There are two big trends impacting Communications Service Providers (CSPs) that have a tendency to not get the headlines they probably should.

The first is that CSPs around the world, looking at the explosion of data on their networks which is actually accelerating, can no longer sustain “all you can eat” business models. They must move to metered service models in order to:

• Be able to fund the network expansions required to meet the demands of a multimedia world where users armed with multiple devices are requiring more and more capacity.
• Fend off competition and/or accommodate OTT traffic which is viewed as “bandwidth hogs” (at the heart of the net neutrality debate).
•  Generate profits.

The second is mediating the massive flows of information associated with service delivery that can enable CSPs to be fast-to-market and fast in the market. This is a task which legacy BSS systems are not capable of handling.   

Stockholm, Sweden-based DigitalRoute, with the launch of its Service Control solution, a pre-configured solution built on the company’s MediationZone platform addresses the above CSP needs. It is designed to enable CSPs to reduce the cost of delivering metered data services. It does so using a service delivery and execution engine designed for CSPs whose new services and service bundles (of voice, data, and/or next generation services) are keys to their competitive strategies.

“The Service Control solution expands the value of the MediationZone platform to address mission-critical use cases,” said Johan Bergh, CEO at DigitalRoute. “It will play a central role in how DigitalRoute helps its customers to achieve their own goals.”

Service Control directly addresses the most pressing competitive challenges telcos face today. In a recent survey, Top 10 risks to Telecoms Operators, Ernst & Young described:

• Failure to shift the business model from minutes to bytes.
• Disengagement from the changing customer mindset.
• Return on investment.
• Turn demand into value.
• Failure to capitalize on new forms of connectivity.

“Our customers face pressures to innovate and to increase their revenues and market share yet find that their legacy IT is a barrier to success,” said Thomas Vasen, VP-Product Management & Marketing at DigitalRoute. “Service Control helps solve these challenges through fast enablement and reduced cost of delivering metered data services.”

In fact, Service Control is already being used with impressive results. One North American operator notes Vasen is, “Providing services in a new, disruptive way using a Freemium model has challenged us to find a lean and cost effective counting solution.  Service Control has been our answer. On top of this, we need to continually evolve our offering and be able to quickly introduce new services like toll free data, or high cost payment services. Either way, fast T-T-M is critical to success.”

As Vasen told TechZone360, “CSPs are facing a situation where their legacy BSS are putting them at a competitive disadvantage. Those systems cannot support next generation service models, devices and networks. They lack flexibility, agility, and the speed needed in a world that is rapidly changing, and where customers have lots of easily accessible choices and lots of information on what can suit their preferences.”

Service Control, as the graphic below shows, addresses what Digital Route sees as six of those challenges.

Source:  Digital Route

Next generation service control

The need for new business models and market agility have created a sense of urgency within CSPs to get better control over their ability to react to market conditions and better track and monetize the myriad of alternatives for service delivery requisite to be competitive today and going forward. With these as design criteria, DigitalRoute provides the following capabilities in Service Control:

• Easy configuration for rapid service innovation –tiered pricing models can be quickly monetized and managed in simple buckets, bypassing costly changes to legacy rating and billing.
• Self-sufficiency by empowering new and innovative use-cases to be quickly configured and launched through the same engine, without dependency on the vendor.
• Total subscriber control via a holistic data layer that is system and silo-agnostic, meaning a better end-user experience for the customer. This means pro-active actions can be taken before support costs are incurred.
• Reduced BSS costs and increased margins by offloading legacy billing. As service offerings have become simpler, they can be matched to a lean back office solution. Complexity legacy BSS is only needed for a minority of the transactions that are presently handled in the stack. Service Control eliminates the volumes that are handled inefficiently, thereby increasing margins for bundled services that might otherwise only be borderline profitable.

A European operator now using Service Control comments, “Rapid service creation was not possible in our legacy BSS stack, but enabling new roaming bucket services in time for the vacation season was achieved after the introduction of Service Control by DigitalRoute – and in only a few week’s time!”

Vasen noted that the use cases for leveraging the service mediation layer are already demonstrating the value of the approach in terms of enabling CSPs to partner well and bill OTTs, increasing customer satisfaction by enabling mobile operators to provide transparent roaming bundles, and by offloading costly tasks from legacy BSS.  “Leveraging mediation does not mean throwing out legacy systems, but it does mean creating a leaner and more cost-efficient stack, and providing CSPs with a solution that is self-sufficient which is the DigitialRoute differentiator,” explained Vasen.

We do in fact live in what I have described on numerous occasions as, “The Age of Acceleration” —where the constants are that the world is changing fast and the speed of change is increasing.  CSPs have reached a critical juncture in terms of being able to monetize their services and be fast to react to user demands as well as the competition. The need for speed, in all aspects of the business from network capacity to competitive dexterity, is disruptive. Accepting the status quo is not an alternative when it comes to having the right infrastructure in place to create and sustain differentiated value cost-effectively, and leveraging the value of next generation mediation is something that is going to get serious consideration.