality, all enabled by policy control and online charging systems. We’re also starting to see CSPs analysing and adapting their customer engagement through intelligent interactions like free services and campaign offers, better matching service profile configurations and other things that better suite personal preferences of usage. All of these services need to be activated, changed and deactivated in real time with a provisioning and activation engine that can scale to the vast speed and low latency.

Likewise, the usage data will be so diverse and vast in its volume that a next-generation mediation system with massive scalability is needed to enable managing the online feeds of data and transactions securely and to adapt the data from various sources and formats with all of the potential various destinations (and their formats). This layer we saw formed in the CDR/file world will also be very necessary in the new online/diameter world.

In summary, behind the acronym LTE-A, there is a promise of vast bandwidth, which no matter how you look at it, will surely benefit us, especially as many other innovations can then be applied to it. There are some hurdles to overcome, but just as many opportunities presented with the technology.

If you’re interested in talking about LTE-A a bit more, please leave a comment or come to our booth at the upcoming Management World 2012, taking place in Dublin in May, to chat with me about it.

Reflections on LTE Advanced – Part One

When following the hot industry trends, I found a lot of excitement around LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) and wanted to share my thoughts on this emerging technology.

So what is LTE-A?

Well, in the simplest of terms, it’s the latest advancement in radio technology that will put one Gigabits/s bandwidth (or 1000 megabits/s) to your mobile device of choice, whether it’s a laptop, dongle, tablet or smartphone (and eventually feature phone). Network rollouts will occur once the technology is proven in trials and compatible devices are available.

For comparison, you can get up to 100 megabits/s through LTE technology and up to 24 megabits/s with ADSL technology. The bandwidth that LTE-A enables is similar to the fastest speeds from Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) technology and about three times faster than that of cable. It is also approved by the International Telecommunications Union as the true 4G technology irrespective of what industry marketing and some communications service providers (CSPs) are saying about LTE and DC-HSPA. Globally, we are just deploying LTE infrastructure, and thus, LTE-A will have its first major deployments sometime in the future.

Some Perspective

While the maximum speed will most likely be very theoretical, at least in the beginning, the technology promises to provide all of the bandwidth we need without wiring everything together physically, allowing for true mobility. To put that bandwidth into perspective, one HD quality video stream can consume up to tens of megabits per second depending on the encoding/decoding technology used. This would then decide how much of the CPU and graphics chip on your device would be used and how much battery life they consume on decoding the video feed. The less bandwidth that is consumed (and hence tighter compression used in video encoding), the more work the CPU and graphics chip will have to do, and more battery will be consumed. In theory, you would not need much video compression with LTE-A, as there is plenty of capacity and hence less demand on battery, CPUs and other chip development needs. Think about several HD video channels being streamed to your device and having the ability to use other services in parallel. It would also enable higher upload speeds, so your multi-megapixel DSLR pictures could be streamed to your cloud storage or photostream of choice in near real time.

Is there really a need for this much bandwidth?

I’ve witnessed first-hand that once more bandwidth is available, it will get used. Remember the times of MS-DOS and the famous statement that 640 kB of memory is enough for everything? I’m feeling a bit old here, but seriously, we are masters of consuming 97% of our hard drives, for example, no matter what the capacity is—and the same applies to bandwidth. With recent advancements in HD displays in relatively small form factor (e.g. retina display in the new Apple iPad), it’s almost guaranteed we will consume available bandwidth. I’d think, however, that with such bandwidth, the need for large local storage on devices becomes less important, especially as cloud storage is becoming more affordable. Hence, we will see more video-enabled devices with minimal, built-in storage capacity.

LTE-A sounds promising, right? In my next post, I’ll discuss this technology further and highlight some areas where there’s room for improvement.

Summarising My Thoughts on Mobile World Congress

I thought I would have been able to blog more during Mobile World Congress (MWC). How wrong I was though! In retrospect, I have to say I’m not at all disappointed about it, as MWC was a great event for Comptel. Ulla Koivukoski and others can say more about that. In this blog post, I’ve tried to focus more on the product side of things, but first wanted to say something about the way we looked.

The launch of our new brand was noticed by all who have known Comptel for a long time. It was great to hear the positive feedback as well as MWC attendees’ curiosity about the new brand. When I saw our new tagline, ‘Making Data Beautiful’, being noticed by one of my favourite technology news sites, it warmed my heart. The Register even gave us a special mention in its MWC coverage (any news is good news, or would you disagree?). To me, it’s very clear how we make data beautiful, but I welcome everybody to discuss it with us—we are happy to share our story with those interested.

At MWC, we also unveiled our focus on offering Customer Engagement solutions, where our product portfolio helps realise our ‘event-analysis-action’ vision. It seemed to be well understood and led to some very interesting discussions during the event. In addition, there was a natural interest towards Comptel Social Links and our future plans with that product, which we recently acquired from Xtract.

The future of policy control and online charging and the importance of integrating them (which we already did in 2010) still had a major buzz around it. This is not where the evolution of policy control will stop though—it’s actually quite the opposite, and we’re heavily working on new capabilities in this field. Some of those ideas were recently referred to by Alan Quayle in his MWC summary.

Comptel Dynamic SIM Management and our Wataniya Kuwait project garnered a lot of attention, too. Many discussions began on how self-care personalisation is a tool and way for communications service providers (CSPs) to enable loyalty, and how catalog-driven order management is essential for such self-care to be effective and cost-efficient. This is especially important when aggregating over-the-top (OTT) and other third-party offerings into the CSPs’ own offerings.

During the same week as MWC, Comptel was awarded with an IBM Beacon Award for the Best Communications Industry Solution. I think it’s a great honour from one of our most long-term strategic partners. It was given based on our mediation product, which is being used by about 20 of the 30 largest CSPs (by subscribers) and processes 20% of the world’s usage events. This was a figure that came as a surprise to many, but we have an extensive install base with multi-billion events being processed per day.

There lies a key question for CSPs. With data processing volumes expected to grow 10-100 times with LTE, according to various reports published, how scalable is your mediation system, and more importantly, how cost-efficient is it really to scale to these volumes? We expanded on the work we did with Heavy Reading on this topic during the event.

We also demonstrated some of the most recent product advances we’ve made, and proved that we are not just talking on a conceptual level but can demonstrate how our products actually work. One of these was the new release of our catalog-driven order management solution.

MWC for me is always a lot more than just meetings with partners and customers. It’s a way to see the people behind email addresses. The event brings a lot of people together, and you get to see former colleagues in their new roles and old friends long gone, and build on those relationships, which are very important, at least to me. This relationship building is also very crucial for CSPs to do with their customers; the deeper the relationships are, the more profoundly difficult it is to let go. But like every relationship, it needs to be actively cared and nurtured. And like we say at Comptel, that is beautiful.

For some reason, after a rather exhausting event filled with long days and a lot of meetings, I felt somewhat sad to be sitting in the airplane on my way home. Not that I didn’t want to go home, but I very much enjoyed MWC this year. If you had some great experiences, why not leave a small comment here?

For those that read my previous blog post about the failing cruise control on my car, the story had a happy ending. The maintenance shop fixed the problem, and I had first-class customer service during the re-visit.

I’m starting to move my sights to Management World 2012 in Dublin, where you can also meet us and find out more about Comptel. I don’t want to spoil the event by telling you what we’re going to show there, so be patient, we always have something new cooking. Let’s ‘co’-operate and ‘co’-create better customer engagement until then!

Preparing for Mobile World Congress 2012 with Great Anticipation

It’s been awhile since I’ve had a chance to blog, and a lot has happened in that time— you will see it when you visit us at Mobile World Congress (MWC) or online. Change wasn’t, however, the only reason for blogging.

While preparing for the event, I was reflecting on my past MWC experiences, and concluded that a lot is different, yet a lot is the same. What I mean is that we’re in the same place, Barcelona, in the same booth area, with many of the same companies and same people around us. But just like over the years we have evolved the frequency and way we travel around the world, our industry is undergoing a change, too.

Customers rightfully demand better value for money in terms of fairer treatment, better service and more interaction, and they are willing to spend more for premium treatment, like our recent study shows.

Just like me. I have recently had a few different customer engagement experiences and have decided to share one of them with you. It’s not specific to telecommunications but is an example in real-life customer experience nevertheless, and we all have these.

I have an ongoing issue with my car and its annual maintenance. Finland has quite a strict law on car maintenance, and for older cars, they are inspected annually for their condition. Well…I don’t drive an “old” car (over three years) but had the first inspection nonetheless. It didn’t go smoothly…

I had some pre-inspection maintenance carried out and got a green light from the shop. A truly very nice and helpful experience. I was also told that my issues with cruise control were now fixed. I then went to the inspection, and to my surprise, got two recommendations for corrections (with a notice of 10 days to fix them) for items that the maintenance report claimed were “checked and ok.” Not good.

Naturally, I called the maintenance shop, and have to say, I was given exemplary treatment. I was given the choice of my preference for the revisit time without any conditions, a free temporary car with no mileage limits and a very nice service manager who took as good care of me as he could in this case. The shop fixed the issues of the inspection and informed me when the car was ready via sms. It said that there were no charges, and explained what had happened, what they found out and what they did to fix the issues. The only problem is that the cruise control still doesn’t work.

I’m sure I will get great service once I’m able to return to the shop. I admit frustration that I need to visit it once more, but I know the staff acknowledged their error, will treat me well and will do their best to fix the problem. Not much more I can ask.

What is great about this experience is what makes a good treatment of a customer. The issue was not treated as the customer’s fault, plus keeping the customer informed and aware of what is being done, has been done and will be done in case the problem persists, is a great example of a real-time personalised treatment.

It would be great if the service was completed the right way the first time around, but technology can be complex and not very easy, so sometimes it just does not happen. Admitting failures, plus adapting to a customer’s schedule and needs, is a way to take care of a problem. Mistreatment, untimely communication or lack of engagement is a poor approach that can lead to further frustration and general customer dissatisfaction.

This is a level of engagement we all would like from our communications service providers (CSPs). With dropped calls, call scrambling, lack of bandwidth or network congestion, it would be great if the CSPs could immediately respond and inform that they have identified the issue and will do their utmost to give me, the customer, the best possible service at all the times. The good news is that the need to deliver a high-quality customer experience like this has been well acknowledged across the industry.

Like I said in the beginning, they require “change”, and Comptel is changing, too. We are passionate about helping CSPs engage with their customers in real time, and understand their customers’ personalised needs to interact at the right time with the right proposition in that specific condition. We hope to collaborate with CSPs to combine our knowledge to conquer the issues.

We have a lot to offer from self-care-driven, just-in-time activation of SIMs and services that enables service personalisation and dialogue-driven engagement with customers, to real-time, next-generation fulfillment and catalog-driven order management. Plus, Comptel can drive personalisation, quality of service (QoS) management and monetisation of data services with policy control and integrated charging, and support the explosion of transactions in the data-driven world with next-generation mediation. We also have recently added real-time predictive analytics to tie together our vision of ‘event-analysis-action’. It’s about making intelligent use of data to engage in a new way and to take actions towards improving the customer experience in real time. I think it’s beautiful.

I look forward to MWC 2012 and to meeting with as many new and old acquaintances as I can. Visit Comptel at Stand #1C06. Let’s ‘co’mmunicate!

Comptel’s Second Day at Management World Africa 2011

Phew! The second day of TM Forum’s Management World Africa 2011 is over. Now, I’m back on an airplane but this time to Cape Town (where Comptel has an office). Before landing, I again reflected a bit on the speech I gave on “taking personalisation to the next level—exploring how communications service providers (CSPs) can optimise customer retention and profitability through SIM management.”

In the afternoon’s presentation, I explored how CSPs across most parts of the world run their prepaid businesses, giving relatively little choice to users, mostly pre-provisioning the data and logistically managing many types or packages of SIM cards. Basically, SIM packages define the product one buys with or without a number attached.

I then expressed what the basic choices of personalisation are (price or product) and raised the question of segmentation. Aren’t we already in the stage of various types of micro-segments where two people in even the same village in rural Africa, let alone in urban cities, likely won’t have the exact same desires and expectations of CSPs’ services? If we start looking at the number of devices we use and the usage patterns we have, we would find that there is hardly any commonality, except that we all call and use data services—but that is not granular enough to address our need for personalisation. We have a vast amount of segments to address today, and the old mechanisms for defining products with varying prices and other parameters need to be rethought; otherwise, they will lead to non-personalised experiences and low customer loyalty.

I went on to explore if the mechanisms of trying to guess what is hot or not is valid—ultimately suggesting that CSPs do not even try. Let users select the services and value-adds they are interested in, and enable them to choose these elements themselves. My conclusion: loyalty is driven not only through quality but also through personalisation. If we allow users to self-personalise the services they take from their CSPs, how can competitors offer anything better?

Like I wrote yesterday, catalog is left, right and center of this kind of approach, but the way we fulfill service orders needs to be well coupled with the catalog data. If you want to know more, we’re happy to discuss it with you—it’s a bit of longer story than a blog post really.

Overall, it was a tight 15-minute session with a Q&A with the audience, and there was much more positive discussion afterwards 1-on-1 with the CSP community present.

On The Way to Management World Africa 2011

I’m writing this while travelling to TM Forum’s Management World Africa 2011 in Johannesburg, South Africa, where I’ll be giving a speech on “taking personalisation to the next level—exploring how communications service providers (CSPs) can optimise customer retention and profitability through SIM management.” (Despite most of my blog posts having been about IMS or LTE, this one won’t.)

So while flying on the Airbus A380, which, by the way, is the most advanced aircraft I’ve ever travelled in, I started to think about how telcos, in general, fail at personalisation and why they should really take a serious look at other sectors like the airline industry. A major difference can be seen when comparing the way CSPs and airlines price their offerings. Telcos, for the most part, have fixed pricing with tiered costs based on peak and off-peak hours, but they don’t really personalise it at all. Whereas airline fees vary depending on the time of your flight, the number of passengers on that flight, etc.

Then, taking it a step further, upon booking, airlines personalise all communication based on your mileage program level. You can also choose your seat depending on availability and class of service, and sometimes have the option of special meals or drinks. Even after landing, I will be picked up by a personal driver, who has my name on a large sign to help me find him in the crowd.

Looking at it, aircrafts like the A380 are complicated ‘monsters’, technological masterpieces on their own. However, the airlines do not really sell the technology—but rather the experience. And although the personalisation is limited somewhat, it is still much more than just an SMS informing you that the European Union regulatory data caps and prices are valid when you’re roaming, for example.

I will be presenting around this topic and how CSPs can make personalisation real for customers. The key elements needed to see it through? Comptel believes it’s a full-fledged fulfillment suite. Comptel Dynamic SIM Management uses a configurable dialogue engine to drive user interaction, backed with Comptel Catalog to ensure that the products defined can actually be delivered with a service and resource inventory for numbers and SIM-related data and, of course, real-time Comptel Provisioning and Activation.

I know this will be published after I land, but thought of writing this to begin to explore the issue of personalisation. I will continue with this direction during Management World Africa and in some blog posts to follow.

LTE – The Voice Problem

A few months ago, I wrote a blog about whether LTE was breathing a new life into IMS. I received a lot of comments, and that post has been one of the most popular on the “The Dynamics of OSS”. Clearly, I touched a nerve there!

This time, I would like to look at how operators plan to solve “the voice problem” in LTE. Yes, voice! Given the revenue operators still make from voice services, one would have thought they would have made voice a priority. In fact, the focus so far has been almost entirely on faster data. However, the “voice problem” won’t go away.

The problem arises because 2G/3G voice is basically circuit switched, not packet transport. LTE, on the other hand, is all-IP, packet transport with no ‘circuit’ at all. This creates quite a problem for operators when they decide to transition voice from 2G/3G to LTE.

Currently, operators with LTE are considering three options to support voice:

1. VoLTE (GSMA- and 3GPP-backed Voice over LTE, basically voice services in IMS core)
2. VoLGA (Kineto Wireless-supported alternative Voice over LTE using Generic Access or UMA also known as unlicensed Mobile Access)
3. CSFB (Circuit Switched FallBack, prior to Voice over LTE, the 3GPP-backed standard)

As it relates to voice calls, CSFB is principally not LTE at all.  The radio connection is moved to a circuit-switched 2G/3G radio connection (and LTE radio is not on). As a result, data sessions (web surfing, data streaming, etc.) would be cut unless the device has a dual radio mode (LTE and 2G/3G radio on at the same time), which apart from consuming more battery life, this would generally be a bad compromise.

VoLGA is a somewhat of a competing offering by Kineto among others. It proposes to bridge the gap between LTE and CSFB, but would require each handset and device to also support VoLGA. So far, the adoption of VoLGA appears to be limited.

This leaves VoLTE.  VoLTE seems to be the winner, as it is backed by all of the major network and device vendors. However, it mandates IMS back-end core and also forces all services in existence in 2G/3G voice (IN services, prepaid, roaming) to be re-implemented in IMS, which is clearly a big and potentially expensive challenge for operators. VoLTE would support the handover of radio to ensure voice call continuity in a single-radio mode (very good for sparing battery consumption), but some work is still needed in the standardisation for the handover process from 3G to LTE.

LTE could also naturally drive OTT (over the top) voice services (e.g. Google Voice, Skype, etc.) , but the challenge is that the handover to 2G/3G radio would cut the data sessions and disconnect voice. As LTE coverage will most likely not be 100% (at least for most European operators), this will most likely impact some users. That being said, it would only affect truly mobile customers. Nomadic customers, who are essentially stationary, would not have to face that problem and could use OTT services to the detriment of operator revenue.

However, it seems many operators have decided to tackle the challenge by first driving the rollout of LTE by using data only. Then, when coverage and hunger for more data is handled—and handled well—the assumption is that voice can more easily be put onto the network. I’ve heard rumours that larger international groups are building a central IMS core to be shared between their national operating companies (the LTE radio part would remain separate). This would help to drive the business case for IMS, as IMS costs are split between the operating entities. However, sharing IMS rollout costs perhaps will not be available to smaller, independent operators then.

With CDMA, the world is ’simpler’ as the 3GPP2 standard for handover procedure from LTE to CDMA is not available, and at least Verizon is not even looking into that.

Needless to say, all of this will have an impact on back-end systems, like charging and policy control, as well as service creation and activation, which will require special attention—especially in the complex world of hybrid LTE+2G/3G networks, where services still need to be created and charged for so that they seamlessly work during handovers.

LTE: Breathing New Life into IMS?

IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) is back in the news! Remember IMS? There was a lot of hype around it a few years back, then came a big reality check (e.g. how can the cost of deployment be justified?), and in the end just a few operators decided to roll out IMS in earnest (and indeed Comptel was part of some of those successful deployments).

So, why is it in the news again?

The main reason why IMS is currently making headlines is LTE (Long Term Evolution): the new mobile technology that effectively brings in IMS. This has led some observers to declare that IMS is nowhere at the moment but will be everywhere once LTE comes in. Now I don’t see it that way—far from a big bang, the introduction of IMS is and will remain to be a slow and incremental process. I would like to explain why.

Firstly and most importantly, I believe that the foundations for IMS are already being laid now at many mobile operators, because of factors that are not directly related to LTE. The massive increase in mobile broadband and the development of packet core networks is moving the industry slowly but inevitably towards an IMS type of all-IP environment. To an OSS/BSS vendor like Comptel, this can be witnessed relatively easily by the amount of work done around DIAMETER and various DIAMETER protocol implementations. We see that, for example, in various policy control approaches taken by most mobile operators, such as AT&T (which I blogged about recently) or the Comptel Roaming Cost Control implementation at DNA Finland. DIAMETER is not necessarily the de-facto standard yet, but it seems that more and more equipment supports DIAMETER as the ‘standard’ protocol for usage charging or policy management. And this is key to IMS succeeding; DIAMETER is part of the IMS architecture.

Another factor driving the progressive evolution to IMS is the growing interest in using user data for active decision-making in OSS/BSS. I have already mentioned policy control, but we are also seeing an increased need for customer-centric fulfilment and charging. And, this is mirrored by the evolving role of customer information repositories, such as GUP (Generic User Profile), SPR (Subscriber Profile Repository), HSS (Home Subscriber Server) and HLR (Home Location Register) and others, as well as the significantly increased awareness and adoption of 3GPP-aligned strategies. So while data management is still a major challenge and synching all repositories is still a major headache, there is no doubt that customer data and intelligence are moving towards the network—as IMS requires it.

That said, while there is clear evidence that the foundations are already being laid pre-LTE, I also believe that when operators do eventually deploy LTE, they will not go to an all-IMS architecture straight away. The main reason for this is that operators are unlikely to do a wholesale replacement of their established 2.5 and 3G networks. The fact is that, despite the growth in data, revenue is still mostly made with voice, and voice does not really need an all-IP environment. The Circuit Switched (CS) core is still there, and why not use it? Just like PSTN, the CS core will be more or less a place where no new investments are made, and if they are made, it’s because the new stuff is substantially lower-cost, if nothing else. Furthermore, while IP core is struggling to cope with the smartphone load of IP traffic, I would think that operators would be adopting the wrong strategy if they put their money making voice onto an overloaded (or soon-to-be overloaded) IP network. There may be a time when it will make economic sense to move to an all-IP network, but operators will also be keeping a CS network. And that also means that IMS will have to sit alongside more traditional and indeed legacy systems.

There is one final factor that I would like to highlight: China. While the rest of the world is contemplating a move to IMS, China Mobile and more recently China Telecom are boldly going where virtually no other has before—a large scale, nationwide IMS infrastructure. In my opinion, aside from the example it sets, this will mean that some vendors who supply the network-side kits to this investment will be in a fairly strong position in the future, having gained invaluable experience, and that will serve to reassure other telcos about IMS. This move will impact the telco sector much more than we can even imagine today.

In short, I believe we are unlikely to see a mad rush to IMS, just a slow and steady adoption as we have seen up to now.

In reality, neither IMS nor LTE (or any other technology) matters really. What matters is that we, the users, get the services we want at a price we’re willing to pay for with devices and technology supporting it. If IMS or LTE are the technologies that can deliver the necessary capacity, experience, latency or whatever functionalities (or not) needed, while balancing operators’ costs so that they can continue to build more, then they will be adopted. If not, they will fail and be hyped about for awhile and forgotten.

AT&T: Taking Charge of Its Mobile Broadband Services?

While I was painting something in my garage (and waiting for it to dry) this past week, I was surfing the Web on my E90 Communicator and reading about AT&T’s recent announcement.  I think the communications service provider’s (CSP) move to pricing ‘bucket plans’ for its mobile broadband offerings is a very interesting one—compelling me to write a blog post…

What AT&T announced was that consumers with smartphones can choose a DataPlus package, pay USD $15 a month and get to download 200 MB of data.  They will also receive a notification when they near the quota limit and a warning about additional charges for exceeding the 200 MB.  Alternatively, consumers can go with the CSP’s DataPro package, pay USD $25 a month and get to download 2 GB of data.  Otherwise, this package principally works in the same way as the former.

After digesting this a bit, I saw many similarities between these plans—with a monthly subscription, an online quota management and a selective bucket, extra usage pay as more is charged and a notification of nearing the quota—and the type of capabilities offered by Comptel Control and Charge, which are currently being explored by CSPs worldwide.  But that’s not all… With Comptel’s solution, CSPs can, for example, offer fixed-mobile convergent quotas and service-specific quotas or exclusions, such as streaming music or downloading it from iTunes or Spotify, so that it does not consume the entire limit.

It is becoming more and more evident that ‘all-you-can-eat’ types of mobile broadband propositions are being converted into something more value-based and limited.  Although the limit may be large—like AT&T’s offering, where 200 MB is enough for 65% of users and only 2% exceed 2 GB—it is still there, preventing excessive usage or charging for high usage, and thus either creating new revenue opportunities or limiting (and guiding) customers’ behaviours in some way.

AT&T’s case is not the only example around, but it seems to be quite clearly well-defined and focused on a classic issue associated with mobile broadband.  I think it is a fairly fair policy and definitely a case where the CSP is taking charge of its services.

A Dynamic Customer Experience: Going Beyond CRM

Back in 2006, Comptel developed its vision of the Comptel Dynamic OSS. This wasn’t just a piece of marketing spin—there was real substance behind the concept. What we realized was that we were on the midst of a major shift in telecom software, and that Comptel was in quite a unique position.

At that time, customer experience management was becoming a key differentiator, but much of the focus of communication service providers (CSPs) until then was on bringing in self-care and a better CRM. What we recognized was that one of the key aspects of the customer experience was happening below that glossy surface. With customers, consumers or businesses, increasingly wanting things “now!”, it was essential for CSPs to be able to create and tailor both services and charging plans to suit their needs. And, that called for dynamic, real-time fulfillment and charging capabilities closely linked with customer-centric data repositories. (Hey, that is exactly the area of business that Comptel specializes in!)

Fast forward to 2010—now customer experience is at the centre stage.

At Management World 2010 in Nice, there was much talk about policy management, for example.  What is policy management when you think about it? At its core, it’s about being able to deliver personalized services and charging plans dynamically to customers. And, that requires dynamic policy control and charging solutions coupled with customer-centric information—like Comptel Control and Charge.

Another example of the need for customer-centric, dynamic OSS is SIM management. Although you’d think the issues around dynamic resource management would have been solved ages ago, they’re not. We launched Comptel Dynamic SIM Management in February 2010 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to address the issue created by the pre-provisioning model. The idea is to completely transform the process into a just-in-time one. This enables CSPs principally to unbundle their prepaid (or postpaid) commercial proposition from the SIM card and all related assets, until the service is actually acquired and activated by the subscriber. This way, we lower the cost to acquire a customer substantially, and we also provide the ability to launch new services or campaigns to market much faster, as the ‘product package’ is dynamically allocated at the time of activation. Think of it as a means to run campaigns per any and every day, as SIM card packages no longer define the campaign offering! Also think of the “first use experience and personalization” you are able to offer with this new type of activation process!  Once again, it’s about dynamic OSS components working closely with customer-centric information.

Solutions like Comptel Control and Charge and Comptel Dynamic SIM Management are key ingredients and very vital parts of CSPs’ strategies in being able to ensure the best, differentiated customer experience, while lowering costs and increasing revenues.

With Management World Americas 2010 on the horizon and the future ahead of us, it will be interesting to see what will be the next ‘dynamic’ solution that will enable CSPs to reach the next level and offer an improved customer experience! We’d like to hear your thoughts on what it could or should be…