The new year is upon us and while there are a number of evolving trends driving the industry in 2015 and beyond – from big data, to cloud, 5G and security – there clearly is work to be done. January is a prime time for setting goals, so following are six resolutions network operators should keep in mind if they hope to keep pace with customer demands and remain competitive.
Focus on the customer experience and service personalization
This should be a no-brainer and a resolution for every year moving forward. Don’t just manage traffic, but manage the user experience. Improved network performance can increase adoption, so use technology to enhance user experience and build brand value. Leverage network insights to protect, improve and monetize the subscriber experience.
Optimizing the network and properly managing bandwidth will not only boost performance, it will ultimately enhance the user experience for over-the-top applications like video, voice over Internet Protocol and unified communications. While preserving high service-level agreements, don’t forget to implement proactive and real-time monitoring to quickly resolve any issues that could harm the consumer’s experience, such as abandoned applications and services.
Use analytics to monitor utilization and develop new business models with OTT providers. A great example of this is application-centric plans in which customers are given the choice between different levels of access, such as offering unlimited social media usage or VoIP minutes. These personalized plans are based on the way subscribers live, work and play, and benefit both parties by increasing subscription and customer loyalty.
Make security and privacy a top priority
Cybersecurity threats are all around us and hackers are more targeted and sophisticated than ever. As device proliferation continues and more employees bring consumer devices and bandwidth-hogging applications into the workplace, enterprises and individual users are leaving themselves vulnerable to new threats and vectors for hackers to exploit.
In addition to securing the network itself, operators must allow mobile data users to be in charge of their own online privacy, security and browsing boundaries. Through opt-in services that offer parental controls, safe-browsing, anti-malware and content filtering, service providers can play a central role in fulfilling this demand, become more valuable and ingrained with their customers, and establish a market for new revenue-generating services.
Content service providers are particularly well positioned to provide enterprises real-time protection from the heart of the communications network, including providing real-time URL filtering to block access to inappropriate websites, stopping malware downloads to computers and smartphones, and mitigating distributed denial of service attacks.
Don’t fly blind, harness big data
The growing number of connected devices and applications are driving an explosion of data that service providers have the opportunity to leverage to improve network performance. Applying analytics to the mountains of data will be critical to gleaning meaningful information that will transform service provider operations in 2015.
Operations and engineering departments can use network analytics to gain greater intelligence and visibility into operations, then harness this data to optimize network planning, issue detection and more. Specifically, service providers should resolve to do a better job of capturing and analyzing a rich variety of application, subscriber, device and quality of experience data from their own networks. Only then can they begin to turn data into smart business and technology decisions that will drive greater service profitability and customer satisfaction.
Hone marketing efforts and capture brand loyalty
Big data is also transforming marketing departments by opening the door to smarter marketing and monetize services. Using analytics, marketing departments will gain the ability to quantify and characterize subscriber activity to assist with customer segmentation and service planning.
By identifying and segmenting data to improve the effectiveness of campaigns, drive greater promotion acceptance rates and improve overall customer experience, telco big data can not only drive more successful contextual and real-time marketing offers, but also lower the cost and time needed to launch campaigns, reduce churn and increase brand loyalty.
Optimize performance and monetize the network
One of the major barriers to fast and cost-effective new service deployment is old, outdated, complex and costly network infrastructure technology. Take advantage of the flexibility offered by software-defined networking and network function virtualization technology that’s enabling faster, more scalable and cost-effective service deployment and management. Not only will you save on hardware and operational costs, the benefits of virtualization make it easier to monitor, analyze, control and charge for network services.
Fast and easy roll-out allows for easy development of new value-added services to customers, without the need for truck roll or forklift upgrades. Coupled with new developments like virtualized traffic detection function, service providers can bring application-awareness to their core and access networks, and couple service function chaining with policy control and charging to ultimately deliver value-added services and customized customer-centric plans.
Don’t over-hype 5G
Another major investment on the horizon for mobile operators is “5G.” However, judging by the technology development rate, we don’t expect to see many live production network deployments before the next decade. Despite the growing hype already around 5G, the reality is that the need for speed in itself isn’t the most compelling development – 4G LTE already does a great job of meeting today’s digital lifestyle needs.
Sure, soon we’ll see high-end applications requiring high-end connectivity and capacity, such as 3-D, 4K video and maybe even holograms. But network operators will need new sources of revenue to fund and justify the 5G investment. The key motivator will be more around when and how they can introduce this technology while seeing a return on their investment. Don’t let the hype overshadow the hard work that yet has to be done.
Yaniv Sulkes is a telecommunications professional engaged in designing, developing, productizing and marketing industry leading solutions for over 14 years. Sulkes currently serves as the AVP of marketing for Allot Communications. Prior to Allot, Sulkes managed a large-scale telecom engineering project and served in different software engineering capacities. Sulkes has a M.Sc. in electrical engineering and B.Sc. in industrial engineering and management from Tel-Aviv University.
Editor’s Note: With 2015 now upon us, RCR Wireless News has gathered predictions from leading industry analysts and executives on what they expect to see in the new year.
