Dial Connectivity, Quality of Service

At the recent Amdocs InTouch Business Forum held in Singapore, Alastair Hanlon — a Ph.D in Experimental Physics from the University of Cambridge — had some interesting results to report about consumer behaviour in the world of telecom. As the company's Vice-President of Market Strategy, Hanlon, during a brief interaction with Business Line post his presentation, said that consumers in the Asia-Pacific are prepared to pay a premium for increased connectivity and quality of service. Our conversation continues over email.

Excerpts from the interview.

As a revenue management services company, where does Amdocs see its revenues coming from, over the next three-five years, despite the fall in traditional telecom company (telco) service revenues?

Service providers face two key challenges in the coming three to five years: customer-facing and network-facing challenges. With nearly thirty years of experience serving the evolving needs of service providers, and leading technology innovation in the communications industry, Amdocs offers the business and operations supporting systems (B/OSS), as well as consulting through implementation and managed services that can help providers address these challenges and gain a competitive edge.

The customer experience is becoming increasingly fragmented, with each subscriber using connected devices for both work and personal needs, in the home, in the office, or when travelling. Subscribers often have more than one connected device, on which they enjoy a multitude of services: voice, text, Internet, social media, maps and so on. Subscribers also contact their service providers in different ways, via the call centre, retail shop, dealer, self-service channel, or social media.

On top of that, an Amdocs survey just conducted into consumer behaviour worldwide reveals that consumers in the Asia-Pacific are prepared to pay a premium for increased connectivity and quality of service.

Service providers need systems that can overcome this complexity of experience and demand, and provide personalised services that are relevant to the individual subscriber, when they want them.

The staggering increase in data consumption, meanwhile, means service providers also need systems that can help them plan, build and capacity-manage their networks to fully utilise their network resources, limit investment in additional capacity and better monetise their data services.

What is the difference Amdocs expects to make for telecom businesses as they experiment with newer revenue models?

Today, with families having six, eight, and even ten connected devices, tier-1 service provider could be supporting up to 500 million data plans, and that's before accounting for enterprise and M2M services.

Amdocs recently signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Canadian company Bridgewater Systems. Bridgewater policy management solutions, coupled with Amdocs' convergent charging technology, will provide a holistic view of the consumer across any data service, any device and any network — enabling service providers to support virtually any data pricing model, including value-based pricing models. Providers will be able to redefine the real-time, data experience and their approach to monetising data services.

This would mean, for example, that a family could share a single, consolidated plan across the wife's iPhone (on a 3G network), the husband's iPad, the children's smartphones and home broadband connection, all at preferred bandwidth speeds. A family would have one easy-to-understand plan, based on what they value.

Do you see distinct business models evolving among customers, partners and network players?

We see three distinct business models emerging.

The customer experience model in which the service provider is the guardian of the connected customer experience, combining connectivity with third-party services and content to deliver a compelling customer experience. The service provider will ensure the customer experience across multiple channels reselling connectivity and services.

The partner experience model in which the service provider enables others to deliver the connected customer experience in the communications industry and new vertical industries. Here service providers will move from being traditional wholesalers, selling just network capacity, to selling core competencies and value added services such as network intelligence, content hosting, integrated services, etc.

The network experience model : Here the service provider is responsible for the operation of networks either as standalone utility businesses or on behalf of wholesalers.

> dmurali@thehindu.co.in

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