Need to Speed up Integration

Worldwide, the transition to next-generation networks including 3G/4G/LTE is putting pressure on service providers to support ever-growing data demand from subscribers. Unfortunately, their existing IN/billing/mediation systems were primarily designed to support voice services and cannot be as easily scaled up to support 'on-the-fly' data provisioning requirements.

For instance, existing IN systems cannot support multi-service balance scenario or real-time service activation in IP based scenario which can have very different charging patterns. Offering service personalization to users with differing data requirements is an added challenge due to lack of integration between solutions such as PCRF, charging, billing, etc, as they come from different vendors, failing to give a centralized view of the subscriber.

Making up for the Lack of Integration

If operators do go for costly upgrades to newer systems, the past approach would have been to go with different vendors making the launch of data based services a time-consuming affair due to long hours of coding and lack of synergy between the IT, network and business teams.

Instead, a better competitive approach would be to have a convergent system which gives a single-window glimpse to operators, helping them launch new services through simple configuration within hours. A pre-integrated platform is a future-proof system that can support upcoming IP based services and business models with real-time credit control, on-demand service activation and more.

Such a platform is already seeing demand from operators in Middle-East and South-East Asia; even in India as the mobile data revolution gathers pace in the near future with the buzz around LTE networks, operators cannot miss the obvious advantages in transferring from a legacy approach to a pre-integrated one.

The mobile broadband industry is in an interesting growth phase from earlier voice-driven consumption trends as smart devices such as 3G-enabled handsets and tablets cause a huge explosion in data traffic. This is leading to extra pressure for next-generation service providers who are forced to stretch their network capacity to accommodate the rising data appetite of smartphone users.

Clearly, there's a huge revenue opportunity; according to a Gartner forecast, worldwide mobile app store revenues will triple from $5.2 bn in 2010 to $15 bn in 2011, and keep growing to a remarkable $58 bn by 2014. While device manufacturers and App players like Apple, Android Market, RIM, Nokia, etc, corner a major segment of this market, the operator is left out of the entire value chain, being forced to become little more than a transport mechanism for OTT players.

If they continue to offer mobile broadband services as an all-you-can-eat model, it will simply erode operator revenues while leading to exponential increase in data consumption. Basically, traditional mobile broadband solutions suffer from a silo-ed thinking where each critical component is independent of the other, being possibly managed by different vendors. This poses a stiff challenge for operators when they want to speedily roll out new plans and services based on 'which' subscriber is doing 'what' and 'how'.

Rise of New Business Models

To succeed in the emerging marketplace, mobile operators must transform their service offers, partnerships, operational models and organizational structures to position themselves to capitalize on key areas where they can create sustainable value. As the move to 4G gives rise to ever more open mobile ecosystems, it heralds the onset of a plethora of business models.

Some of the new Business Models that have emerged in recent years are:

• Two-sided revenue model
• Partnership with OTT Providers
• Partnership with smartphone manufacturers
• Machine to Machine

Traditional business and operational support systems must evolve to enable a dramatic increase in service speed and an end-to-end view of user experience over 4G. This requires considerable upgrades from the siloed infrastructure.

Integrated BSS & Subscriber Management—What Analysts and Operators Say

According to Shira Levine of Infonetics Research, "As policy expands beyond its traditional bandwidth management function, operators are increasingly looking for solutions that integrate policy control with adjacent functionality such as billing, charging, and subscriber data management."

The above result is achieved by a pre-integrated platform addresses the challenge of visibility at subscriber end by unifying different components of the mobile broadband system:

• Subscriber Management
• Billing
• Charging, and
• PCRF

The system gives a converged view of the subscriber in terms of billing plans, policy, session, and balance (See Figure), therefore, enabling the operator to roll out use cases like upselling turbo boost, ARPU based targeted promotions and shared family wallets.

The demand for such an integrated approach is already being witnessed across greenfield operators in SEA and Middle-East and MVNOs in OECD markets like Western Europe. This is because the integrated approach offers a number of benefits over the typical customized IT stack deployment, allowing operators in these countries to fast track their entire IT stack rollout in order to launch services to market.

Since the Indian market is still voice-driven and not matured towards data consumption trends like elsewhere, most operators are presently showing interest in pre-integrated platform eg, in WiMax deployments, which means there will be genuine deployment cases in the near future.

Basically, what a pre-integrated platform does, as shown above, is to offer a converged view of the subscriber-bill, policy, session, balance, thus, offering a synergy between Subscriber Management Platform & BSS (Network & IT Convergence). An integrated platform that includes convergent billing, mediation, charging, voucher management, PCRF, and subscriber management solutions onto a single close-knit platform.

Such integrated platforms will offer the much needed respite to operators wanting to roll out next-generation services. It allows operators to more quickly and easily roll out new use cases while also enable them to derive better value from their new network infrastructures-whether those are 3G or 4G-by reducing the IT complexity associated with creating and deploying new services. A single-platform approach mitigates the risk and time associated with integrating multiple solutions, and helps reduce opex by reducing license, support and maintenance costs which is a crucial need of operators.

Key Benefits

• Faster rollout of innovative and differentiated services as a result of centralized database and centralized product management enabling one-time configuration of plans rules and policies for billing, PCRF and Charging, thus enabling service providers to create, launch and provision for all offerings with reduced efforts and time to market. Moreover, it extends much needed support for new business models and capabilities to enable desired personalization for smartphone subscribers for extracting the utmost value from devices like PDAs & iPads
• Enables ease in integration with new partners in the ecosystem and develop flexible business models and charging plans as a result of end-to-end compliance and support
• Advice of Charge-With pre-integrated Service Selection Portal (SSP), PCRF & Charging systems, subscribers get to know applicable pricing and product benefits in real-time while opting for suitable schemes & promotions from the SSP; there is no separate integration effort needed for Advice of Charge feature
• Cohesive business intelligence reports for Billing, AAA, Charging unlocks precious network and subscriber behavior information and produces a bigger picture for aligning service strategy

Conclusion

An integrated BSS and subscriber management platform is geared towards giving telecom service providers an end-to-end picture of their business. By bringing together all key aspects of service delivery such as authentication, billing, CRM, policy, SSP, rating and charging, and analytics, such a platform offers service providers a deeper understanding of the network resources along with customer behavior and expectations.

By taking converged business intelligence to the next level, an integrated platform allows service providers to grow more customer-centric over the rapidly emerging next-generation networks. Through a single one-stop vendor, the pre-integrated platform drastically reduces cost and time (up to 50-60%) at all stages of the operator monetization cycle from vendor evaluation, proof of concept to new service product launches.