Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.
For Brazil, 2012 marked another year of amazingly rapid change for both consumers and service providers as the full force of the mobile Internet began to be felt. Perhaps the biggest trend was the news that “4G” is finally on the near horizon — a fact driven home by Brazil’s successful $1.4 billion auction of “4G” spectrum last spring, as noted in this Bloomberg News story. The shift to “4G” is being driven in part by service providers’ preparations to offer a full range of new services for the “mega events” that Brazil will soon host: the FIFA Confederations Cup in 2013; the FIFA World cup a year later; and then the mother of all sporting events: the 2016 Summer Olympics.
But what trends are on the horizon for 2013, both globally, and in the Caribbean and Latin America region? Here are a few fearless predictions:
The continuing data explosion: data traffic is going to continue to expand at dizzying rates, powered by the rising tide of video and highlighted by the growing increase in cross-screen viewing and service providers’ TV everywhere strategies. Service providers need to harness this data, monetizing the demand for new data services while optimizing their network and IT assets. Therefore, in 2013, we’ll start to see service providers using LTE as a means to introduce new value-based pricing models and advanced services, and not just as a way to overcome capacity challenges and provide subscribers with faster speeds. This will require better integration between the network and the service provider’s business support systems with policy control and real-time charging key to successful monetization.
Omni-channel customer care and service: The new mandate for service providers is to connect with their customers more effectively beyond the call center. Today, despite an increased investment in online self-service channels, many people still find these channels cumbersome and end up contacting the call center, which is expensive for the service provider and can be time-consuming for the customer. That’s going to change: service providers will integrate their different channels so that customers will be able to interact with their service provider via the channel that they prefer and continue this interaction from one channel to another seamlessly.
Big data = big opportunity: In 2013, we’re going to see a move away from service providers focusing mainly on the operational challenge of managing big data to beginning to realize the business opportunity that big data enables. Perhaps the most important differentiator in the service provider’s arsenal against their over-the-top competitors is the customer experience they provide their subscribers. By capturing more customer data and then using data analytics tools to offer proactive and contextual experiences, service providers will be able to offer more enhanced services tailored to the individual subscriber.
Manuel Briseno, Director, Marketing, Caribbean and Latin America Region, Amdocs
