Big data has reached telecom operators, and wireless carriers have to look to adding intelligence in their networks, going beyond the traditional business intelligence systems. However, in Latin America, carriers are only starting efforts to address big data, and how to approach and analyze it.

“Telecos are beginning to understand they have to use all the data they have, and the data is available,” said Matti Aksela, VP at Comptel.

 Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and subscribe to our free periodic newsletters

Indeed, when the market is saturated, wireless carriers become more conducive to adopting business analytic systems. “Latin American carriers will become much more active in the near future. The time to adopt and benefit from big data is now, and this is a trend that is being seen all over the world — CSPs have a huge amount of data available,” said Aksela. “With increased market saturation, the need to ‘work smarter, not harder’ in terms of understanding what services are most valuable to customers and be able to react to issues much faster will drive not only the use of big data in the static sense but also the use of data as it is being generated.”

Big data is a global phenomenon. Companies from the financial, telecommunications and retail sectors are more likely to face an explosion of data, and they have considerable opportunities to increase revenues by analyzing all that information. So, how will big data change carriers’ customer service?

“Through being able to analyze the vast amounts of data available, CSPs will be able, for example, to understand their subscribers better, offer more relevant services and products, and react to end customer problems and complaints much faster with real time understanding,” Aksela said.

All of these things might lead to decrease churn and lost revenue for the operator as well as better resource use and increased customer loyalty. “Most Latin American operators have traditional data warehouses, and they are learning to address big data,” said Aksela. “That’s the way to go.”

Be sure not to miss

• Reality check: Big data challenges mobile operators
• EMC: 2012 will be the year to educate market about big data
• Changing telecom industry’s new challenges: monetization, security and becoming “smart pipe”