BIMS Daily Digest – Conference Day One !
Hello from Amsterdam and the 15th Annual Billing & Information Management Systems Conference!
With such a wide variety of interesting presentations taking place, it is impossible to attend them all, so I thought those of you at here in Amsterdam would welcome a summary of what’s been going on today… and those of you unable to make it would probably benefit from hearing about some of the key themes emerging this year.
The morning was opened with some extremely interesting insights from Bob Webb of ACN Europe. Keynote speaker on the plenary session, Webb highlighted the fact that legacy systems maybe successfully rejuvenated rather than replaced. He provided a warning to people building new systems that we are actually writing tomorrow’s legacy systems today. Joanie Tonkinson of Sprint/Nextel then went on to highlight the importance of telcos aligning KPI measurement with business priorities. She gave examples of best practice billing and performance measures followed by Sprint Nextel in the US. She added that the merger of two large telcos such as Sprint and Nextel created a series of interesting challenges and a variation on the KPIs that each followed prior to the merger.
The real time benchmarking session was interaction at its best; enabling delegates to learn key insights in a ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ style voting experience. 88% of respondents believe that KPIs were valuable in running an efficient BSS operation and 54% had actually developed their own KPIs.
The Real Time Charging and Marketing stream led by Telcordia’s Pat McCarthy kicked off with a detailed presentation by NTT DoCoMo describing their new MoBills billing environment which handles a hefty 28,000 CDRs per second (on a platform centered on 50 HP Superdomes). Despite the fact that 90% of DoCoMos customers are post paid, MoBills calculated charges in near real time, a real feat at the volumes outlined by Tomoki Shimamura. For Hong Kong’s CSL, customer needs for near real time views of charges are addressed by polling for CDRs every fifteen minutes, raw rating them and having the details available for customer view within thirty minutes. CSL’s Peter Smith agreed that they are keeping an eye on the need to move at some point to a more real time environment, but that currently their customers seem well serviced with the near real time information.
kajeet co-founder Ben Weintrub had many heads nodding when he described their MVNO designed to meet the needs of tweens, and of their parents. Working closely with Telcordia, the kajeet team wanted to come up with a service offering that appeals to kids by presenting them with cool services and brightly colored, fully featured handsets (no “five button” phones for these kids!). Just as high on the priority list was serving the needs of the parents, including knowing where their children are, even when the handset is turned off; being able to set limits on the time of day that services can or cannot be used; which numbers can be contacted, and how much money can be spent. The result is a fast growing customer base, with very high ARPU, especially for data-oriented services such as SMS, email and web browsing – but only to sites that meet the U.S. regulators’ requirements for child safe content and tightly restricted advertising rules.
There was no clear winner on the Real Time versus Near Real Time rating topic in today’s sessions. On the need for speed in defining and launching new services and new rate plans however, there was complete consensus: being able to keep up with, or ahead of, the competition is vital for operator success in today’s highly volatile markets. For a very large operator like NTT DoCoMo, MoBills enables a new rate plan to go into production in one quarter of the time required previously, but that shortened time frame is still one month. For smaller, more nimble operators like kajeet and CSL, that can mean a new plan launched over night, proving that small equals nimble, at least for now.
In the payments stream Dave Birch from Consult Hyperion highlighted that NFC was not just about payments. He emphasised that P2P was potentially a very large market because of the simplicity of NFC technology. He reminded us that margins were very tight so operators need to be more creative in generating opportunities from NFC technology. He also mentioned that operators don’t really need banks to have an effective NFC strategy.
Charmaine Oak from Orange UK presented the opportunities that Orange is working on and made the connection to the Enablers and Billing required. She discussed a range of potential applications including money transfers, a form of remote payment and local or proximity transfers utilising NFC technology. These are potentially very large markets that her company is looking at addressing. Charmaine made the point that the consumer will help us discover new applications for fundamental capability put in. In solving security issues around mobile payment, it is possible that we find more application areas open up for example in G2C(Government to Consumer).
Aside from issues surrounding the convergence of the mobile and financial service industries on the payments stream, convergence in all its forms was the focus of a number of highly informative presentations.
Sabri Ali Yahya of Etisalat gave the first presentation of the convergence stream, with an account of a converged solution for prepay/postpay mobile voice/data in Egypt. Converged billing was fundamental to Etisalat’s aggressive entry strategy to enter the Egyptian market. Although Sabri mentioned a number of business drivers that influenced the decision to adopt a converged solution, clearly the big payoff came from the ability to implement a wide range of imaginative marketing programmes to grab attention, and therefore market share.
The presentation by Rupert Berger of Telekom Austria, could hardly be more different. A long-established incumbent, exclusively postpay, with a converged billing objective to provide a single invoice for fixed voice and broadband, mobile voice and broadband, and IP-TV. Integrating the rated billing streams from five existing systems took them a mere three months, not counting a few billing cycles to handle the customer confusion and concerns. Although a single platform is planned, TA couldn’t wait: once again the driver was market share, not cost savings or operational efficiency. The new unified bundle, with exclusively on-line bill presentation, allowed TA to slash prices and, according to Rupert, achieve “enormous market success”. When competitors complain to the regulator, you know you’ve made an impact.
The final presentation on convergence was by Navaneeth Kumar of Wataniya Kuwait. Navaneeth described some of the problems and obstacles encountered in trying to transform an existing environment into a converged one. Lots of useful lessons here, and Navaneeth ended up quite convinced that a single vendor solution would have made life a whole lot easier. But he hasn’t found one yet. Wataniya chose to streamline the organization too, combining the technical (network) department with IT at an early stage. Clearly this can create benefits over and above the need to converge systems and one that it would be good to hear more about.
So all in all a busy and informative first day at BIMS 2008!
Don’t forget we still have two more action packed conference days lined up. See you tomorrow!
With kind regards from sunny Amsterdam.
Mindy Emsley
Conference Producer
IIR Telecoms
memsley@iir-conferences.com
| BIMS Media Partner Insights: Real Time Charging |
|
Introduction The overall market for real-time charging will grow 10.6% CAGR from $2.67 billion in 2007 to $4.41 billion in 2012. Today 69% of that spending is for traditional IN (Intelligent Network) pre-paid platforms. By 2012, that percentage will decline to under 30%, opening the way for active mediation and complex real-time rating to become the major factors in real-time charging. Along the way, real-time charging will take on a bigger role in providing new services. Many services offered now in only a post-pay environment will be offered in post-pay, pre-pay or hybrid payment scenarios with services rating handled in real time for all scenarios. Further, CSPs will be able to offer more flexible pricing for more service bundles, reducing the need for flat-rate bundles when introducing new services.
Source: OSS Observer Active mediation and complex rating growing faster than IN pre-paid IN pre-paid platforms will decline at -8.4% CAGR to be $1.2 billion in 2012. This is still a lot of spending for products already viewed as legacy. Continued spending is driven primarily by mobile subscriber growth. Spending is reduced because the value is shifting to active mediation and complex rating and because IMS session control (which we do not yet forecast) will start to supplant IN session control in later forecast years. Active mediation will grow 27.8% CAGR to $1.46 billion in 2012. This represents a phenomenal shift in the prospects for mediation vendors and attracts more attention from major vendors in other areas. IN suppliers have developed or bought active mediation products that allow them to protect their revenue in this area. However, many CSPs are choosing active mediation from ISVs because they have better capabilities or to limit their dependence on NEMs as suppliers. Active mediation deployments dampen demand for traditional mediation where spending is essentially flat. Complex rating will grow the fastest, 34.5% CAGR, to shift from the smallest segment to the largest. Along with this shift, every possible supplier is getting involved. All the NEMs have developed or purchased rating products. Traditional billing-vendors have segmented their rating software into modules that can be linked to real-time interfaces and demonstrate the low-latency characteristics needed in real-time charging. New suppliers have entered the market focused on this remarkable opportunity. Role of Real-time charging Figure 2 illustrates the role of a real-time charging system in the overall telecom systems deployment. In this simplified view, real-time charging is added in a service delivery platform environment to complement existing systems in support of new data content services. In fact, real-time charging encompasses IN-based pre-paid charging support, active mediation, rating functionality and customer care support. Most active mediation and complex real-time rating systems derive from products originally developed to support complex post-paid billing. The following figures and discussion explain this more complex and complete view of real-time charging.
Source: OSS Observer Three scenarios for real-time charging Over time, the market is moving to encompass the full set of these services and billing models, but CSPs are moving in a step-wise manner using three basic scenarios. Scenario 1: Existing pre-paid voice deployments extended with support for basic pre-paid data services by adding active mediation. The key change over IN pre-paid voice is the addition of active mediation. These deployments primarily support SMS and GPRS data and do not require highly sophisticated content rating and product offers. They tend to emphasize software re-engineering of IN-based platforms to separate rating and balance management from SS7 session control and add active mediation for data networks. Active mediation may come from the IN pre-paid supplier or may come from an ISV. Post-paid systems are unaffected. This approach is used primarily in North America and in emerging markets where complex services are not available to pre-paid customers. Scenario 2: Existing pre-paid voice deployments extended with support for complex pre-paid data services, a hybrid of pre- and post-pay services, or access control for post-pay services. This extends the approach of scenario 1 adding not only active mediation but also complex rating. In scenario 2, existing pre-paid voice deployments have been extended with support for complex pre-paid data services, a hybrid of pre- and post-pay services, or access control for post-pay services. This extends the approach of scenario 1, adding not only active mediation but also complex real-time rating. The adjunct system shares balance management with the pre-paid voice. The pre-paid rating system is sometimes, but not always the same system used in post-paid billing. These are most commonly deployed in tier-1 and -2 CSPs with a large pre-paid installed base. Nearly every European operating entity and many Asian tier-1 and -2 mobile CSPs have implemented this approach. Scenario 3: Real-time, convergent charging. This is a deployment of a new system that supports voice, data and content for a primarily pre-paid customer base with co-incident support for post-pay support. This has a single rating system and shared product definitions (though prices vary). Deployments usually involve a pairing of a proven IN-based platform with a proven post-paid rating system. These scenario 3 deployments are the full-fledged convergent systems but there are fewer actual deployments than for scenarios 1 and 2. Scenario 3 is the most likely means to deploy real-time charging for residential broadband. In some cases, the IN platform would not be needed, putting all the focus on data network access and control. CSPs’ need to deploy new service drives real-time charging Due to the increasing competition for mobile subscribers, service providers are looking to offer content-based services and new data services. These services will allow them to maximize ARPU and increase revenues. As a result, CSPs need visibility of the usage, the ability to control access, and redirect pre-paid subscribers to top-up/recharge servers when their balance is low. GGSN (Gateway GPRS Support Node) vendors are providing these increasingly sophisticated capabilities, but CSPs must also support them with their charging systems and their customer care. Service providers want to combine pre- and post-paid services in a way that offers subscribers more choice and flexibility. With this convergence comes the need for greater sophistication in charging and account management than exists in the current pre-paid systems. Service providers are deploying increasing numbers of application servers which generate more billing events and have limited support for legacy protocols. They need a real-time charging platform capable of dealing with these increased event volumes. The material in this article was taken from OSS Observer’s Real-time charging Outlook report, published in November 2007. This report explains the business environment and key drivers for change in real-time charging. It provides specific market definition of this new, complex and often confusing area. There are different scenarios which lead to different needs; this report explains why CSPs choose these scenarios and the implications for vendors. The Outlook report also contains charts that compare the 25 vendors who play some role in each of the deployment scenarios, and provides a look at which functions within each scenario each vendor supplies. Additionally, it provides short profiles of each of these vendors.
This article appears courtesy of OSS Observer
|
BIMS Sponsor Insights - True Real Time Charging Improves The User Experience |
| Contacts |
Conference Programme: Mindy Emsley, Conference Producer, IIR Telecoms & Technology at memsley@iir-conferences.com For details of sponsorship and exhibition opportunities, contact Stephan Groves, Business Development Manager at sgroves@iir-conferences or Russell Bacon, Business Development Manager at rbacon@iir-conferences.com |
| Gold Sponsors | |||
 |
 |
||
| Lanyards Sponsor | |||
|
|||
| Strategic Change & IT Transformation Stream Sponsor | |||
|
|||
| New Business Model Stream Sponsor | |||
|
|||
| Charging Stream Sponsor | |||
|
|||