Need for Service Delivery Transformation

http://www.lightreading.com/servsoftware/details.asp?sku_id=2162&skuitem_itemid=1082

Two strands for the telecom transformation – business transformation – identification of new business models and making money and other is the infrastructure transformation which involves making changes to the network and IT infrastructure so that it is ready to support new business models. I guess identification of such new business models and identifying changes in the infrastructure would both drive the existing operator for the transformation whereas for the greenfield operator it is the identification of business model that would drive the decision for the infrastructure selection.

However the whole transformation started with development of the all-IP networks that brought out new service providers who were part of the Internet. This forced the telecom operators to sit-up and take a look at emulating the Internet business model  (i.e., a business model in which a network of different actors and their resources are linked together by the internet technology) to get share of revenue from IP services value chain. Now let me dissect the meaning of “Internet business model” for telecom service provider.

Business model is the product/services offered to creat revenue and hence value to the share holders. Now while doing so it should be cost effective and should provide differentiation with the competitors. Now for the telecom service providers, providing plain voice services is not the product/service. It should be providing always-on kind of link to connect with their work, friends & faimily, entertainment. Now how does this generate revenue; may be by becoming a trusted party who manages all the service providers providing different kind of service, providing a unified platform for storing their information, unified identity platform and offer flexibility for making payment. Since end user is getting the flexibility of anytime, anywhere access of these services, and is independent of devices, operator would have to collect for this service from the end user. To become cost effective, the service creation has to be flexible, get developed from internal/external developers to reduce cost of creation of service. To create competitive advantage, the service assurance and making the service available on any device from anywhere could be critical. Also close tracking of the consumer behavior and doing a targetted advertisement and upsaling of the other services could bring additional revenue. To handle the multiple service providers, have the business platform to support the required workflow and the charging – modification in the eTOM framework adopted?

For the service creation unified subscriber data view and service data view is essential where different services will have to be orchestrated to provide service to the end user. Since operator own the subscriber, orchestrating the service will become a critical service in their offering. In terms of services it should be able to offer independent of the access and things like voice call continuity and data call continuity between the access should become a reality. For voice operator can themselves offer the voice (with committed QoS) but also should allow other providers like Skype to offer the service.

Revenue model in this new world will have to be built around the affliate marketing model. In this model, a business rewards one or more affiliates for each customer brought about the affiliate’s marketing effort. But in the case of operator, this can be because customer using the service say from Google when compared to Microsoft. This model could also include the advertising to bring business for the other service providers operating using Internet. In this model operator can have a single web page which aggregates all other service provider. Then may be based on the content accessed (including Voice), it can be charged or a flat fee.

On the infrastructure side, since for each of the service providers the quality of service is delivered, the network infrastructure should be aware of the services (e.g., it should be able to give differential treatment based on the port, service type, URL etc).

Mobile Marketing Platform based on Near Real time Content

http://www.indiaprwire.com/pressrelease/telecommunications/
200804178845.htm

An interesting service where TELiBrahma has partnered with Sportingmindz to provide audience in a stadium to receive real time match linked information on their mobile handsets through Bluetooth. Sportingmindz provides the analytical content necessary for this service. Here is the flow of service:

1. Mobile subscriber enters stadium & activates Bluetooth (not sure whether there is any specific application needed in the handset)
2. Subscriber start receiving information like welcome kit (forecast of the match, pitch report, team composition, history of previous matches), video clips (wicket, best shot, crowd), trivia and updates (bowler pitch mark, partnership.scoring patterns) at every turn of the event at the match
3. Contest inside the match – player of the team, best dressed spectator, moment of the match etc

Right now the content is exclusive to Royal challengers and hence it is aimed at building the mobile fan club. Ultimately it is the brands that would like to ride on the content sent to the subscribers as this throws open a huge opportunity for advertising opportunity at the stadium.

However I do believe this has a potential to grow outside the stadium as well by sending information through SMS, MMS, WAP (even IVR to listen to quick match update). However with do-not-call kind of service becoming norm, it is essential to have an opt-in mechanism for the end users.On the other hand, can also have agreement with different telecom service providers to share the subscriber profile information (but will operator’s share such information?)

IPTV BOM – Hanasystec’s Solution

http://www.hanasystec.com/html_h/board/data/iptv%20system-by%20hana%20systec%20co.,ltd.pdf

Following is a typical bill of material for IPTV service (20K subs with 4K simultaneous sessions). Here the IMCS (Integrated management control system) or middleware takes care of the total IPTV control and provisioning. Also provides the CRM interfaces. But SMS (subscriber management system) and  SAS (Subscriber Authentication server) would also be part of middleware, no? If the broadcasting center and data centers can be clearly differentiated as follows, then it will throuh-up lot of possiblity for mix and match in the IPTV industry i.e., if one plays offer to connect their streaming distribution servers on multiple network operator’s network, then multiple broadcast centers would be able to provide services to subscribers residing on different networks. So essentially again the network operators would become bit pipe providers.

 

Encoder (H264 (MPEG 4 part 10) or MPEG-2) feeds the digital content to the streamer that can stream the video/audio onto the network. Now this streamer should be able to stream onto the wireless or on the wireline infrastructure. The way it should be streamed on wireless would be definetly will have to take care of the bandwidth limitation and the latency. But before the content enters the encoder it might have received either from live feed receiver or from stored video/audio content. The ad insertion would have to be done in either of these content sources.

Typical dimensioning requirements are:

- Total number of IPTV subscribers – gives  the license required for the middleware
- Support X number of live TV channels
- x% of VOD subscribers in total subscribers
- VOD server requirements – x number of concurrent streams, total storage for x hours
- CA/DRM – number of subscribers and how many channel scrambler
- How many E.264 encoders (1:1 ratio with channels + redundancy), IP streamers
- Whether the access network supports the required bandwidth

Service Broker – Necessary component in SDP

http://www.stratus.com/download/index.cfm/pdf/telecom/CSB-white-paper.pdf

Subscriber expectation – have multiple services and multiple devices, so they expect to access any services & content from anywhere on any device. So having IP backbone is essential to achieve such a need. So it is essential to have converged routing, messaging, content and centralized subscriber profile information. This is nothing but having a unified service delivery platform catering to different networks. In this service delivery platform, Stratus network is focusing on creating a service broker which can mediate in a multi service, multi access and multi network environment.

Stratus service broker consists of two part. One is the signaling gateway that converts and handles different protocols and the other is a mobile call converge device which takes care of handling call and call handover  between different networks (like WiFi, Celluar, TDM etc); also it handles service interactions by connecting to external subscriber database lookup. Below is the architecture of this service broker.

 

Now this service broker would also provide an IDE to create relationship between the services and create service rules (in the same lines as business rule creation in an SOA environment). Service rules thus created will have to have a service rule execution environment similar to SLEE. But now will be the interaction between such a service rule engine and an independent service execution environment be handled? i.e., if there is already established legacy IN services and SIP application server, can the service rule engine work with this service broker. It is possible to achieve this only if the service broker can sit between the core network elements and the application servers (which is already proposed as SCIM in IMS architecture). But with all network service traffic hitting the service broker, it is essential for the service broker to make some kind of distiction whether the service requested by the end user is a straight forward one or has some interaction. So the transaction processing capability of service broker will have to be really good and should not introduce any additional delays. On the other hand, such service brokers would really help in avoiding the interoperability issues as it can have agreement with NEPs to support their proprietary protocols (INAP/CAP/SIP) and on the AS side it can publish its own protocol or can work as proxy/protocol coverter based on the actual need. Following is the architecture of the Stratus service broker solution.

 

SINAP – Stratus integrated network application platform
C-SLEE – converged SLEE

Interesting point to note here is the Stratus T series hardware. I wonder whether it an ATCA blade server built by Stratus. Overall I think this is a necessary component in the overall service delivery platform of an operator who is in the path of evolution to an IMS based network. And for the greenfield operators, this element could help them to explore the possiblity of using a shared application server either from an existing operator or use a hosted application server from the vendor.

Uniceltech mCampaigner

http://www.uniceltech.com/mno09_mCampaigner.html

Unicel’s mCampaigner is an interactive mobile platform that enables the enterprises to create interactive mobile campaign from desktop. Some of the functionality supported in this system are:

- Create interactive campaign from desktop – so what are the channels on which the campaign message be delivered and also the tools available for the advertiser to publish the advertisement, also whethere there are any templates available for some of the standard campaign flows? As per their web site, text, logo/picture message, ring tone can be dynamically inserted as part of the campaign

- Create campaign to be delivered to targeted audience – what are the ways of creating the business rule based on which these target audience can be selected, also from which systems the data can be mined

 - Different attributes of the campaign task i.e., set date & time of outbound delivery of the campaign, select only with certain criteria (again is this business rule?), presence, location etc. Here presence and location based campaign is interesting but that requires to build integration with the location based server. Now how many telecom service providers offer access to the location servers? But how about a third party build location servers on top of other telecom service providers

- Ability to measure marketing efforts and allow access to prospective clients/leads – does this mean creation of the dashboard showing realtime/non realtime statistics?

This coupled with Unicel’s following technology components listed below could make a compelling proposition.

- GlobalOne a SMSC & SMSGW combined virtual number platform for interactive P2A applications (here the understanding is this virtual number platform is nothing but a platform that can host multiple short codes). With service template creation capability, it would be much more useful. Also if such templates support all the business processes identified in the domains, then it would help such companies to integrate their business processes with the campaign.(http://www.uniceltech.com/domains.html)

- eMobileGateway – content management platform to process information from different sources and deliver on diverse set of handsets

- SMS/MMS/WAP/HTTP Gateway – for connection to operator’s SMSC, MMSC, WAP/HTTP infrastructure on the standard interface

- NotifyOne- group messaging – anyway the basic functionality of creating SMS groups would be already part of campaign manager. But creating a group for the end users could help in viral market, also could track the behavior of such groups and with permission, targetted products can be marketed for that group.

But the main concern is the scalability and reliability of the solution as well as the TCO for this total solution. I have not found any information on the hardware required as well as the traffic model that is supported by these solutions.

Marketing Situation in Telecom

Excerpts from Mr. Gopal Vittal, Director Marketing & Communication, Bharti Airtel appeared in ET’s 11th March 2008 edition – Winning In Chaos: Just do, learn and do

Mr. Gopal talks about the nature of the telecom service provider business. He draws parallel between the FMCG & telecom service busines as these two industries have direct interaction with mass consumers. He notes that telecom service providing is totally different from FMCG in terms of compression of the planning cycle, value of speed, challenges of addressing diversity of consumers through a single brand, dramatic changes in the consumer profile as subscribers start discovering new ways of using mobile.

But I am not sure whether I agree with all these. First the compression of the planning cycle; now I guess even in FMCG industry the product management has to be really efficient to constantly updating or customizing the product according to end user tastes/lifestyle. Won’t this be similar to the telecom service consumption behavior of the end users, and will this behavior change so fast? But yes, the difference could be that there is no real product for consuming in telecom service business as it is only using of the voice network that is already in place. There is some difference in terms of content based service as there is a scope of defining real assets and also there is an option to bring in getting external parties to bring products under operator’s brand.

Now addressing diversity of of consumer through a single brand; again in telecom service also there are different products created to address different consumers. The segmentatation would obviously different for telecom service when compared to FMCG. But whether the telecom service provider can create a “brand” to address these segments or are they trying to address all these segments through the overall brand, say ‘Airtel’? Now isn’t Virgin Mobile trying to create a brand that targets only the teens?

However I like Mr. Vittal’s suggestion to handle the chaos. I can easily relate this to product management in an environment where consumer behavior/lifestyle is changing very fast. He mentions having a deep-rooted consumer centricity regarless of environment is the first cruicial factor that can work in managing, navigating and winning in a chaos environment. He gives how tracking consumer behavior (e.g., using mobile device to fill those ‘empty moments’) can help service provider to come out with products suiting such behavior. Now to understand that behavior one needs to keep track of the behavior and learn from the experiences of the previous product launches. For this it doesn’t matter whether you do an elaborate planning or just get on with a skeleton planning and keep improving.

Outsourced CxO

http://outsourcedcfo.googlepages.com/OCxO-MgtNxt-0802.pdf
An interesting concept of the outsourced CxO is mooted in a article by Mr. Jayant. As per him it should be possible for the SME segment to outsource some of the C level roles like CIO/CTO/CMO etc as these organizations may not require full timers on these roles and may not be able to afford. Some of the requirements of such a O-CXO would be to be able to work in start-up mode/’chaos, available 24×7, earn respect based on day-to-day activity, ethics etc. However I do agree that this is a different model that SME can work on but how this model is different from the consultants who help organizations to address certain issue, for e.g., if the issue is about the marketing a product, why not employ a consultant with clear goals and why require a O-CMO? Also with O-CxO I guess it will be difficult to layout the clear responsiblity and make this outsourced executive accountable for the results. Because defining a measurable KPI for activities done by CXO is difficult. No?

Also if the outsourced C level executive works for more than one organization in the similar capacity then how does the executive make sure that the ideas proposed (or derivative of that idea) is not shared with other organization and there is no conflict of interest. In the existing software outsourcing model, this concern is addressed by having physically separated facilities by the outsouced companies.

CEO Talk: TTSL MD on Future Plan

http://www.telecomwatch.in/bnrs/08-03-03-tata/index.htm

Mr. Anil Sardana took over as TTSL MD after his assignment in NDPL where he was involved in transformation of the organization to focus on customer service. Here is the summary of his interview with Telecom watch on his plans for TTSL

- Customer care and service, benchmarking in various components of the business, with a special focus on the value-added services: customer care and service is mostly taken for granted in the mobile service industry as there is an explosion in the number of subscribers. But with brands like Virgin Mobile who have decided to focus on a particular segment, the customer care/service becomes a differentiating factor for subscribers to choose a particular mobile service providers. With mobile portability in force (and if the charges for owning a number is not high for the subscribers), there will be large scale migration of the subscribers to the service provider who provides a better service. But what is the meaning of benchmarking, is it that defining a goal for each business units like the one focusing on prepaid, enterprise etc in terms of business and service quality? Isn’t this a common practice to have such goals? Focus on value added service is something which everyone is talking about. But how can a service provider drive consumption of the value added services? Would it be through attractive tariff plans or through bundled packages or through customized handsets?

- CDMA focusing on data – this is something that I guess Reliance also agrees and are planning to do i.e., focus on the data transfer capability of CDMA and offer data services to SME sector. Looks like bundling data with different services like, sales force automation, mobile centrex, vehicle tracking, logistics could be one of the way to target the SME segment. Now if they have vertical specific solutions like vehicle tracking, logistics for the logistics/travel industry, mobile centrex and integration with the heal care system in health etc, then service providers would be able to offer targetted services to these SME segments i.e., communication enabled business processes will have to be targetted by the telecom service providers

Pseudo MVNO – Virgin Mobile in India

http://www.virginmobile.in/downloads/Press_Release.pdf

Virgin mobile has finally been launched in . They are very clear that they will focus only on subscribers between age 14~25. Accordingly they have set the tariff plan. Some of the “cool” charging features are:

- Get paid to receive call i.e., you get credit of 10 paise for every 1 min of incoming call
- After 1st 2 mins of national call in a day, for rest of the local calls on that day get discount on per minute charges
- Discounted tariff in weekend

This is a clever strategy of push & pull for both the calling party and called party subscribers. This will definitely increase the network utilization for voice. Now for data, they do a daily charge of Rs 5 and unlimited access to portal. This portal hosts some free content as well as paid content. This is a good way of instigating the subscribers for data consumption (look at the ARPU – straight Rs 150 from data which is almost 70% of the current CDMA ARPU of Rs 200). With CDMA offering better data rates, I guess this is a very good strategy. If they can drive more traffic to their portal and if they have compelling content then they will get good revenue share from the 3rd party content providers as well.

Virgin mobile is offering customized handset (not sure whether they are buying from Chinese vendors like ZTE & Huawei as well). All phones are FM and camera ready and are in range Rs 1500 ~ Rs 6000. Again a clear focus on the youngsters. Virgin Mobile also claims that their service centers will be more responsive then others i.e., the same agent will handle the subscriber every time!

ZestADZ Mobile Advertising

There are now host of companies that are trying to monetize the mobile site, SMS service or the mobile applications developed by independent developers. This is similar to the Internet model where a web site ower can include content specific advertisement get paid based on the click. Now for mobile a similar model has been developed by companies like AdMob, ZestADZ etc. Hovr has gone one step ahead and can allow the game developers to monetize games that they have developed i.e., end user gets the games free of charge but it contains the advertisements.

So here is the summary of the model provided by ZestADZ (http://www.zestadz.com/index)
- Built on the permission marketing concent (http://www.permission.com) which means Ads are served to subscribers along with premium services as they get that for a subsidized price or free in return advertising
- It offers the ad inventory that are location sensitive and contextually relevant. Supports non-intrusive, interactive mobile advertising which makes its possible to offer content/services free of cost
- Revenue model
  – with advertisers: CPC (click per cost) or pay per click (PPC) for text impressions and CPM (click per thousand impression) for banners
  – Pays out the publishers within a agreed period of time after billing which is typically 30 days. It is mentioned that 25% of the ad revenue is shared with publishers
- Typical traffic that ZestADZ bosts – 1 million expression per month for SMS (how? where the site originates or is it originated from its partner applications/services?) and WAP traffic 0.5 million impression per month
- supports advertising in Hindi (using Tensor Technologies MeghDoot Hindi SMS solution with Mobile Transliteration Technology)

The channels that the ZestADZ offers for the campaign management is SMS, WAP and J2ME applications and games. That means the focus is more on the data space of the operator. It is interesting that they expect the advertisers to pay the money in advance…

For the SMS, it charges per SMS sent and inserts context specific advertisement e.g., if there is a key word lunch in the message then some eat out place is appended to the SMS. And for WAP site, advertisement is inserted as text or as banner.

Following is the logical architecture of this system. But in this architecture it is not sure whether the data analytics system would have the access to external systems like the device information or the usage pattern of the subscriber. So may be only by tracking the WAP usage pattern the system must be tracking the subscriber behavior. But can it maintain per subscribers i.e., assuming 40% of the 170 million Indian subscriber information is maintained?

For the publishers or the service developers, ZestADZ offers API to embed the advertisement e.g., for SMS API call to their server and for J2ME applications & games MIDP1.0 APIs.