It’s been a busy week for Amdocs with announcements related to carrier-grade Wi-Fi and quad-play acceleration.
Starting with the carrier-grade Wi-Fi announcement (covered by RCR Wireless in yesterday’s news edition), the focus was on an independent research report looking at the potential to transition from best-effort Wi-Fi to carrier-grade. The research, which was conducted by Real Wireless and Rethink Technology Research, found that operators support the need to resolve decreasing revenue opportunities associated with existing best-effort Wi-Fi services.
Although carrier-grade Wi-Fi is expected to grow from 14% today to 72% in 2018 and almost all operators surveyed (85%) plan to do so by 2016, there are still concerns. Two-thirds of the respondents said a lack of network planning and management tools to support this technology was hindering their move forward as they would not only have to invest in the new Wi-Fi infrastructure, but also make changes to those tools. Today, about 30% of operators utilize so-called “homespots,” which enable passers-by to connect for coverage along their route. This scenario is projected to grow to 77%, also by 2016. Of course the hot spot owner must agree in advance to leave the connection open for external users.
The operators interested in this technology are not only MNOs, the MVNOs also see the opportunity but for different reasons. The network operators look to carrier-grade Wi-Fi to broaden the reach of their networks and offload the RAN traffic enabling a more consistent user experience. The virtual network operators look to this technology to help enable quad-play offers and wireless services.
The research was conducted with 40 service providers across Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America. Further statistics can be downloaded from the Amdocs site in the form of an infographic and detailed whitepaper.
Moving on to the second announcement of the week, Liberty Global announced it has chosen Amdocs to support the expansion of its quad-play offer focusing on three locations within Europe. Working under a managed services agreement, the deployment will support quad-play by adding mobile services to existing broadband, fixed-line and pay-TV offers.
Liberty Global has launched three national MVNOs in Hungary, Switzerland and the Netherlands already. Each one individually manages its own mobile platforms but utilizes a common service delivery platform. Amdocs has integrated this platform with existing Amdocs business support systems and third-party BSS, along with Liberty Global’s customer-facing systems. This enables a single bill across all lines of business. The Amdocs mobile MVNE solution is aimed at helping virtual operators expand into new revenue streams.
It’s interesting to watch the MSOs moving to MVNO expansions in Europe. The U.S. market experienced that a few years back and it changed the playing field for traditional MNOs. It will be interesting to watch how the European MNOs react to a an ever-expanding new form of competition given the upcoming elimination of data roaming across the region.
