As the definition of ‘service provider’ morphs, CSPs have an enormous opportunity to leverage what other stakeholders do not: sophisticated operations- and business-support systems.
It’s been an incredible year in terms of technological evolution with network speeds, device capabilities and application sophistication. It’s also been an incredible year in terms of encroachment of over-the-top players like Google, Apple, Hulu.com, Netflix, Yahoo and Youtube.com. It’s definitely been enough to mobilize communications service providers to take the plunge into uncharted waters (well, maybe “plunge” is too strong a word—how about, dip their toes and cautiously wade in).
They also are steadily increasing their pursuit of mobile commerce, targeted and mobile advertising, and emerging technologies like NFC and M2M (machine-to-machine) to further integrate and personalize user experiences.
And of course, there is their mounting interest and energy to leverage years-worth of managed-services experience and relationships to become more prominent as IT “enablers” of cloud infrastructure for enterprise customers and vertical industries in need of what telecom already has—data centers, experience managing large amounts of equipment, technicians and fleets, not to mention OSS/BSS that other IT players lack.
With the evolution of their fixed and mobile broadband strategies, not to mention devices and customer sophistication, telecom operators are also revolutionizing their pricing and bundling models. Rather than all-you-can eat plans, operators are recognizing they must cater to both price-sensitive customers seeking one type of usage and “value,” while simultaneously pleasing time- and quality-sensitive customers seeking a different perception of usage and “value.”
Change is good, but proving difficult
As telecom operators battle on many fronts to fend off (or perhaps partner with or enable) encroaching competitors, to enter new markets and to transform their pricing models, they must also race to stop one of the most dire challenges they’ve ever faced—the collapse of their networks. The irony is that the very strategic and tactical moves they are making for survival may be the same moves that bring down the very thing they need for survival: the network.
In the rush to create and carry more compelling services, bandwidth-intensive applications, peer-to-peer computing, and streaming video are taking a toll, making network congestion an immediate and pivotal concern for operators.
Optimization of networks in today’s environment requires a delicate balance of unprecedented levels of visibility and intelligence with unprecedented levels of vigilance in adhering to net-neutrality and privacy pressures from consumers and lawmakers alike.
In the battle to stave off the type of network and ultimately customer experience degradations that could prove disastrous to current business models (after all, churn is always one bad experience away), CSPs are turning to the new heroes in the mix: OSS and BSS.
OSS/BSS: Stronger than the sword
The years telecom operators spent building, managing, fixing, replacing and evolving OSS/BSS might pay off in a big way as “service providers” today morph into altogether new entities requiring exceptional and groundbreaking levels of management capabilities—the type of which telecom providers in many ways lead all other industries.
No longer seen as boring back-office or just your standard customer-facing systems, a new generation of software, hardware and professional services will be necessary for any stakeholder hoping to compete in the realms of communications, information, entertainment and media.
Crucial to the very vast and diverse universe of services will be the business processes, information and data frameworks, applications, systems and know-how that empower different value-chain partners to deliver and grow what they want. There will be a growing need for intelligence and analysis for intuitive marketing about what types of services different customers want. There will be a need to achieve right-first-time provisioning, activation and management of services (requiring sophisticated charging, rating and billing, as well as sophisticated policy management, subscriber data management, assurance, customer experience management, trouble management, and revenue management and assurance). And, of course, of growing importance will be the management of the ever-expanding value chain and the need for highly evolved partner management and settlement, SLA management, and perhaps even intellectual property and digital rights management. And oh, did I leave out the ever-important issue of security, authorization and authentication—particularly as services involve more partners, devices and even geographic boundaries?
All of these requirements should, indeed, push OSS/BSS vendors and their telecom customers to think out of the box about how they can not only be service providers in telecom, but also work alongside other value-chain partners that play a role in the creation and delivery of tomorrow’s new services.
In what is becoming an action plan to change customer perception of “telecom” as a stodgy, staid industry—and to avoid looming threats of disintermediation and relegation to “dumb pipe” status—CSPs are marching toward non-traditional services and non-traditional mindsets. As they make progress on their IPTV and TV Everywhere efforts, they are working to provide on-demand, personalized content that will transcend traditional “linear” TV experiences and perhaps delve deeper into the “long tail” with dynamic experiences that can leverage the integration and interconnection of devices and user experiences.
They also are steadily increasing their pursuit of mobile commerce, targeted and mobile advertising, and emerging technologies like NFC and M2M (machine-to-machine) to further integrate and personalize user experiences.
And of course, there is their mounting interest and energy to leverage years-worth of managed-services experience and relationships to become more prominent as IT “enablers” of cloud infrastructure for enterprise customers and vertical industries in need of what telecom already has—data centers, experience managing large amounts of equipment, technicians and fleets, not to mention OSS/BSS that other IT players lack.
With the evolution of their fixed and mobile broadband strategies, not to mention devices and customer sophistication, telecom operators are also revolutionizing their pricing and bundling models. Rather than all-you-can eat plans, operators are recognizing they must cater to both price-sensitive customers seeking one type of usage and “value,” while simultaneously pleasing time- and quality-sensitive customers seeking a different perception of usage and “value.”
Change is good, but proving difficult
As telecom operators battle on many fronts to fend off (or perhaps partner with or enable) encroaching competitors, to enter new markets and to transform their pricing models, they must also race to stop one of the most dire challenges they’ve ever faced—the collapse of their networks. The irony is that the very strategic and tactical moves they are making for survival may be the same moves that bring down the very thing they need for survival: the network.
In the rush to create and carry more compelling services, bandwidth-intensive applications, peer-to-peer computing, and streaming video are taking a toll, making network congestion an immediate and pivotal concern for operators.
Optimization of networks in today’s environment requires a delicate balance of unprecedented levels of visibility and intelligence with unprecedented levels of vigilance in adhering to net-neutrality and privacy pressures from consumers and lawmakers alike.
In the battle to stave off the type of network and ultimately customer experience degradations that could prove disastrous to current business models (after all, churn is always one bad experience away), CSPs are turning to the new heroes in the mix: OSS and BSS.
OSS/BSS: Stronger than the sword
The years telecom operators spent building, managing, fixing, replacing and evolving OSS/BSS might pay off in a big way as “service providers” today morph into altogether new entities requiring exceptional and groundbreaking levels of management capabilities—the type of which telecom providers in many ways lead all other industries.
No longer seen as boring back-office or just your standard customer-facing systems, a new generation of software, hardware and professional services will be necessary for any stakeholder hoping to compete in the realms of communications, information, entertainment and media.
Crucial to the very vast and diverse universe of services will be the business processes, information and data frameworks, applications, systems and know-how that empower different value-chain partners to deliver and grow what they want. There will be a growing need for intelligence and analysis for intuitive marketing about what types of services different customers want. There will be a need to achieve right-first-time provisioning, activation and management of services (requiring sophisticated charging, rating and billing, as well as sophisticated policy management, subscriber data management, assurance, customer experience management, trouble management, and revenue management and assurance). And, of course, of growing importance will be the management of the ever-expanding value chain and the need for highly evolved partner management and settlement, SLA management, and perhaps even intellectual property and digital rights management. And oh, did I leave out the ever-important issue of security, authorization and authentication—particularly as services involve more partners, devices and even geographic boundaries?
All of these requirements should, indeed, push OSS/BSS vendors and their telecom customers to think out of the box about how they can not only be service providers in telecom, but also work alongside other value-chain partners that play a role in the creation and delivery of tomorrow’s new services.
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