Navigating Change Is a Priority

As customer-centricity becomes a focus area for telcos, real-time charging and subscriber management tools are serving as key enablers

Despite the growing mobile data consumption, the average revenue per user (ARPU) for telcos has stayed under pressure and has even showed early signs of coming down. In a price-sensitive market like India, that spells trouble, to say the least. What further complicates matters is that customer needs and consumption patterns keep changing in quite a dynamic manner. From voice to video; from faster response times to personalized services, they are seldom static. Evaluating and understanding their usage patterns, to determine future requirements can be grueling, particularly given the fact that prepaid users form a dominant part of the overall subscriber base.

Now that’s a perfect setting for the sophisticated OSS and BSS solutions to chip in. These solutions allow operators to constantly take stock of their network infrastructure; have a birds-eye view of the services that users avail; help develop preferential pricing plans, and draw out better plans for customer retention.

Increasingly, telcos outsource infrastructure, operation and management and network operations and maintenance to multiple vendors. Though they opt for managed service provid-

ers that work directly with multiple OSS/ BSS vendors, convergence of all data, be it billing or revenue management, customer relationship management, centralized customer support, etc., is a big ask. While users consume a diverse variety of data across various genres of voice, data, video, and other multimedia, they need to be charged through one consolidated bill.

For telcos, achieving operational efficiencies without overshooting operational expenditure is the name of the game. They are also developing more customer-centricity, and the adoption of customized OSS-BSS software is expected to facilitate their efforts.

The OSS components help automate processes involved in network operations like network inventory maintenance, service provision, configuring network components and fault management. BSS systems comprise customer-oriented tasks such as billing, CRM, order management, and call center automation among others. Together, OSS/BSS provide service fulfillment and assurance, and provide an accurate snapshot of the business metrics and their progress.

Key players and their strengths

The OSS/BSS market in India is quite frag- mented. Some of the key players include Ericsson, Redknee, Amdocs, Nokia, IBM, Oracle, Tech Mahindra, Comptel and others. In the fiscal gone by, the market was dominated by companies like Ericsson, Redknee and Amdocs. Despite holding significant market share, these players constantly invest in innovations and integration of emerging technologies to add value.

While there often are standalone OSS/ BSS deals, these could also be bundled as part of the bigger network deployment or managed service deals. In February, for example, Ericsson won a deal to operate and maintain Vodafone India’s optical fiber cable network for three years, covering 10 circles. Ericsson has been Vodafone’s partner in the radio, core and transport domains for several years and the fresh deal further cements its partnership. Earlier, Ericsson also bagged a deal to supply Idea Cellular with a 4G/ LTE network.

Redknee has built quite a reputation for its real-time monetization and subscriber management platform and counts Vodafone India as a key customer, among others. It roped in industry veteran Sanjay Sharma as its regional vice-president and head for southwest Asia region in June 2015. The move helped the company

make some rapid gains in the India market during the fiscal.

India is also one of the largest markets for Comptel and comprises around 10 percent of its global revenues. It is particularly focused in the areas of service activation and charging, and licenses its software to most of the leading operators in India. Comptel customers include Airtel, Idea Cellular and Tata Teleservices. Last year, Airtel sealed a three-year extension contract to Comptel.

Then there’s Amdocs which has Reliance Communications as a key customer that has deployed Amdocs’ customer management solutions. Vodafone India too is understood to be running an integrated Amdocs BSS platform to provide billing services to enterprise customers. This is part of a larger BSS deal, where Vodafone migrated all its post-paid customers to a consolidated Amdocs billing platform. The telco has also partnered with Redknee to keep a check on realtime charging of prepaid and postpaid data subscribers across the country.

Growth strategies

To have more skin in the game, OSS/BSS providers are also exploring M&A or collaborative strategies, globally as well as locally. For instance, in July 2015, Amdocs completed the acquisition of the BSS unit of Comverse to consolidate its position. In India, the homegrown optic fiber and telecom cables major Sterlite acquired niche OSS/BSS provider Elitecore, with a view to offer operations and billing applications on a single palate. While Sterlite creates the infrastructure, Elitecore runs applications and services. Interestingly, IT services major Wipro had earlier inked a deal with real-time charging and billing solutions provider Orga Systems to collaborate and develop a pre-integrated BSS solution.

Apart from M&A routes, players are also exploring organic growth options wherever workable, with a view to fortify their market shares. For example, Redknee Solutions opened a new 350-seater facility in Bengaluru, indicating its long-term commitment for India. The facility will not only cater to the growing market needs of Redknee customers and strengthen its client engagement and support services across the globe, but also maximize value for existing clients in the region.

Meanwhile, the use of software-asa-services (SaaS) model in the OSS/BSS segment is increasing due to a demand for complex service support and a need to recover investments in legacy systems. The trend is expected to gain traction as enterprises deploy cloud systems to reduce their capital expenditures. Last fiscal, Airtel roped in Nokia to deploy a cloud-ready virtualized OSS as part of a 3G network rollout contract for eight circles.

Vendors are also revamping their product and service offerings with customized solutions like data monetization through mobile convergence; enhancing network efficiencies, resolving customer issues and improving time-to-market. Customer segmentation, event-based billing, converged services, community care, and customer experience are the other growth drivers.

For instance, Ericsson recently unveiled a new revenue management tool, developed with HP Enterprise, as a cloud-based charging and billing solution. The new product offers a breakthrough approach, and acts as a digital business enabler for service providers, reducing time-to-market, and supporting various business models.

Likewise, Huawei’s ‘Total Telecom IT Managed Service’ solution is aimed at helping operators expand their customer base, improve customer loyalty, raise profitability, and reduce capital and operating expenditure. With this, operators can concentrate on core telecom services, and reduce costs effectively by keeping those structured, transparent and controllable.

An increasing adoption of convergent billing systems, rising demand for customer and data services is driving worldwide OSS/BSS market. The global OSS/BSS market, led by players like Ericsson, Amdocs, Redknee, CSG Systems, IBM and Accenture, remains highly competitive and hence the possibility of a further consolidation may not be ruled out.

Also, going forward, the OSS market will see a growing emphasis on the service assurance and fulfillment solutions, given the demand for consistent high-speed connectivity. Similarly, the BSS market has seen increased usage of customer management solutions and will likely to hold its sway for some more time.