Ericsson, which currently works with mobile operators Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone India, Aircel, Tata Teleservices, and Uninor, has shared OSS / BSS tips to telecom operators.
Nishant Batra, head of Engagement Practices at Ericsson India, says Indian telecoms must open up their network and service capabilities to many different players in the marketplace, ranging from developers and OTT players.
Ericsson India offers wide capability of pre and post-sales support across all aspects of its OSS/BSS portfolio covering key business process of an operator. A holistic approach to OSS/BSS solutions for customers allows Ericsson to maintain a distinct competitive advantage.
OSS/BSS trends
Personalization improves their ability to rapidly and dynamically support user needs and address new business opportunities. Today’s customers are more sophisticated and demanding than ever before. Used to the convenience of online services and shopping, many customers expect services to be tailored to their individual needs, and personalized based on their previous experiences.
Real-time capability enables telecoms to manage the need for real-time interaction between the network, users and partners.
Telecoms can simplify their OSS/BSS into an open and flexible architecture with reusable technology components supporting process-oriented solutions to enable faster time-to-market.
Recent customer wins
In early 2013, Ericsson bagged a deal from Bharti Airtel, to deploy Ericsson’s Mobile Broadband Charging solution and modernize its pre-paid/ IN solution for Airtel subscribers, across India. The solution will allow Bharti Airtel to enhance the prepaid customer experience by offering a wider and attractive range of prepaid services, flexible bundling and real-time control of chargeable services. Ericsson’s Mobile Broadband Charging solutions are also being deployed by other major operators in India.
Customer demands
“In order for operators to be successful, they must open up their network and service capabilities to many different players in the marketplace, ranging from developers and OTT players to the digitally native consumer, resulting in a new and diverse ecosystem,” said Nishant Batra.
Further operators need to simplify their OSS/BSS architecture and look for OSS/BSS capabilities that offer: innovation and business agility to act rapidly and differentiate themselves in the new marketplace; real-time capabilities with network, customer and partner interaction and flexible and business-oriented architecture with reusable building blocks.
Tips to telecom CTOs
OSS/BSS is that element which touches the daily life of customers by introducing innovative services tailored to their needs. Data explosion has caused a profound change in the way OSS/BSS functions today. With more data coming to the fore, OSS/BSS has to become more customer-centric. For operators to be successful, they must open up their network and service capabilities to many different players in the marketplace, ranging from developers and OTT players to the digitally native consumer, resulting in a new and diverse ecosystem.
A great opportunity within the OSS/BSS domain is that operators are waking up to the end consumer’s voice. Increased competition through new players in the marketplace as well as easy switching on the part of the end consumer has given weight to consumer complaints. Telecom operators can no longer afford to be complacent when it comes to improving customer satisfaction. This awareness will prove to be extremely beneficial for millions of Indian mobile phone subscribers.
As smartphones and tablets became the access devices of choice, mobile user behaviour has undergone a fundamental shift from being predominantly voice-centric to data-centric – or, more accurately, app-centric. To provide for this, operators need new ways to assess performance and the quality of the user experience that enables operators to build and manage their networks in the most efficient, targeted and profitable way.
In response to this challenge, a new approach to network performance – called app coverage – is proposed as an indicator of the mobile broadband experience. App coverage is the probability that the network will deliver sufficient performance to run a particular application at a quality level acceptable to the user.
App coverage integrates all aspects of network performance – including radio network throughput and latency, capacity, as well as the performance of the backhaul, packet core and the content delivery networks. Ultimately, managing app coverage and performance demands a true end-to-end approach to designing, building and running mobile networks.
The landscape of the telecommunications market is changing rapidly. Data has added new dynamics to the market. Today, subscribers around the world want to be in control. They want to get the services they pay for, and want to feel special.
Supporting the multimedia demands of an always-connected, real-time, online lifestyle for individuals and organizations creates a whole new level of challenges for operators. They have to assess and upgrade their Operational Support System (OSS) and Business Support System (BSS) capabilities in order to be able to meet these challenges and capture this newly created revenue pool. Support systems need to provide agility so that operators can meet customer expectations, and stay one step ahead.
Nishant Batra said the need of the hour for OSS/BSS is no longer just to improve scalability and diversity but also to become more consumer centric.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
