By Akshat Joshi,
VP - Wi-Fi Product Mgt,
Elitecore Technologies.
Following is a list of five trends that we expect to gain momentum in the year ahead and look forward to as the telecom industry continues to evolve.
#1: VIRTUALIZED NETWORKS EXPECTED TO ACCELERATE IMPETUS IN 2015
Today a number of industries and business verticals are realizing the power of cloud computing and NFV. With clearly visible advantages around better manageability and controls, cloud based networks will continue being adopted by service providers across the globe. NFV technology supports the virtualization of components allowing a flexible network infrastructure that underpins the shift of applications and services to the cloud. NFV will bring agility and efficiency to networks and business operations and will allow operators to efficiently and cost-effectively support dynamic subscriber demands.
The upcoming year will witness several telcos offering their PCRF solutions on the cloud and defining their NFV roadmap strategies in an aggressive way. With completely virtualized PCRF working on the cloud, telecom operators can easily scale their PCRF to cater to the new age traffic, gain more control on new regions and hence increase their chances of having new monetization possibilities around data services.
With the technological evolution and considering the scale of variety of offerings available on the cloud, next generation networks services like Wi-Fi and its offerings are also made cloud accessible. The hosted and managed cloud based Wi-Fi platform can easily respond to the needs of enterprises to deliver innovative and cost effective services through cloud thus enabling them with automated processes to capitalize on their market opportunity and launch differentiated services quickly.
#2: DATA ANALYTICS WILL BECOME A KEY DRIVER FOR TELCOS
We also see a great opportunity in Charging & Policy analytics as a tool for CSPs, to unlock the real time intelligence from their networks and equip them with the right information to roll out more personalized plans at the right time resulting in business value.
Operators will attempt to integrate services more closely with social media platforms, and start introducing advanced analytics through big data in order to get a 360-degree understanding of customer behavior. Big Data Analytics will come to operators’ rescue and help them turn their obstacles into opportunities. Using a series of techniques including, NoSQL, MapReduce and machine learning to analyze complex data, it will enable the operators to take more informed and quicker decisions.
Akshat Joshi,
VP Wi-Fi Product Mgt,
Elitecore Technologies
#3: PARTNER MANAGEMENT FOR REVENUE REALIZATION
From a services and content perspective; in 2015 there is no doubt that Over-The-Top will continue to offer both - opportunities for some and challenges for others in the industry. Rather than building services that are designed to compete with OTT service providers, we expect to see operators developing OTT capabilities and services for their existing customers. The rapid pace of today’s marketplace, combined with a rising number of OTT players, has required all operators to become more responsive and agile in order to keep up and maintain healthy revenue streams. To stay ahead of the curve, operators will switch from the traditional voice services and cast an eye towards revenue opportunities like offering bundled data plans.
To bring new products and services quickly to market, OTT Monetization Platform will be available to assist the operators to adopt diverse partnership models for various OTT partners including platform partners, content partners, banks etc opening up new avenues for revenue generation through faster rollout of OTT services and reaping the benefit out of it.
#4: PROFITIZE FROM MOBILE ADS
Mobile advertisement is another area that will be in focus in the year 2015. Reaching out to consumers with advertising based on Wi-Fi access holds great potential to revolutionize the economics of mobile advertising. With access technology behind its back, Wi-Fi can provide much more accurate user location, when compared with mobile cellular network, allowing for much better targeted advertising. And most importantly, the usage of Wi-Fi is opt-in, meaning that only those customers who are interested and receptive to Wi-Fi messages, opt for it and hence it is truly a next generation ready advertising model as compared to the traditional alternative spam model. Thus, we expect that more and more operators will aim to reap huge benefits out of it in the coming year.
#5: WI-FI CALLING EXPECTED TO GAIN GROUNDS IN 2015
As an access enabling technology, Wi-Fi is already gaining ground in many areas and ‘voice calling’ through Wi-Fi is another area where Wi-Fi holds great potential to entice positive disruption in the telecom space. Innovation in Wi-Fi will take the centre stage in the coming year to deliver value for the operators and end-users. Next-generation Wi-Fi Calling with VoWiFi and Voice over LTE (VoLTE) support pre-integrated in the Smartphone dialler, will offer a completely different experience to its users with better indoor coverage and seamless call transfer support between Wi-Fi and LTE. With these advantages, Wi-Fi calling is set to become the de-facto standard very soon.
About The Author:
Bringing together a wealth of expertise and industry experience of over 15 years , Akshat Joshi plays an integral role in managing the portfolio for OSS and telecom access network (WiMAX, Wi-Fi, Broadband, LTE etc.) related products and solutions. Recognized for his ability to assess new situations, identify critical issues, and formulate and implement solutions quickly and decisively; he has held various positions at Elitecore – Product Management, Solution Architect, Presales, Projects Delivery, SME for various 3GPP solutions, Product Engineering (architecting , QA, testing) and new product & solution developments. Playing an instrumental role in evolving Elitecore Wi-Fi solutions from enterprise to telecom, his work has resulted in developing new endearing approaches for Wi-Fi in the challenging markets. He is closely associated in developing Wi-Fi monetization strategy with new technologies.
