Telecom Redux incorporating Wireless Business Review

Monday, 13 October 2008

Home

- - - - - - -

Wireless Business Review

- - - - - - -

PR Plus International - PR and media relations

International PR Service

Sell by data

Friday, 18 July 2008

Service providers turning to multilayer customer info to tap into new revenue opportunities…

Communications market research firm Infonetics Research is predicting that increasing numbers of mobile and fixed line operators around the world will invest in subscriber data management (SDM) software and integration services to help them roll out new services to customers, reduce the cost of rolling out these new services, and deploy revenue-generating mash-up services.

According to the new Infonetics’ report, ‘Subscriber Data Management Software and Integration Services’, service providers already spent US$106mn worldwide in 2007 on SDM software and integration services, led by mobile operators in the EMEA region and Asia Pacific.

INSIGHT Research Corp in its analysis ‘Telecommunications Subscriber Data Management: Building Customer-Responsive Products and Services 2008-2013’ characterises SDM as consisting of tools and procedures that make it possible for service providers to leverage data from a wide variety of internal sources to create customer-centric service and customer-responsive products. In the case of mobile operators, according to INSIGHT: “SDM goes well beyond the traditional core data sets used by mobile service providers that exploit home location register (HLR) data: SDM employs common data from various internal sources in ways that can be analysed and acted upon to offer a better customer experience.”

Infonetics itself says SDM software facilitates the collection and aggregation of subscriber data (identity information, service profiles, preferences, and device information) across a range of networks, applications, and databases, and serves as a centralised repository for aggregated subscriber data. The company adds that SDM integration services integrate SDM software and services into a service provider's network and business process infrastructure.

Infonetics argues that a consolidated view of the subscriber's service profile and personal preferences via SDM can eliminate data duplication and inconsistencies and ensure the right customers receive the service they have requested.

“Service providers are investing in subscriber data management solutions for a variety of reasons. Besides enabling service bundling and upsale opportunities, SDM also helps operators reduce SIM card fraud and manage subscribers with multiple SIM cards,” judges Jeff Heynen, directing analyst at Infonetics Research. “SDM is quickly becoming an integral part of the overall network virtualisation trend, which began in the enterprise world and is migrating to service providers who are interested in decoupling applications, service components, and subscriber data from the physical and logical databases and servers on which they reside. For service providers, this is a CapEx and OpEx reduction play.”

Other takeaways from the Infonetics report include:
·         the suggestion that the SDM market is growing enough to warrant some early consolidation, with Nokia Siemens having acquired Apertio in January 2008 for €140mn
·         the observation that companies such as Bridgewater Systems, Xeround, and Blueslice Networks offer compelling SDM solutions that are being trialled and deployed as part of mobile operators' larger plans for upgrading their existing HLR infrastructure
·         the listing of the main components of SDM as including: the subscriber and device data aggregation engine, which collects and aggregates subscriber and device data across a range of network databases; data federation software, which creates a standard user profile across multiple services and policies; and identity management software, which manages identity and access to resources

But established service provider interest in SDM may contain an element of duress, not to say of fear. According to ‘Subscriber Data Management: It's Time to Get Personal’, a 2008 analysis from Light Reading's Services Software Insider, the present inability of most network operators to deploy robust subscriber information management platforms could put them at a serious marketplace disadvantage compared with next-gen service providers that are primed to attack the telecom services sector with Web 2.0-based technologies.

“Network operators have a wealth of information about their subscribers, and as they broaden their next-generation service portfolios, they are in a position to collect even more information about subscribers' service preferences, usage, and transactions,” reported Caroline Chappell, research analyst with Light Reading's Services Software Insider and author of the analysis.

As over-the-top communications services become more deeply embedded in Web 2.0 platforms, and as companies such as Google build out their own networks, the advantages now held by network operators will diminish and eventually disappear, Chappell argued. “Unless network operators accelerate their deployment of integrated subscriber information management applications, they run a serious risk of losing control of their customers to more aggressive competitors from the Web 2.0 world,” she concluded.
John Williamson