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Informa Telecoms and Media Blog…
12 Top OSS/BSS Trends for 2012
Analyst Peter Dykes highlights an exciting outlook for the OSS/BSS sector in 2012. He predicts that the growing requirement for more complex rating and billing functionality will open up opportunities for vendors, and says that improvements in this area are necessary for operators embracing LTE. For 2012, he also believes that in both mature and emerging markets, there will be a greater focus on areas such as customer experience, business intelligence and innovation in handling network congestion.

The predictions Comptel believe are particularly interesting include the rise in demand for OSS tailored to M2M services, which Steve Hateley recently wrote about, and the growth of policy-based online charging (OLC) as operators seek to offer more innovative services.  What 2012 prediction do you think is most surprising?

Telecomasia.net…
Five New Challenges for APAC Telecoms in 2012
Ovum analyst David Kennedy believes that tightening margins and streamlining business processes will be the main theme for the Asia-Pacific telecoms industry, as overall growth in the mobile market slows and competition for customers increases. David believes these five trends will drive the market forward in the region in 2012:

• The push for cost optimisation and efficiency – this will grow in importance due to increasing competition and margin pressures.
• The importance of customer service – operators will work to stay ahead of the competition with promotions, marketing, better network convergence/reliability, etc.
• The future of smart devices and mobile app ecosystems – successful devices will need to integrate applications, content and services into the platform.
• Network data management importance– as data surges, operators are being forced to alleviate network congestion and will roll out a combination of solutions including more LTE networks and Wi-Fi offloading.
• Bundling for customer retention – more bundling is expected to emerge for mobile-only and second-tier operators.

Do you agree that these trends will define the APAC telecoms industry in 2012 and ensure continued profitability and improved efficiency?

Telecoms.com…
Mobile Network Predictions for 2012
In 2012, the mobile market will see two key trends emerge: technologies critical to maintaining a high user experience and initiatives providing additional profit growth opportunities while reducing costs.  In an effort to improve the customer experience and increase revenues, operators are looking to invest in network sharing and traffic optimisation.

Another major issue in 2012 will be coverage for LTE networks, most notably in markets where operators only have access to high frequency spectrum. LTE femtocells are predicted to boom in popularity, which will benefit residential, business and public hotspots.  However, deployment of LTE small cells for capacity improvements is not expected to be widespread in 2012.

Additionally, investing in traffic optimisation for video is a hot topic, with content providers, CDNs and other vendors, and mobile operators debating various ways to deliver mobile content efficiently. We’re looking forward to seeing mobile innovations in action at the upcoming London Olympics, where operators are expected to showcase the successes of their technologies.

Around the World

The Hindu Business Line…
Take Broadband to the Masses
In order for India to sustain the economic growth it has experienced over the last few years, broadband needs to be accessible throughout the country. Spreading broadband beyond urban areas ensures the efficient delivery of remote education, healthcare and government services.

Factors that previously prevented widespread adoption include affordability and lack of availability. However, while the latter is less of a hurdle today as service providers continue to embrace wireless, the former continues to be a challenge. Sustainable growth requires subscriber plans that are reasonable yet profitable. This is where OSS/BSS providers can help, by giving communications service providers (CSPs) the opportunity to make flexible plans while simultaneously reducing their costs.

FierceWireless…
Increased Network Congestion Requires Fresh Thinking from Operators
As the growing popularity of smartphones brings a boom in data traffic, operators are developing new ways to acknowledge network congestion problems and deliver a personalized customer experience. In fact, recent research from Current Analysis claims that social media and end-user forums have become a key part of identifying network issues and prompting operators to take action.

Additionally, many operators are training customer support staff to assess network failures and award credits to individual subscribers when needed. This is a step forward towards improving the customer experience, but as IDC analyst Andy Hicks recently said, the key to ensuring predictive and proactive customer service is implementing service and network automation, so that subscribers’ needs are addressed before end users call customer service.

CIOL…
LTE Won’t Stop Carrier Wi-Fi Momentum
Despite the growth in LTE networks, many CSPs are embracing Wi-Fi due to its massive footprint, low-cost and large presence on smartphones. In addition to deploying Wi-Fi access points in hotspot locations, they are integrating the technology into their core networks and extending OSS/BSS and customer management capabilities to Wi-Fi.

While the benefits of LTE are clear and the technology is continuing to gain momentum, ABI Research analyst Aditya Kaul observes that the true motivation for adopting LTE is for customer acquisition, competitive differentiation or being first to market. But the adoption and promotion of Wi-Fi still makes sense for many operators when it comes to retention, which could even be turned into a competitive advantage. Do you think Wi-Fi has a long term play, as new LTE services, products and packages continue to roll out?

Video Making up the Majority of Mobile Network Traffic

By Samantha Tanner, Telecoms IQ at IQPC

It’s been widely reported that video is making up the majority of mobile network traffic. Most recently, research has revealed that more than two-thirds of consumers are watching video on the iOS platform compared to other smartphone operating systems. The report from Futuresource further confirms that the increased viewing of mobile video has been driven by the huge uptake of smartphones and tablets, such as the iPad. However, the consulting firm, like many others, is sending out a warning message to mobile operators—many of which are going to start (and are already) coming under increased pressure to better manage the data and resources like bandwidth as the mobile video explosion continues.

In a recent Telecoms IQ interview, Jim Morrish and Matt Hatton from Machina Research highlighted the choice that mobile operators have to make when deciding how they want to handle the data they receive from these devices:

“So with that growth in traffic from smartphones and these nebulous other devices, what are the implications for operators? Well, obviously, they’ve got a choice. Either they spend a lot of money upgrading the network in order to cope with that demand, which might not necessarily be profitable given the relative prices of mobile data compared to more traditional services. Or, they can leave money on the table, or they can provide a full user experience—none of these are particularly appealing propositions.”

Morrish and Hatton then went on to identify a number of ways in which mobile operators can manage this vast growth in mobile video usage and data traffic, but both were in agreement that it would be ideal to gain more spectrum:

“Getting hold of additional spectrum is obviously going to be a strong method of dealing with additional demand. Taking a European country as a typical example, 3G has around 150 MHz of spectrum in the 2.1 GHz band. There are two potential extra sets of spectrum available for use of data. The first is newly available spectrum, so that’s the 800 MHz digital dividend spectrum and the 2.6 GHz spectrum. Now that will add an additional 250-260 MHz of spectrum to the current 150 MHz.”

Of course, greater network capacity can only work to each operator’s advantage as better bandwidth and the ability to crunch through more data becomes more attractive to customers. For example, in the U.S., AT&T has been under attack for not being able to match the network capacity of rival Verizon, who won most of the bids for open spectrum in 2008. However, AT&T saw another route in gaining more spectrum this year, with the purchase of T-Mobile. But, it remains to be seen whether this will provide a fix to the capacity crunch.

Additionally, DNA has teamed up with Comptel in order to control traffic congestion on Radio Access Networks in real time and allow for maximum network utilisation—and remain competitive in Finland’s fierce mobile market.

To read the full interview with Jim Morrish and Matt Hatton and to find out more information on Telecoms IQ’s Spectrum Management & Network Optimisation conference in September, please visit www.spectrummanagementevent.com.