Changing Models

The regulator now is willing to distribute more licenses and increase the
competition. As more players start their services, they would have the need for
off the shelf state-of-the-art BSS systems. But apart from that, existing
players would have to upgrade or buy point solutions to keep their market share
intact. Improving customer experience would become the key to an operator's
success, and BSS systems would play a key role in that pursuit.

According to Frost & Sullivan, the total OSS/BSS market in India was $497.2
mn for the FY 2007-08. It is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17% over a seven year
period. The industry experts, say, the billing, raring and charging market
outlooks are likely to remain healthy, driven in part by the need for real-time
back office support for the next generation network (NGN) services.

2010 is expected to go slow with most operators now having adopted a NGN
platform, the new purchase will come from modular offerings rather than a
complete billing system. WiMax, 3G, IPTV, VoIP, enterprise services and VAS
applications will be the primary drivers of growth in 2010 in India.

The increase in teledensity combined with the forces of price wars and newer
entrants will push operators to think of retention policies. So far, the
acquisition success has often resulted in a level of ignoring or not knowing the
customer. This is bound to go away as more operators would institute retention
policies for high and medium value customers who are critical to their
bottomline performance.

Moreover, traditionally telecom operators have believed that prepaid
customers do not have the propensity to buy anything but voice and messaging
along with the absence of loyalty. That rudimentary thinking is slowly going
away, and efforts are on to bundle different services and products to prepaid
customers. This is not only to improve the loyalty, but also to increase
bottomlines. This new thought will lead to more demand of sophisticated BSS
systems which will help them create personalized and bundled services and
offers.

Trends

There will be a real shift towards real-time actionable intelligence which
will help the operators improve customer experience, and hence profitability.
Wealth of billing data will help the operators configure offers, promotions and
service packages to their prepaid customers.

Once MVNOs are permitted in India, there might emerge a need for billing SaaS.
CSPs would roll out a multitude of infotainment solutions, but location based
services (LBS), advertising, content management, security, web portals and
search would also receive considerable attention. This would create a demand for
enhanced billing solutions.

True convergence in terms of service convergence, also known as single bill
for multiple services along with payment convergence that is pre/postpaid
convergence is likely to start for corporate customers, and eventually move into
the retail space as well.

In the times to come, when the subscriber growth options largely get driven
by cannibalization, operators will tend to enforce protection rings fencing
primarily for corporate customers initially, as steps to avoid profit erosion.
This will force operators to increase their presence in the corporate world
(across the organization and across pre/post paid boundaries) by offering
'custom offers' that suit a particular MNC (domestic and international).

A trend noticed in Europe and Australia is that as the technology evolution
makes current assets close to obsolescence earlier than in the past, plus there
is a reduction in the growth, it will force CFOs and business owners to achieve
returns on network investments in shorter timeframes than in the past. This will
have ramifications in terms of excess network capacity, and operators will have
to find alternative business models such as wholesale, setting up captive MVNOs
to infuse the demand.

The market is witnessing a fast evolution in terms of content distribution
models with the arrival of the 'Apps Store' model, a new way to manage and
distribute content. With Apps Stores gaining popularity and the development of
alternatives to traditional voice services (VoIP in general and P2P services
more specifically), operators need to find new ways to manage the value chain
and the revenue accruing from these types of commercial models.

Tech Focus

Major thrust is likely to be centered around the theme of real-time
actionable intelligence, enabling operators to make relationships profitable
especially based on interactions between the boundaries, and improving
effectiveness and not just efficiency.

Vendors are innovating the charging and billing models, with requirements for
wireless voice, data and video services, and now collaboration, presence,
location services and M2M also.

In wireline and broadband services, there will also be more focus on video
and collaboration services, as well as wireless broadband to complement the
wireline infrastructure. Triple play/quad play services are now even starting to
move towards the integration of smart grid technology for a smart home and the
so-called 'quin-play'.

Some solution providers are focusing on lowering the deployment costs, and
are continuing to drive innovation in charging, billing mediation and
inter-carrier settlement. This includes the ability to deploy products within a
Linux environment, with an associated low cost operating environment.
Integration and interoperability are critical, using SOA and cloud environments
as the critical focus in this space.

With an estimated $900 mn as yearly revenue losses, revenue assurance and
fraud management are the key thrust areas for Indian CSPs. They need to
establish tight controls on the revenue value chain, and implement real-time
fraud management systems.

An Affair With Green

Vendors are creating technologies that will enable green initiatives. As a
technology provider, their aim is to reduce power consumption in their
deployments and strategically look at utilizing infrastructure that occupies
less space, runs on lesser power, and reduces the cost of maintenance.

Some vendors have taken big strides also in the 'smart grid' initiatives
towards helping utility providers in their mission to go greener.

With support to a low cost, Linux operating environment is preferred. This
means that the products can be deployed using an array of low cost commodity
hardware based on Intel x86 technology, rather than the need for large
monolithic servers which require more power as well as air conditioned operating
rooms. By moving to commodity hardware, products can be deployed using less
power, thus contributing to more sustainable data center operations. Solution
providers are evaluating analytic application offerings that can help a CSP
collect data on carbon emissions from varied sources, and get real-time
visibility into sustainability across the enterprise.

Heena Jhingan

heenaj@cybermedia.co.in