Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column where C-level executives and advisory firms from across the mobile industry share unique insights and experiences.
A recent Ericsson Mobility Report found that by 2020, more than half of all mobile traffic will be made up of video-based content. Smartphones are the main drivers of this change and global adoption rates are expected to increase as users demand access to their mobile content anywhere, anytime. This rise in subscribers has left mobile device manufacturers excited, but the same cannot be said for mobile carriers – they have a major problem.
Just five years ago, mobile carriers were in complete control of their networks. By saturating subscribers with their own offerings, like Verizon Redbox, AT&T U-verse and Sprint TV, they were able to keep independent content – shared videos, third-party apps, etc. – to a minimum. Today, however, those same carriers are becoming pipes for the third-party content they once tried to minimize. Adding to this, no-fault contracts, promotional deals that promise to pay cancellation fees and other offers have created a revolving door of subscribers, leaving mobile carriers scrambling to maintain service quality and a positive user experience in order to retain and generate loyalty among new customers. More importantly, without proper understanding of the way their network functions, mobile carriers are unable to properly improve services or even respond to network outages or connection failures.
Network analytics, more than ever, are a critical component of addressing these challenges. Mobile service providers can leverage network analytics to properly understand the exact needs of their customers through client-side insights, help streamline network improvements, drive larger optimization initiatives and achieve top-tier customer experience. Here’s how.
Client-side user insights
Client-side and network-side analytics can assist carriers seeking to differentiate themselves from the competition, provide a great user experience and efficiently plan for expansion. With 70 to 80% of content consumed over Wi-Fi, today’s mobile carriers often only have a piecemeal snapshot of their user’s activity. Client-side analytics provide carriers with a granular, 360-degree view of user activity, offering insight into the best ways to improve services and optimize user experience. Network-side analytics, in turn, provide a bigger-picture view, showing the best places for offloading data to Wi-Fi and the ideal locations for small-cell placement. With mobile users always on the move, a combination of network-side and client-side analytics help take the guesswork out of building network infrastructure to support network expansion while delighting subscribers with an unmatched quality of experience.
Improved user experience
A mistake some carriers make when considering the overall quality of experience for their subscribers is equating it with other key performance indicators. For example, although very important, high bandwidth or low latency does not automatically equate to a good user experience. No matter the speed, if the reception isn’t strong enough to take advantage of the bandwidth, there is an increased likelihood of customer churn. Analytics can pinpoint problem areas and ensure that response time and improvements are focused in the areas that need the most help.
Planning for the future
Being able to identify ideal locations to erect new Wi-Fi hot spots and small-cell clusters can help carriers effectively and efficiently orient their future infrastructure improvements. In tandem, network analytics can help drive these improvements and provide the added benefit of deriving business value from stored insights about subscriber usage and behavior patterns.
Network and client-side analytics can help carriers identify points of failure within a network, help match bandwidth supply with actual demand for resource shifting and drive more cost-efficient network usage. As they continue to harvest customer data, network analytics also provide key insights into user behaviors that can drive larger business decisions about business growth and expansion. These business decisions will be critical as the mobile market is saturated by third-party content and increased competitive pressures mount up.
