DUBLIN – KPN Mobile’s CTO Erik Hoving warns if telecom network operators truly want to innovate for the future, it’s essential to simplify the IT and network operations now.
In a keynote on Tuesday, Hoving spoke to a filled auditorium at Dublin’s TM Forum, warning the attendees that “all the time spent on standardization before we simplify is time wasted.”
KPN Mobile is a Dutch company, with reach extending as far as Belgium, Germany, France, and Spain, primarily.
To kick off his keynote on the new communications ecosystem, Hoving compared the current network to spaghetti, a mish-mash of processes. On the other hand, Hoving calls the future next-generation operations lasagna, or neatly organized entities.
“Now don’t cut the lasagna, put the spaghetti in, and put the top back on and call it lasagna,” he said. “You have to get rid of the spaghetti.”
Since Hoving took over at KPN Mobile, he’s been trying to streamline voice, data, and SMS across country lines. The task, seemingly harder than it seems, requires KPN Mobile to create a single set of systems to support these three products.
Within the simplification strategy, KPN’s goal is to deliver faster and more cost-effective choices for the customer. Relatively simple sounding, in order for KPN to achieve this goal Hoving must unite the network and IT operation teams, establish the network cost per sub, and network spend per unit used, and to throw away existing technology road maps.
Finally, his goal is to have ample free time to overhaul IT. “We had to do a huge IT overhaul in one of our countries, and we were unable to deploy new projects for nine months. It was the best nine months we’ve had.”
Thanks to said success in the IT field, KPN plans to continue its plans to simplify and employ new products.
