Info Image

The ‘Max’ Factor: How Opera Delivers Experience, Engagement and Analytics for Operators and Subscribers in the Mobile Data Era

Smartphones have become omnipresent. Mobile Internet has become pervasive through cities, towns and villages. People catch up on their favorite TV shows while travelling, while waiting at the post office and while taking a stroll in the park. Mobile data has become the world’s most transacted commodity, and is on track to becoming a universal currency.

It is therefore not at all surprising that Mobile Internet has created a rich technology and services ecosystem of its own, worth more than a trillion dollars, as it continues to fascinate the human race and as businesses compete to outdo each other to claim a share of the growing, and lucrative mobile Internet market.

Within the USD600 billion Mobile Internet or mobile data market, as it is popularly known among consumers, one trend emerges stronger above all others – the consumption of rich content. High quality video, gaming and other interactive highly-graphical applications started recording phenomenal growth in their consumption, as mobile networks continue to improve speed and coverage on the back of new technologies such as 4G LTE and LTE Advanced, delivering such content seamlessly on today’s mobile devices.

The consumption of rich content on networks that were initially developed to provide access to light content such as standard websites, email services and light-weight apps will undoubtedly give rise to new challenges, technical and business-wise.  One such challenge is network congestion, which has always been a key concern for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) whose overarching goal is to maintain high subscriber experience at all times. Constant stalling or buffering on content can put off thousands of mobile users from consuming data, and lead to increased churn.

Consumption of rich content also means that subscriber’s usage charges will be increasing significantly as a 30 minute HD video can eat up a significant portion of a user’s standard monthly plan, leading to over consumption of data. While this increases billable revenues in the short run, bill shock and overages will start to impact subscriber’s experience and result in them moving away from their service providers in the mid and longer run.    

These new challenges have led to MNOs exploring pre-emptive strategies and have given rise to a number of innovative solutions in the market place. Tara Neal and Prushothma Rao of The Fast Mode this week spoke to Opera Software, the company behind the popular Opera browser, on one such solution, the Opera Max, whose product video emerged as one of the three winners of the ‘Popular Choice Award’ in the recently concluded The Fast Mode #TopTechVideos digital event. The Fast Mode #TopTechVideos web event is one of its kind digital showcase that saw leading telecom technology vendors narrating their winning solutions in some of the most innovative product videos.

Mobile Data Optimization

Giving subscribers more content while keeping their consumption light on the bandwidth is spurring more Mobile Operators to deploy solutions that help their subscribers maximize their mobile data experience on rich digital services.

Opera's Product Video and Kiosk as Featured in The 2015 Top Tech Videos

 

Per Wetterdal,

SVP Business

Development,

Opera Software

Per Wetterdal,
SVP Business Development,
Opera Software

Speaking to The Fast Mode, Per Wetterdal, Senior VP, Business Development of Opera Software shared on the company’s initiatives in the mobile data space specifically on Opera Max and the timely introduction of the app amid the rapid growth of mobile data consumption in a ‘Mobile First’ environment, where dedicated apps have become the preferred way to access Internet world over.

Opera Max, Opera Software’s App for Android smartphones is an end-user offering, allowing smartphone users to improve their mobile data experience while keeping tab on their consumption and help them save on their data. According to Per, Opera Max boasts three key capabilities – data compression, data optimization and app management. Data compression converts rich content to lighter versions without any significant loss in quality which reduces bandwidth consumption up to 50%, delivering great savings to users; while data optimization adapts media (that is typically designed for larger screens and fixed connectivity) to small screen devices powered by mobile connectivity, which is often susceptible to inconsistent coverage and fluctuating speeds. Apps Management, on the other hand allows users to configure their Apps by various usage parameters, for example, the quality of content it delivers and the use of bandwidth.

The Benefits of Opera Max for Mobile Data Subscribers

While compression works autonomously on IP packets to save bandwidth, optimization and app management work in various ways, also on the device level, to ensure that mobile data users are consuming only what they want to consume.  An example of one such optimization is reduction of application background activity. According to Per, "Native apps are different from a data consumption perspective compared to a browser, which end users are not fully aware of. A browser works in a way that it consumes data only when the user is in the foreground. So if a user goes to Facebook via a browser, that is when the consumption starts, where content feeds are updated server side."

Opera Max's App Management Feature

Per added, "Native apps however, are sitting on the device and living their own lives. They are fetching data when the user is not aware of it. We have monitored this at Opera and up to 30% of data consumed by users can happen in the background." In this case, Per said that by having access to the information of their consumption, users can either block background activity or make adjustments to their content consumption. Doing so provides users transparency on their consumption in real time, allowing users to manage their data consumption, improve their confidence and boost overall usage of mobile data.

The Opera Max App for Wi-Fi Usage Management

Per added that Opera Max also gives mobile data subscribers control over content delivery. Content provider algorithms often result in content being rendered in quality that is based on network capacity and this at times results in wasted bandwidth when too high quality media is streamed to a small screen device where standard quality is sufficient to create the expected experience.  With Opera Max, mobile data users can adjust their content quality levels on applications as Netflix or Youtube, allowing them to align experience with spending, thus increasing their overall satisfaction, on both content as well as the network.

Shift in the management of subscriber experience, .. and the MNOs' Advantage

Providing more control in the hands of subscribers presents a shift in the management of subscriber experience. With the increasing number of tech-savvy smartphone users, players in the mobile Internet ecosystem, specifically MNOs are expected to benefit in a major way as these savvy users see control as an outlet for determining their experience, and more importantly, as new channels for engagement with their service providers.   

One of the key channels of engagement is achieved by providing users the analytics they need leveraging the information gathered by apps such as Opera Max. According to Per, "We are currently implementing more use cases to help users optimize their smartphone data experience. Based on the data that we have, we can inform the user more proactively of what is happening on the phone. Today users can always go to our Apps and check what is happening. Going forward, we will also explain and provide suggestions on how to improve the experience. This will be important when scaling to a wider mass market user base."

In fact, Opera Max is working on the next level of engagement with users with features such as notifications or alerts which will be delivered in real-time onto the screen to inform users in a timely manner of their consumption and expenditure. During the next year, Per foresees the app providing enhanced features including the capability for users to set their own usage rules based on their data plans which can help them to more accurately manage consumption and spend, creating the effect of ‘policy on the device’.

Another channel of engagement is delivery of contextual ads, leveraging Opera Max’s ability to tap on its rich analytics and real-time visibility of the user’s consumption pattern, allowing it to deliver offers that are a great fit for the user’s circumstances based on attributes such as consumption history, location, plan balance and content preferences.  Opera Max is also able to push sponsored data type offers which provide users with free data in exchange for participating in advertisers’ content such as taking part in a poll or viewing of a video ad.

Helping MNOs create winning data bundles

MNOs partnering with Opera can drive engagement not only by tapping on its massive reach, but also via access to Opera Max aggregate-level analytics which provide deep insights, from data collected across millions of its active users worldwide covering attributes such as device types, applications, connectivity, etc. Per added that such insights which reveal customer habits and preferences can point to the right opportunities for MNOs, enabling them to create plans that can more accurately respond to subscriber needs in the marketplace.

Subscribers, MNOs and beyond…

Interestingly, Opera Max’s move to partner with Operators represents a growing number of alliances between MNOs and Over-the-Top players especially as more MNOs leverage the highly developed and well established digital platforms that enable them to accelerate their time-to-market. In the case of Opera Max, the app provides MNOs with access to a mature platform for subscriber engagement and to millions of active, daily users. What’s more, according to Per, is that Opera is also making steady inroads in the device segment, with 14 OEM agreements already in place, which means that the Opera Max will now be either integrated into the phone operation system level or pre-loaded on more smartphones, making it accessible for more users of mobile data globally. 

With subscriber experience becoming the key focus in the delivery of mobile content, MNOs’ quest for more effective tools to engage users and assure better service experience is expected to intensify, and Opera Max stands out as a tested-and-proven platform to deliver quick-wins for MNOs while keeping mobile subscribers happy and MNOs’ bottom line healthy in the long run.  

Missed out on The Fast Mode 2015 #TopTechVideos showcase? Visit now to catch up on some of the most creative product videos for the Digital Telco.

Author

Executive Editor and Telecoms Strategist at The Fast Mode | 5G | IoT/M2M | Telecom Strategy | Mobile Service Innovations 

Tara Neal heads the strategy & editorial unit at The Fast Mode, focusing on latest technologies such as gigabit broadband, 5G, cloud-native networking, edge computing, virtualization, software-defined networking and network automation as well as broader telco segments such as IoT/M2M, CX, OTT services and network security. Tara holds a First Class Honours in BSc Accounting and Finance from The London School of Economics, UK and is a CFA charterholder from the CFA Institute, United States. Tara has over 22 years of experience in technology and business strategy, and has earlier served as project director for technology and economic development projects in various management consulting firms.

Follow Tara Neal on Twitter @taraneal11, LinkedIn @taraneal11, Facebook or email her at tara.neal@thefastmode.com.

PREVIOUS POST

Innovation via BSS – Making it Possible for MVNOs and Enterprises to be Niche, Agile and Profitable

NEXT POST

Real-time Network Analytics and Policy Enforcement for Efficient Bandwidth Management