 | Issue: | AME 2013 |
| Article no.: | 13 | |
| Topic: | Service activation – the key to LTE success | |
| Author: | Thad Dupper | |
| Title: | Chairman & CEO | |
| Organisation: | Evolving Systems | |
| PDF size: | 370KB |
About author
Thad Dupper is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Evolving Systems. Mr Dupper joined Evolving Systems to oversee sales, business development and marketing; he has more than 23 years experience in the telecommunications technology industry. In his earlier career, Mr Dupper was Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Expand Beyond, a wireless software company. Mr Dupper was also Vice President, International Sales and Business Development of Terabeam. Mr Dupper held positions as senior vice president of Dun & Bradstreet and vice president of Teradata where he oversaw data warehousing solutions for the communication industry.
Thad Dupper holds a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from Manhattan College in New York.
Article abstract
Service Activation systems, help operators provide and control the use of all services – voice, data, content, information or messaging – and allow operators to offer complex solution bundles, including multiple services and tariffs characteristic of LTE together with real-time activation. These systems are increasingly capable of managing the next generation network access technologies that will be critical to the success of LTE as operator roll-out rates ramp up across Africa and the Middle East in the years to come.
Full Article
Long Term Evolution (LTE) is among the fastest-growing mobile network technologies today, as wireless operators invest to provide the mobile data services demanded in markets around the world. Just three years after the technology was originally deployed, worldwide subscribers to the 4G wireless standard are expected to surpass the 100 million mark.
In African and Middle East markets, LTE remains an embryonic technology. Statistics from Informa Telecoms and Media show that there are just over 50,000 LTE subscribers across the Middle East and North Africa region. There is huge potential for growth, however, both in LTE itself and the high-speed communications technologies it supports. Analyst House, Analysys Mason recently projected that 4G connections will grow in the region at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 122 per cent between 2012 and 2017.
As wireless operators fight to establish edge in an increasingly crowded and competitive telecoms marketplace, LTE will become ever more important across these regions. The higher network speeds that this technology supports will increasingly give operators the opportunity to offer customers a better experience and achieve business advantage through the roll-out of new subscriber services, and, in particular, quad-play bundled services, typically comprising of TV, phone, Internet and mobile.
But access networks are becoming increasingly heterogeneous as operators deploy multiple technologies to ensure end-users have the best available connection wherever they are. Many operators use femtocells alongside their primary cellular networks to improve coverage in densely populated areas. Smartphones and tablets now almost always support Wi-Fi as well as cellular data, and users are accustomed to switching to Wi-Fi at home and in the workplace.
For the best user experience, the device needs to be able to seamlessly switch between different access technologies. While the operator will want to deliver this capability, it will also want to maintain control or ownership over the customer. The SIM contained within the subscriber’s device can be used as the identity/authentication mechanism across all access networks and technologies.
Managing a subscriber’s identity/subscription/entitlements across multiple access networks becomes complex, and needs flexible and capable operational support systems (OSS). The Service Activation system is a vital part of the OSS layer, and operators need to make sure their system is up to the task of integrating multiple technologies to deliver the best user experience.
Key to profitability
An effective activation system is critical to an operator’s profitability. Activation systems are involved in providing every service to every subscriber – voice, data, content, information or messaging, and so are invaluable as operators look to integrate additional access technologies into their portfolio. Also, the volume of activation transactions handled by operators is huge – and still growing.
Any shortcoming is highly visible and is likely to negatively impact revenues and customer retention. Many operators today still have activation systems that need to be replaced. The effort involved in managing and updating them to meet emerging requirements is driving total cost of ownership beyond sustainable levels – and in fast-developing wireless communications markets like Africa and the Middle East, this is likely to be a growing problem over time.
That’s why scalability, flexibility and reliability are arguably the three key qualities that the latest next generation service activation solutions need to possess. More specifically, they need to be able to increase business agility to introduce, manage and withdraw services – and new technologies – while at the same time reducing customer churn by significantly lowering activation errors.
Tight cost control is equally important. The best solutions also need to be able to reduce total cost of ownership for activation through a roadmap and benchmarked performance, while at the same time lowering the risk and cost of integrating to a wide range of network elements and business systems.
Solutions also need to be able to offer a comprehensive service for the whole service development lifecycle. In addition to pure service activation, they need to deliver three key business capabilities for operators: service assembly, service verification and service delivery integration.
A model-driven approach to service assembly will reduce time to market for new services. Efficient and effective service verification will increase customer satisfaction while delivering improving utilisation and data quality of resources. The final element, service delivery integration, ideally needs to reduce integration cost and risk while increasing business agility both through extensive pre-integration and standards-based integration.
Reaping the rewards
Today, the best service activation systems allow operators to meet the growing needs of consumers for complex solution bundles, often incorporating multiple services and tariffs so characteristic of the new world of LTE, together with real-time activation demanded by Internet-savvy users wanting instant fulfilment. At the same time, these systems are developing the capability to manage the emerging generation of new network access technologies that will be so critical to the success of LTE as operator roll-out rates ramp up across Africa and the Middle East in the years to come.
Already we are seeing many operators turning to technology vendor partners who have the necessary expertise to shorten their time to market and lower their cost of ownership while at the same time enabling them to provide the highest possible levels of quality and availability as they implement these new technologies. As we have seen, LTE implementations are taking off but for operators it is high-quality service activation systems that are really making them fly.
