Mobile World Congress Day 3: The Turning Point for Telco Networks

The third day of Mobile World Congress was defined by the keynote session about Big Data and mobile, but the underlying theme was network infrastructure. Three CEOs in the space touched on the upcoming evolution of networks: Joe Tucci of EMC, Michael Combes of Alcatel-Lucent and Patrick Gelsinger of VMware.

The consensus was that mobile devices and the dramatic, sweeping changes in traffic requirements are going to fundamentally change the structure, dynamics and functions of networks around the world.

“I believe we are just at the beginning,” said Combes.  He emphasized the importance of a structural change to build networks for the customer habits of tomorrow. “We clearly have to see the network differently to deliver the scale and elasticity required for new applications.”

Networks, in Context

Combes charged that the whole telecommunications industry is at a turning point that started about five years ago, when an increasing number of mobile devices entered the scene. He estimates that there will be a 440 percent increase in cloud and datacenter traffic between 2012 and 2017, but many communications service providers (CSPs) are still building networks with a legacy footprint.

Combes highlighted the debate taking place about the need for more intelligent, faster networks and how networks and the cloud are becoming more integrated. He touched on how this is changing the dynamic of the industry, because network operators will be deploying across a unified cloud platform and datacenters will be shared by multiple tenants.

“In Europe, there still aren’t enough investments in network and IT,” he said. “[CSPs] have no other way but to compete on price, as opposed to innovation.” He believes that networks must adapt to user needs and become user-aware.

Comptel’s vision of contextual intelligence at every touchpoint plays right into this line of thinking.

Infrastructure 2.0

Joe Tucci, the CEO of EMC, discussed the phenomenon as well.

“What’s happening is IT is bleeding into networks and vice versa,” he explained. “We call it the 3^rd grade platform of IT.” He added that developers will rule in the future. They will look for platforms that help them create new and innovative solutions. And a lot of those platforms will be in the cloud.

Patrick Gelsinger of VMware picked up the conversation by explaining how virtualisation is bringing efficiency and savings to networks that used to rely upon physical servers. He added that VMware has actually virtualised 70 percent of the company’s own servers.

Comptel has been very excited about the potential held in software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV). If the expected benefits of lightning fast speed, agility and real-time responsiveness are realised, these new networks will empower CSPs to deliver better, more personalised customer experiences than ever before. It was great to hear that other companies in the space are working toward similar goals.

The telecommunications industry is indeed at a turning point and with the right infrastructure, CSPs will be able to meet both customer and business goals in new and creative ways.

In this eBook, we share exclusive, global executive research that highlights:

- Executive strategies for 2014

- Barriers to integration

- Technology priorities

- Attitudes toward data & planning

Download

Mobile World Congress Day 2: Getting Big Value Out of Big Data

The first day of Mobile World Congress was a busy one, full of panels, speeches and workshops. When Day Two began, I knew it was going to be another exciting one, full of insights from thought leaders across the telco industry. Today, one of those thought leaders was Comptel’s VP of Analytics and Technology, Matti Aksela. Matti was a participant during the morning panel session, “Big Data Goes on Stage.” He joined executives from Blancco, Creanord, Omnitele, Tieto, and Tecnotree to discuss the current state of Big Data and the changes we can expect to see over the next several years.

Big Data is still a fairly difficult term to define. At Comptel, we believe that the term is a new label that’s being applied to something fundamental – the ability to build a business strategy around customer data. The panel acknowledged this, noting that telcos are handling petabytes upon petabytes of information that could potentially be useful to the business.

But what do telcos really need to make the most out of Big Data?

The Foundation of Data is Infrastructure

Tomi Paatsila, CEO at Omnitele, explained that scalable infrastructure is integral to Big Data analytics, because organisations have to be able to adapt to different traffic environments. Matti added that scalable infrastructure also needs to support different types of data to effectively consolidate all that information.

Part of that requirement is due to the emergence of new virtual machines (vms). Ideal infrastructures will have to be vendor-agnostic, providing a seamless integration for the technologies of yesterday, today and tomorrow. As Lucas Weber, product manager at Blancco pointed out, both virtualization and the rise of cloud computing have added new layers of complexity to the data that infrastructures must be able to handle.

However, collecting and processing all those petabytes of data can still be a cumbersome (and expensive) task for telcos, especially if they attempt to do so manually.

Automation for the Next Generation

The panelists agreed that automation is a key element to any Big Data solution. They also agreed that it’s important to analyse end-user behaviour at every possible touch point, a particular science of the customer experience that Comptel has championed for a long time. When telcos can collect contextual intelligence at every touch point, execs can make informed business decisions based on real-time, segmented customer interactions.

Matti often observes organisations that are frustrated with the results of their Big Data solution, because business leaders didn’t identity a specific motivation behind implementation. As Matti said on today’s panel, “The key is to start looking for value out of the data right away.” To do that, telcos need to decide which business problem can be solved with the help of Big Data. In Matti’s experience, the top use case is churn reduction.

Weber summed up the panel conversation perfectly: “At the end of the day, consumers and enterprises should benefit from Big Data.” As telcos strive to become customer-centric companies, the ability to efficiently utilise Big Data to create a better customer experience will be an important factor in their success, or their failure.

In this eBook, we share exclusive, global executive research that highlights:

- Executive strategies for 2014

- Barriers to integration

- Technology priorities

- Attitudes toward data & planning

Download

Mobile World Congress Day 1: Customer Experience, Disruption Reign Supreme

In this eBook, we share exclusive, global executive research that highlights:

- Executive strategies for 2014

- Barriers to integration

- Technology priorities

- Attitudes toward data & planning

Download

Comptel and Big Data at Mobile World Congress 2014

You probably have not been able to avoid hearing the term, “Big Data”, nor about the expectations of its limitless possibilities for communications service providers (CSPs). CSPs have a unique opportunity to delve into the spectrum of network, customer, service and other information at their fingertips and flowing through their OSS/BSS, eventually using it to improve both internal operations and customer-facing processes.

But Big Data sadly often means Big Projects. It is not just management of the three core “Vs” – volume, velocity and variety – that contributes to this, so can the setup of the technology to store and collect the data. But often, the biggest challenge stems from the fourth “V”, or value. What do operators need to do in order to drive true value from Big Data? I believe that there are some key requirements for being successful here:

• Have a strategic business objective to focus on. Do not just collect data for the sake of collecting data, but have a goal in mind and a roadmap of what to do to drive more value when you reach that goal. (Buy-in from the boardroom, of course, helps, too, especially with issues like breaking down organisational silos.)
• Don’t start with a blank slate. It’s important to have a set of proven, productised applications to address your business pains, whether it be customer experience-driven like smart throttling or network-focused for proactive service management, for instance.
• Collect experience and learning in your organisation if you see information as your key asset, but don’t wait until you have built an experienced team to do so – have that as your plan, but start generating value from operational applications from the get-go.

And that’s where Comptel comes in. We’ve been developing our Big Data offering to help CSPs give their initiatives a running start, and also  supply them with the tools to support information-based decision-making and derive the true value they’ve been looking for – quickly and in a future-proof and extendable way – to solve acute business pains and build on that success.

Comptel provides a true Big Data solution, addressing all key components of the Big Data process:

1)     Data Ingestion: Integration, importing and formatting of historical and real-time data from CSPs’ own data sources, combined with external data for a truly holistic view of the business. This is powered by Comptel’s proven technology used in our mediation solutions.

2)     Data Management: Transformation, correlation, enrichment and manipulation of data to ensure optimal usability, and using the most appropriate methods to store data—whether it be Hadoop for unstructured data, massively parallel processing databases or in-memory data grids.

3)     Data Analysis: Highly accurate, real-time predictive analysis, modelling and reporting, powered by machine learning.

4)     Business Analytics Applications: Productised solutions to solve acute business pains, utilising the whole Big Data solution to drive immediate value.

One important aspect of Comptel approach’s is the utilisation of both historical and real-time data to drive true value—we do not see these as separate discrete steps of a process, i.e. building a predictive model and then applying triggers based on the model’s predictions, but instead having the predictive model applied in the real-time data stream to reap and benefit from contextual intelligence.

Clearly, Big Data analytics is reshaping the telco landscape. According to our recent research supported by Vanson Bourne, about two-thirds of telco executives (64 percent) say they are already in the process of leveraging Big Data to improve customer service, for instance. This is the time for Big Data to show that it is not just a hyped concept but a true generator of value—and we believe that the way to do that is through scalable, Big Data solutions designed to achieve and build on CSPs’ business objectives from day one.

To discuss how contextual and operational intelligence can augment CSPs’ efforts, come to our booth (Hall 5, Stand 5F41) at Mobile World Congress 2014. Look forward to seeing you in Barcelona this week!

In this eBook, we share exclusive, global executive research that highlights:

- Executive strategies for 2014

- Barriers to integration

- Technology priorities

- Attitudes toward data & planning

Download

5 Comptel Highlights from 2013

2013 has been full of good news and remarkable achievements by the Comptel team. We wanted to quickly recap five of the year’s highlights:

1. Mobile World Congress 2013

At the beginning of 2013, Comptel had a notable presence at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona. At MWC 2013, there was a lot of talk, from monetising LTE and ensuring privacy when it comes to Big Data, to efficiently using operational assets and enriching the customer experience – themes that are sure to carry over into 2014.

2. Comptel Survey Reveals Preferences of Mobile Consumers

To gauge consumer sentiment when it comes to mobile operators today, Comptel also conducted an extensive survey on customer experience, with the help of Vanson Bourne. Our survey showed that there’s a real need for better, more personal interaction between communications service providers (CSPs) and their customers—and that this can be fostered with contextual intelligence at every touch point.

3. Partnerships Forge New Paths

In keeping with our goals of improving the customer experience and “Making Data Beautiful,” we partnered with organisations that have those objectives in common. First, we partnered with Accanto Systems to help ensure that our customers are empowered with next-generation customer experience management capabilities. Second, we partnered with salesforce.com by integrating Comptel Fulfillment to revolutionise sales and service creation and delivery innovation.

4. Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific Recognises Comptel

This year, Comptel was awarded “Most Innovative Telecom OSS / BSS Vendor of the Year” by Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific. The analyst firm’s annual Asia Pacific ICT awards program is given to companies that displayed growth in performance and ground-breaking achievements. In addition to those metrics, Frost & Sullivan examined nominees’ major customer acquisitions, portfolio diversity and product innovation.

5. Comptel Social Links Wins Pipeline Innovation Awards

Another major victory for Comptel was winning a Pipeline Innovation Awards for Comptel Social Links. Pipeline’s annual programme honoured prominent telecommunications industry innovators for their advancements in technologies, products and deployments. The 2013 judging panel was comprised of key executives from leading CSPs around the world such as AT&T, BT, Cox, Intelsat, TELUS, Turkcell and Yota, as well as influential industry analysts.

To 2014 and Beyond

We’re proud of everything we’ve accomplished and can’t wait until 2014, which we’re sure will be just as good as 2013!

Globally Evangelising #MWC13 – “Barcelona-in-a-Box”

Mobile World Congress 2013 (MWC) in Barcelona had the highest attendance ever with 72,000 visitors. Every year, many of our customers do not have the opportunity to attend or meet us there, and to that end we created a customer workshop concept ‘Barcelona-in-a-Box’.  The idea is simple – if you couldn’t attend MWC, we bring it to you.

We built the workshop concept on three key industry topics which were discussed during MWC and continue to be on the agenda of almost every CSP.

To set the scene for the Barcelona-in-a-Box sessions, we shared our observations on the industry, based on extensive and in-depth discussions with major operators across the globe, insight we have gained from industry analysts and an independently commissioned report.

These observations addressed increasing smartphone penetration and how it’s driving up data usage, but not necessarily increasing revenues – largely due to pressure by OTT services such as WhatsApp, Skype, YouTube and Facebook (to name a few). Secondly, we discussed how bundled tariffs and packages are increasingly attractive to mobile subscribers, assisting CSPs with customer “lock-in” and positively driving up revenues. We highlighted the next evolution of the bundled approach through creation of fully shared data plans, as seen in the US market for example. Finally, as an observation we deliberated that while LTE rollouts are still in their early stages, the importance of attracting the right high-use customers to adopt the highly valued (and highly subsidised) handsets is key for accelerating ROI on those infrastructures.

To ensure that we have the correct data on consumer needs in place, we at each session discussed the locally relevant results of the consumer survey, Customers Yearn for the Personal Touch from Their Mobile Operators, we made at the end of 2012 with Vanson Bourne, an independent research firm. We polled 6,000 consumers from 12 countries across EMEA, Latin America and Asia Pacific on their service usage and spending habits, as well as their relationships and satisfaction with their mobile operators.

In addition to vivid discussion on the common challenges and local consumer needs, some of the sessions included live demonstrations that showcased the solutions that Comptel has developed to address the needs of its customer. We showed the benefits of the Comptel Event-Analysis-Action strategic framework with:

• Robust and highly automated Comptel Fulfillment that supports service innovation and better customer interaction while reducing costs
• ‘Plug ‘n’ Play’ Catalog-Driven product creation that allows building and adapting marketable products quickly from established service components, accelerating new revenues and allowing agile responses to market changes
• Comptel Social Links, predictive analytics to improve and automate every-day decision-making at each customer touch point and serve customers based on their individual needs and techniques of finding the right customers for new products.

We have already taken Barcelona-in-a-Box across the Middle East, Europe and Asia receiving great acclaim for our initiative and its content, being quoted as having “a fresh approach” to actively engaging with our customers. The Comptel team has enjoyed the lively debates and sense of shared understanding of the industry state and prospects for the future. Based on the feedback, we have validated that Comptel is in-sync with CSPs and our solutions suitably address their needs. We are excited to see which topics are on top of the agenda for Barcelona in 2014!

Mobile World Congress 2013: Guest Speakers on LTE, Analytics

As I mentioned the other day, Mobile World Congress was filled with excitement, with a robust exchanging of ideas among the various attendees and our customers and partners, as we look to the future of telecom. At the show, we were happy to further some of the discussions on LTE and analytics by welcoming a few guest speakers to Comptel’s booth.

The founder of operator benchmarking consultancy tefficient, Fredrik Jungermann, took us through how to pinpoint the right LTE customers. He first mentioned that not as many LTE customers are signing up as operators would like, but the numbers are rapidly growing. For example, 58% of Korea’s data traffic was over LTE in December 2012, and, likewise, Tele2 in Sweden saw an LTE penetration of 40%.

Fredrik explained that we’re transitioning away from a world of unlimited data, with more demand now put on unlimited voice and text. Of the smartphone data that is being used, 60% is through Wi-Fi, which is going un-monetised. With this in mind, he posed the question: what if operators could turn things around and monetise this traffic using LTE or operator-owned Wi-Fi?

The upsides include basic monetisation, which will mainly be based on volume, and as data traffic grows over the top (OTT) players can become an additional source of revenue. Further, offering shared data plans will help enable unused devices and drive revenues even further. The downside to this, though, is that it can be costly to supply LTE handsets, as they have the highest specs. Analytics can help match the expensive and rare handsets to the right customers – dynamically based on individual customers’ needs and behaviours. Overall, this is much more efficient than providing subsidised LTE handsets to everyone.

Additionally, we heard from Zain Kuwait’s director of management information systems, who delved into the various ways the company is improving the customer experience with analytics. If you are interested in learning more about this presentation, as well as Fredrik’s, please email [email protected].

What did you think of this year’s Mobile World Congress? We’d love to hear your favourite highlights and if you heard any interesting news or stats around LTE and analytics. Safe travels home to all!

Mobile World Congress 2013: Qtel Rebranding

Here in Barcelona, I had the fantastic opportunity to attend an exclusive Qtel event in which the company unveiled its new brand: Ooredoo. This translates to ‘I want’ in Arabic, which reflects the telco’s new focus on customer centricity and catering to end users’ desires. Examples of this vision include statements like: “I want a service that reflects who I am”, “I want the world to smile with me”, and “I want to fly higher”.

There were an amazing number of people who spoke at the launch, including Cherie Blair on her charity for women, the general of the International Telecommunication Union, the director general of the GSMA, Qatar’s Olympic medallist from the summer 2013 games, and the CEOs of Qtel Qatar and its subsidiary, Indosat. It was also announced that football star Lionel Messi is the operator’s new global brand ambassador, although he was unable to attend due to an important match.

Ooredoo strides to enrich people’s lives by understanding every single person’s wishes and dreams, and looking at how they can be fulfilled regardless of income or demographic. With this thinking, mobile services and Internet will be more broadly distributed in order to evolve the mobile economy, for prosperity, equality and beyond.

It was clear that the operator is really committed to people’s needs, as both connecting and challenging customers was stressed. It’s leading a Millennium initiative with the GSMA to help alleviate the burdens of poverty, simplifying broadband access so more people have the opportunity to educate themselves.  The CEO of Indosat, Alex Rusli, explained that island people previously had to travel up to four hours for the closest services. After access was made available where they lived, they started to grow and develop. The moral of this story is that rural communities should have the same opportunities as those in the city – everyone deserves an opportunity to grow.

Adding to this is a particular emphasis on women. For instance, the company is rolling out a special program in Iraq specifically for women where the tariff decreases after three minutes of a voice call. Since women tend to talk for longer periods over the phone, they can now enjoy less expensive calls. There are also going to be more female staff serving women at various points of sale and an initiative to help women establish businesses – checking the price of fabric, for example, to ensure they are not overpaying.

Every person wants to grow, and Ooredoo is providing the opportunity to do so by contributing to social business, enriching people’s lives and connecting the world. What do you think of Qtel’s new brand? Leave your comments here or email us at comptel.marketing@comptel and share your thoughts about the 2013 Mobile World Congress!

Mobile World Congress 2013: Live from Barcelona!

The excitement was (and still is) palpable here in Barcelona, as Mobile World Congress kicked into full gear yesterday. The keynote sessions on day one did not disappoint, with four of the largest mobile operators across the globe outlining their business strategies over the past year and looking ahead to 2017 and beyond. First up was chairman of the GSMA and CEO of Telecom Italia Group, Franco Bernabè, who stated that spectrum, privacy and investments must be the key focus for mobile operators moving forward.

Sixty-two million wireless connections are already using LTE, and this number is expected to grow to 920 million by 2017. Spectrum, then, is clearly a priority. However, as Bernabè explained, it’s critical to do more than simply having the right amount of spectrum—mobile operators must ensure that it is also harmonised across the world, in turn, making mobile services more affordable for consumers.

Privacy is another element for operators to consider, as mobile phones are carrying an increasing amount of personal information. With $350 billion compromised this year due to security risks, there is a clear place for mobile operators to become central in secure identity and access management.

Finally, Bernabè urged, operators must find a balance between competition, innovation and investment. Investments will depend on three factors: economics of scale, foreseeable business environments and up-to-date regulatory frameworks. He continued saying that operators must remain committed to Near Field Communications (NFC), LTE and voice over LTE (VoLTE) to create economically viable competition, especially in regions where excess competition is depressing the markets.

Following the opening remarks, GSMA’s director general, Anne Bouverot, moderated a discussion on the challenges and opportunities for mobile operators. AT&T’s president and CEO, Randall Stephenson, believes that we’re moving from a period of wireless experience on mobile devices to one where connectivity is always assumed and new services, like home security and mobile wallets, can be layered on top.

Next, China Mobile’s chairman, Xi Guohua, added that operators should be more concerned about OTT competition, which can erode the value of services. He suggests consolidating industry resources, like networks and devices, to gain a competitive advantage in the value chain. Additionally, Xi believes there is an opportunity with LTE to strengthen collaboration among the Internet of things, such as M2M, which will increase dialogue and align interests for the world’s operators.

Adding to this, Telefonica’s executive chairman and CEO, César Aliert, stated that operators need to lead the ecosystems into a healthy future by implementing new commercial models to better serve customers and change market dynamics. This includes breaking the taboos associated with network rollout and providing the best experience possible to customers.

Then, Vodafone’s CEO Vittorio Colao dove into how his group of operators is transforming in this digital revolution. Interestingly, he noted that more than a quarter of mobile users check their phones at the dinner table, and 66 percent sleep with their phones. Life is clearly mobile, and this is only going to increase. Because of this, Colao stated that operators need to enrich the customer experience with other services. Winners will be those who have the best products and lowest prices and are most willing to compromise and put in the work.

So far, the keynotes have been exciting to listen to, and the show floor has been packed! We’re looking forward to attending more sessions and meeting our customers, partners and other across the industry to share ideas about our changing telco landscape. In the meantime, stop by our booth in Hall 6, stand 6C30!

Q4 2012: An Update on Comptel’s Business and Strategy

Today, we announced Comptel’s financials for the fourth quarter of 2012, which closes my second year as the CEO of Comptel. The fourth quarter was the best quarter in 2012 in terms of net sales and operating profit.  The year ended with us winning two important customer contracts that demonstrate how our focused investments in Comptel Fulfillment and Comptel Social Links have started to bear fruit.

We signed the largest Analytics deal in Comptel’s history with Robi Axiata in Bangladesh, a joint venture of NTT DoCoMo and Axiata Group.  We have a good base of 15 customers now for our advanced analytics and one major win and three whole suite of products of the new Comptel Fulfillment 8 release, which we launched in the first half of 2012.

We continued our strategy execution and investments according to our 2012 plan. Our net sales grew by 7.4 per cent which is more than the approximate 4 per cent market growth. As stated in my Q3 blog, we are consciously building partnerships to strengthen our sales channel and to complement our portfolio. The new CMO organization we established in Q3 has progressed with the sales efficiency activities, including partnership enablement, which will be a key for our growth strategy. The most recently signed up partner is the mobile broadband company Nokia Siemens Networks.

The R&D investments continued to support the strategic Event – Analysis – Action vision in key portfolio areas.  The first half of the year was about developing Comptel Fulfillment 8 and integrating Comptel Social Links to our portfolio. The second half was about the key customer wins, new business use cases and researching the appliance model for analytics. Our ambition is to get analytics as an integral part of the other elements in our portfolio.  For or example service order orchestration “powered by advanced analytics” or personalized policy control and charging “powered by advanced analytics”.  You can visit us at Mobile World Congress (MWC13) at 6C30 booth in the Hall 6 to hear more.

Finally, I would like to mention our services business, where we succeeded to significantly improve the operational performance by implementing the productivity measures in Q2 and Q3. This will give us a good basis for 2013. We were also able to exceed our targets in new services such as Managed Services and Consulting in 2012.

In Q4 we fine-tuned our strategy execution plans to ensure we continue with focused activities in all areas.

Overall in the year 2012, we won 13 new customers and signed 15 significant orders, valued over MEUR 0.5. We will be busy also in 2013 to deliver our top-line and especially to ensure and improve our profitability. We have an exciting and interesting journey ahead in 2013.