91% of global operators view real-time assurance as the most important priority for revenue protection, research from Telecoms.com in association with Openet, has revealed.
The new study explores the levels of emphasis placed on revenue protection by over 100 global operators. It calls out the increasing importance in assuring revenues generated by real-time data streaming services - such as video on demand or live television streaming. With data consumption trends shifting towards an ever increasing amount of video streaming, it is rightly being treated as a top challenge by operators the world over.
Without a transformed approach to revenue and service assurance, over 50% of respondents admit that they will risk losing more than 3% of the revenues expected to come from digital services (i.e. TV services, etc) in 2017 alone. With over 60% anticipating that revenues from digital services will account for 10% of total revenues, and 30% seeing this revenue figure at over 20% of total revenues, this forecast leakage represents a significant level of risk.
The increasing pressure on global operators to manage CAPEX/OPEX and maintain fragile ARPU rates, has placed revenue assurance as a top priority. However, today’s assurance systems may fall short of meeting the increasing demands of an ever-evolving telecoms industry, making the need for change even more pressing. The study uncovers that over three quarters of those surveyed (77%) believe that existing revenue assurance systems would struggle to collect relevant data in real-time from virtualized networks for new services.
The majority (87%) agreed that most existing revenue assurance systems were designed for traditional telecoms networks. With the advent of virtualization across operators’ infrastructure promising increased efficiency in the long-term, at a network level, it significantly increases complexity in the short term. With this in mind, 83% of operators believe the complexity of network virtualization is adding greater need to solve the challenge of dynamic data collection for assurance in this sense.
Report author, Tim Skinner, Features Editor of Telecoms.com, noted: “The results from the survey present a unanimous level of agreement that digital transformation poses a unique juxtaposition among global operators. While digital transformation provides a wealth of opportunities for CSPs the world over, with regards to opening up new revenue streams through digital services, the necessity to assure said streams is arguably more important than ever before. As ever, the winners will be those who can find the sweet spot between building in sufficient levels of revenue assurance without impeding the ability to deploy new services efficiently and with the agility the future digital world will require.”
“As the industry moves to roll out digital services enabled by new real-time systems and virtualized networks, revenue assurance needs a serious rethink. Many service providers are anticipating more than 20% of their service revenue coming from digital services in 2017, therefore it’s important that any potential for revenue leakage is addressed now,” Explained Jon Ross, GVP Product and Solutions Management at Openet. “The changes in the industry mean that it is imperative for assurance systems to collect, measure and monitor all transactions, as they happen, to assure new digital services.”
In reaction to this market need for enhanced assurance, Openet has launched Assure – a real-time assurance tool that reduces or eliminates gaps by collecting and analyzing all data. This new system allows operators to conduct real-time reconciliations across multiple platforms and layers, as well as reconciliation of streamed data at an event level.
