VanillaPlus Magazine Oct-Nov 2011 Issue

O R CE 1 LA O 2 -P N D GU AG O E I - A DE TT TO AC H ED

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011

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ISSN 1745-1736 P R O F I T S

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C O M M U N I C AT I O N

TALKING HEADS

S E R V I C E

P R O V I D E R S

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D R I V I N G

The future lies in BSS, says Subex’s COO LTE NORTH AMERICA 2011 PREVIEW Marketing outweighs technical challenges: 10-page dive into November’s Dallas event BUSINESS ANALYTICS Skate to where the puck is going!

POLICY MANAGEMENT Early adoption pays: Webinar online Now & Review inside MANAGEMENT WORLD AMERICAS 2011 Which services will drive revenue growth? ▼

MOBILE MONEY REPORT Out of Africa -Where’s it at? ▼

PLUS!

Top Operators join our Editorial Advisors • BlackBerry torches its biz!

• What’s On in BSS/OSS Events Worldwide? • Contracts, Products, People & Market News • For the latest News see www.vanillaplus.com

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IN THIS ISSUE

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TALKING HEADS

Sudeesh Yezhuvath, Chief Operating Officer and Wholetime Director of Subex

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WEBINAR REVIEW

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LTE TEST & MEASUREMENT

EDITOR’S COMMENT by the Editor, George Malim.

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COMPANY NEWS NetCracker buys activation assets from Subex; IBM acquires Q1 Labs.

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MARKET NEWS Infrastructure upgrades won’t sort QoE; Convergys & Sigma partner on OSS.

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PRODUCT NEWS CommScope in global energy initiative; IneoQuest’s service assurance addition.

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CONTRACT NEWS Vodafone Czech deploys WeDo rating; Clarity assists Mobinil’s upgrade.

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PEOPLE NEWS Two new operator appointments to VanillaPlus Editorial Advisory Board, plus Jason Bandy starts an epic journey.

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THE CONTRACT HOT LIST VanillaPlus’s round-up of the major B/OSS contracts recently announced worldwide.

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TALKING HEADS The future lies in BSS, says Subex’s COO

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MOBILE MONEY When mobile money transfers were first mooted it was assumed they would be for services in mature markets first. Not so. Mark Dye asks, ‘Where’s it at?’

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EXPERT OPINION Business analytics is about monetising insights.

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WEBINAR REVIEW Corina Bulucea of Computaris urges early adoption of policy management for better customer engagement.

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EXPERT OPINION OpenCloud overcoming barriers to rate plan innovation.

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CLOCKING OFF! 20 Mark Dye has some words of advice for RIM as it torches its BlackBerry business.

Subex Ltd is a global provider of Business Support Systems (BSS) that empowers communications service providers (CSPs) enabling them to use business optimisation to improve their operational efficiency and deliver enhanced service experiences to subscribers. The company pioneered the concept of a Revenue Operations Center (ROC™) – a centralised approach that sustains profitable growth and financial health through coordinated operational control. Subex's product portfolio powers the ROC and its solutions such as revenue assurance, fraud management, credit risk management, cost management, route optimisation, data integrity management and interconnect / inter-party settlement. Subex also offers a scalable Managed Services programme.

Business optimisation includes fraud, revenue assurance, analytics, cost management and credit risk management. Subex's customers include 16 of the top 20 wireless operators worldwide* and 26 of the world’s 50 biggest telecommunications service providers. www.subexworld.com

EVENT DIARY What’s on and where to go in BSS & OSS worldwide.

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10-PAGE LTE EVENT PREVIEW VanillaPlus reports on what you can expect at LTE North America 2011 in Dallas, Texas.

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LTE NEWS Augere selects TD-LTE in India; LightSquared’s service activation needs Evolving; Tekelec introduces integrated LTE systems.

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LTE TEST & MEASUREMENT ‘Are you testing the right LTE attributes?’ asks Nick Booth.

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EXPERT OPINION EXFO tells how to get LTE testing right first time.

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LTE EVENT PREVIEW Jeremy Cowan looks at what is going to make LTE a commercial success, and where you will find it.

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PLUS THE CEO GUIDE TO MANAGEMENT WORLD AMERICAS 2011 Our 12-page preview of this year’s B/OSS event in Orlando, Florida.

Cover Photo: Subex VANILLAPLUS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011

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EDITORIAL ADVISORS

Telecoms software, OSS, BSS –

what’s in a name?

George Malim, Editor: VanillaPlus

Recently, for the first time in a long time, I was asked what OSS/BSS means. I had no problem reeling off the triple letter acronyms in long form and it was pretty straightforward to explain the differences between operational and billing support systems. However, the person I was talking to didn’t get why the two should be separate. To be frank, neither do I.

In 1995, the case for separation made sense, but by 2000 it was starting to become clear that the two were becoming interlinked and that led to the OSS/BSS term becoming commonplace. It has now become a shorthand to describe a CSP’s back office systems but I think that tag is becoming increasingly difficult to justify. Billing, now more accurately called charging, has become an integral part of a CSP’s operations and leads to a logical erosion of the need for separate terms for the functions involved.

Terminology is always an issue in technology. Acronyms emerge to describe complex technical solutions and, as that technology evolves, often the acronym stays behind and becomes less and less relevant to the technology it describes. Sometimes the reverse happens as with ASPs. Application Service Providers was a term that described the first providers of software as a service at the turn of the century. The market didn’t take off then and was overhyped.

The ASP tag was damaged by that. Subsequently it has been buried and replaced with SaaS (software as a service) which means exactly the same thing but has a different tag.

So should we call our market telecoms software, CSP IT, back office software, condense it in the way that some have tried already to BOSS, or just keep going as we are? I don’t have the answer but, in this era of pre-paid, now-paid and post-paid transactions that are used to monetise bandwidth, content, services and even physical items, using the term billing support systems, seems a little inaccurate. Similarly, operational support systems seems too vague to encompass the fully integrated order-to-cash process that CSPs want to have in place.

These are complex architectures that cut across disciplines and technologies.

Old rules don’t apply and neither do old names. CSPs recognise this and are engaged in transformation efforts to migrate to such a process, that’s good news for vendors, whatever you choose to call the industry.

Enjoy the magazine, George Malim EDITOR George Malim Tel: +44 (0) 0208 292 4036 george@vanillaplus.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Mark Dye Tel: +44 (0) 0208 251 8908 md@vanillaplus.com DIGITAL EDITOR Nathalie Bisnar Tel: +44 (0) 1732 808690 nathalie@vanillaplus.com

John Aalbers, chief executive, Volubill

Dan Baker, Research Director, Technology Research Institute

Martin Creaner, president, TM Forum

Andreas Freund, VP Marketing, Orga Systems GmbH

Louis Hall, chief executive, Cerillion Technologies

Gaby Matsliach, general manager, BSS Product Line, Comverse

Pat McCarthy, VP of Global Marketing, Service Delivery Solutions, Telcordia

Simon Muderack, COO, Tribold

John Rainger, vice president, EMEA, CSG International

Olivier Suard, Marketing Director, Comptel

Mac Taylor, CEO, The Moriana Group

Chris Yeadon, director of Product Marketing, Ericsson

Doug Zone, chief technology officer, MetraTech

Dr Reinhard Zuba, CMO, Vipnet (Telekom Austria)

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© Prestige Media Ltd 2011

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Cherisse Draper Tel: +44 (0) 1732 897646 cherisse@vanillaplus.com BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Mark Bridges Tel: +44 (0) 1732 897645 mark@vanillaplus.com

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DESIGN Jason Appleby Ark Design Consultancy Ltd Tel: +44 (0) 1787 881623

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NetCracker buys activation assets from Subex NetCracker Technology has agreed to acquire Subex’s activation and provisioning business in an asset sale, whose financial terms were not Andrew Feinberg, disclosed. The sale include the NetCracker: NetProvision, End-to-end NetOptimizer, and fulfilment stack Vector products and business. The first two represent the former Syndesis business, covering provisioning and activation.

In 2007 Subex bought the Canadian software firm for CAN$164m in an acquisition that nearly bankrupted Subex when Syndesis’s projected revenues came in at less than half the $50m predicted in 2008.

According to NetCracker, the assets are complementary to its telecom operations and management systems suite and will serve to strengthen its order-to-activate capabilities. As Tier 1 converged service providers deploy next-gen networks and services, the ability to rapidly activate and provision services is critical, according to Andrew Feinberg, president and CEO of NetCracker Technology, who explained that service providers now want strategic partners to deliver ‘the complete, end-to-end fulfilment stack’.

He added: "With a number of shared customers, proven technology, a near perfect product fit, and a talented team of industry experts, we expect this acquisition to fit seamlessly within our offerings and expand our ability to meet customer requirements."

(See full interview, pages C5-7)

IBM buys Q1 Labs to build security intelligence IBM of Armonk, New York (NYSE: IBM) has agreed to acquire privately held Q1 Labs, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based provider of security intelligence software.

The move aims to Robert LeBlanc, accelerate IBM’s IBM: Greater efforts to secure its focus on clients’ enterprises analytics more intelligently by applying analytics to correlate information from key security domains and creating security dashboards for their organisations.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Q1 Labs will join the newly-formed IBM Security Systems division, representing the world’s most comprehensive security portfolio. After the close, IBM intends the new division to be led by Brendan Hannigan, CEO of Q1 Labs.

“Realigning IBM’s security expertise in a new division with a greater focus on analytics is a bold step IBM is taking to help clients stay ahead of growing security threats,” said Robert LeBlanc,

senior vice president, IBM Middleware Software. “By consolidating our global expertise, IBM clients will have access to the most comprehensive, insightful view of security across their people, data and infrastructure.”

The new division will target a US$94 billion opportunity in security software and services, which has a nearly 12% compound annual growth rate, according to IBM estimates. Q1 Labs will join more than 10 strategic security acquisitions that IBM has made in the last decade and more than 25 analyticsrelated purchases, including the recently announced acquisition of security analytics software firm, i2.

Organisations face a landscape with high-impact corporate breaches, growing mobile security concerns and advanced security threats. Firms must be equipped to identify threats, detect insider fraud, predict business risk and address regulatory mandates. Three quarters of firms feel cyber attacks are hard to detect and their effectiveness would increase with end-to-end solutions, according to a recent industry report*. * Source: Ponemon Institute report, June 2011

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Comarch and Opencloud join forces for service innovation Comarch and OpenCloud have announced a global partnership aimed at enabling CSPs to increase service innovation with open development techniques. The two believe that combining Comarch's telecom product and service portfolio with the standards-based technology of OpenCloud's Rhino platform will enable service providers to execute service innovation strategies quickly and cost-effectively.

The pair will also collaborate in developing new telecom applications and next-generation intelligent networks. With Comarch's crossdomain experience in BSS, OSS, mobile applications and network integrations, and OpenCloud's technology for real-time execution of applications written in Java, the partnership will help operators build and deliver end-to-end services in SS7 and IP-based (IMS/LTE) networks.

Nokia Siemens Networks opens GNOC in Russia Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has opened a Global Network Operations Centre (GNOC) located in Voronezh, Russia. It is designed to aid telcos across Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States to improve the speed, quality and efficiency of their services. Mobile TeleSystems is the first operator to use the centre.

Built with the capacity to expand up to 3,000 square meters, the centre can host up to 500 technicians and manage up to 100,000 network elements. The new facility joins an existing network of four other multi-technology, multivendor GNOCs – two in India, one in Portugal and one in Brazil.

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QoE issues in mobile broadband will not be solved by infrastructure upgrades alone N E W S U P D AT E

MATRIXX Software raises US$12m in venture funding

Bruno Dizengremel, Innovacom : Capitalise on the growth of mobile broadband traffic

MATRIXX Software, a developer of next generation online charging and subscriber policy management solutions, today announces another round of funding, totalling US$12m, led by Innovacom, with participation from new investor Adams Street Partners.

The funds will be used to continue the expansion of California-based MATRIXX Software’s technology footprint, as well as increase its sales presence in Europe and the US, and expand this to South East Asia and the Pacific.

Bruno Dizengremel, Partner at Innovacom, has been appointed to the MATRIXX Software Board of Directors.

Mr Dizengremel has an extensive background in telecoms, previously serving as a vice president at France Telecom Mobiles International. He also served as Technical Director for Panafon and Head of Business Development for a subsidiary of the Ericsson Group specialising in network management applications.

“This round of funding will further drive our penetration of the global market,” said Dave Labuda, Founder and CEO of MATRIXX Software. “Communications service providers on all continents are urgently seeking to better monetise their networks as the uptake of smartphones and tablets continues to surge.”

“MATRIXX Software’s forethought, innovation and technical excellence have brought an outstanding solution to market that enables operators to capitalise on the growth of mobile broadband traffic,” said Dizengemel.

“With MATRIXX Software, operators have the most advanced real-time platform to drive a better customer experience, and to increase revenues through service differentiation and personalisation.”

Despite heavy investment in networks, upgrades alone aren’t going to solve the quality of experience (QoE) issues that users are suffering with mobile broadband. So there is an opportunity for mobile operators to use QoE to improve customer satisfaction, reduce churn and drive new revenue streams.

That’s according to research from YouGov and Acision which questioned UK consumers on the quality of their mobile broadband and data services experience across mobile handsets, smartphones, tablets, laptops and dongle-powered devices.

Around 77% of those surveyed had encountered some form of quality of experience issue when using services on mobile broadband – an improvement

on last year when a similar survey found that 84% of consumers had issues. Overall satisfaction had risen slightly, but more than half complained about slow speeds with 42% having connection problems.

Only 11% of consumers disagreed or strongly disagreed with operator intervention to optimise video during periods of congestion, with 21% of these even being willing to pay to prevent video stalls and improve the quality of service.

Users want know more about the network that serves them. More than 70% of those questioned stated a desire to be notified in real-time about network congestion, or large download sizes which may impact their data usage.

Convergys partners with Sigma Systems to deliver advanced OSS for converged, bundled services Cincinnati, Ohio-based Convergys Corporation (NYSE: CVG) has struck a strategic, worldwide reseller agreement with Sigma Systems.

Convergys will integrate Sigma Systems’ OSS software into the Morag Lucey, Convergys Smart Convergys Revenue Solutions senior vice president Suite. The joint solutions will offer communications and cable / broadband / satellite providers, in residential and business markets, advanced operations and business support systems (OSS and BSS) software for the design, delivery, and management of next generation communications and entertainment services.

With Sigma’s advanced IP service fulfilment solutions, purpose-built for complex service bundling, it is said that global communications service providers (CSPs) can quickly, efficiently, and continually expand their portfolio of innovative and differentiated revenuegenerating service offerings, delivered

over any access technology and to any device.

Convergys Smart Revenue Solutions Suite paired with Sigma Systems solutions will enable marketing, customer care, and IT organisations to plan for, implement, and accelerate the speed of their transformation efforts, helping to enable service providers’ to evolve into next generation operators.

“This partnership brings together two global companies with proven expertise and deployments in business and service transformation,” said Morag Lucey, Convergys senior vice president of Marketing and Product Management.

“With the advent of new video, entertainment, business, and cloudenabled offerings, service providers have to address both business and service transformation at the same time to successfully expand their offerings and supporting operations systems.

Integrated BSS/OSS solutions from Convergys and Sigma will help service providers effectively define, price, order, provision, and bill for services in a holistic manner,” she added.

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Global energy conservation initiative for wireless industry started by CommScope As wireless networking companies push to become more environmentally friendly, CommScope, Inc of North Carolina, a global provider of infrastructure solutions Anil Trehan, CommScope: for communications Save $5,000 networks, has launched per site an energy conservation initiative that supports the industry’s global efforts in reducing power consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and operating costs.

Anil Trehan, VP Energy Solutions, CommScope, said: “As the demand for better, faster services increases, the industry must also focus on how to reduce its network power and fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse emissions, operating costs and capital expenditures. Taking all these factors into consideration, CommScope’s new initiative helps wireless operators lower their energy costs and provides them with an innovative and reliable way of powering cell sites. It also helps

operators lessen their impact on the environment.”

It is estimated that the operation of telecom networks is responsible for 0.5% of all carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. Operators are seeking ways to rapidly reduce their carbon footprint, and many operators have set goals to reduce their energy consumption by up to 25% within 10 years.

“By partnering with CommScope, wireless operators have the ability to save an average of US$5,000 per site, per year on energy consumption,” Trehan said. “In a 100-site network, that is an annual savings of $500,000. With more than one million cell sites around the world, operators can make significant reductions to their energy costs.”

To achieve many of these “green” goals, wireless operators can invest in clean and reliable backup power generators, remote shelter monitoring, amplifier upgrades, shelter cooling and hybrid cooling systems through CommScope’s new initiative.

IneoQuest launches addition to service assurance solution for multiscreen video IneoQuest Technologies, Inc., recently launched Expedus® ASM, a Quality of Service (QoS) probe that monitors content availability in adaptive streaming video networks. As Kirk George, internet and mobile IneoQuest: video are more widely Real-time monitoring deployed, content and service providers need to provide a high quality experience to retain viewers.

However, delivering video over the internet to large numbers of TVs, PCs and mobile devices poses new challenges, such as managing multiple CDNs that deliver video across a vast geographic area with many end-client types and protocols.

The Mansfield, Massachusetts company’s Expedus ASM is a next-gen

probe that ensures that live and ondemand video assets are available upon user request at all times and locations.

Expedus ASM acts as multiple endclient devices and requests video assets.

It then monitors QoS using metrics such as IneoQuest’s VeriStream, and pinpoints instances of quality impairment on a user-friendly platform to measure performance and troubleshoot them in real-time.

“Adaptive Streaming is being deployed at an accelerating rate as providers attempt to reach new customers with internet and mobile video across the globe,” says Kirk George, IneoQuest’s director of marketing. “Companies need to monitor for content availability to ensure that all video assets are readily available upon request at all times and at all locations. Expedus ASM allows for real-time monitoring to ensure content availability.”

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Content translation platform takes mobile apps global Tethras, an Irish mobile app localisation platform provider, has launched in the US market and opened an office in Mountain View, California.

Tethras provides a simple and affordable platform directly connecting developers to a multi-region community of seasoned language translators. The company, which is headquartered in NovaUCD, the Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre at University College Dublin, was established in 2010 by Brian Farrell and Brendan Clavin.

By developing a suite of cloud-based tools and APIs, Tethras reportedly eliminates the need for project managers and excessive developer preparatory work. This enables developers to spend more time creating new apps, and less time maintaining and updating them for multiple markets.

The online service provides mobile app developers with a way to translate apps into over 40 languages. Tethras alows mobile developers to access global markets and new streams of revenue without ever leaving their desks, giving up their source code, or downloading a single piece of software.

Data published by Apple shows that 8 out of the top 10 grossing apps in China, South Korea and France are localised. So, the need for seamless app translation is critical to maximising revenue and reach.

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Vodafone Czech deploys WeDo rating validation NEWS IN BRIEF

Airtel expands 2G and 3G NSN network, signs managed services deal Bharti Airtel, a service provider with operations in 19 Asian and African countries, has agreed that Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) will expand its 2G networks and deploy 3G networks in seven African countries.

NSN will manage end-to-end network operations, including planning, designing and implementing the networks for Airtel.

NSN will use its FlexiHybrid microwave radio system to address the growing data traffic, and provide a platform for a cost-effective transition to 3G and potentially 4G networks in the future.

The company will also provide Airtel with its NetAct network management system.

Interconnect billing demand growing, says MACH MACH has announced that seven new operators intend to outsource their interconnect billing and settlement functions to MACH’s Wholesale Service Bureau, indicating widening interest in its SaaS-based approach to key partner management functions. The operators, based in Africa and Europe, expect to benefit from improved cost containment and management of their wholesale interconnect margins as a result of this outsourcing.

With the advent of new IP-based services and the intensification of wholesale competition, the traditional environment of voice interconnection is changing. While interconnect billing can typically generate between 30% and 60% of overall revenues for some wireline and wireless operators, it can also account for up to 30% of operating costs. So SaaS-based solutions, says MACH, are looking increasingly attractive.

Vodafone Czech Republic has implemented the Rating Validation Module of WeDo Technologies’ RAID 6.2 business assurance software. The implementation of the software module has enabled the operator to ensure that, initially, pre-paid call charges are calculated in the right way across all relevant systems, minimising the resources required and increasing efficiency in the investigation of discrepancies.

As part of the implementation, WeDo Technologies also trained Vodafone Czech Republic’s team how to run the system independently. This has enabled the CSP’s Revenue Assurance team to adjust rate plans according to changing circumstances such as promotions and top-ups, as well as allowing for new tariff launches, ensuring maximum flexibility.

“WeDo’s rating validation solution has

fully met our expectations; quickly and easily integrating into our existing systems and empowering our teams to ensure that we are servicing our pre-paid customers accurately and efficiently,” said Radek Matyáš, revenue assurance manager at Vodafone Czech Republic.

Ana Miranda, Central and Eastern Europe business development manager at WeDo Technologies, added: “We are delighted that Vodafone Czech Republic has been able to implement the Rating Validation Module of RAID so successfully. Having an independent system that allows CSPs to audit pre-paid tariffs is a vital component of revenue assurance and customer satisfaction. The benefit of our module is that it can be used autonomously according to new and changing rate plans, enhancing revenue assurance coverage as well as enabling a more effective system to track inconsistencies.”

Mobinil upgrades its infrastructure management Mobinil, Egypt’s leading mobile operator, is upgrading and extending its deployment of the Infrastructure Management solution from unified telecoms systems provider, Clarity.

Designed to simplify Tony Garcia, operations, Mobinil Clarity: Direct currently uses Clarity’s impact on the solution to support its bottom line network site roll-out processes across two departments. The upgrade will see the latest version replace many third-party systems and enable end-to-end tracking of infrastructure changes across all Mobinil divisions.

The Clarity system reportedly offers improved planning, purchasing and workforce deployment, providing Mobinil with greater control over resource allocation and analysis. Mobinil will also increase its return on asset investment, says Clarity, by reducing the time between infrastructure investment and first revenue generation.

Moustafa Hegazi, director, network

planning & rollout, Mobinil, commented: “The Clarity solution will streamline network change programmes, helping us meet timescales and budgets. It will ensure that we have consistent communication across our business.

Rather than having to work with many different systems across multiple departments, all divisions will soon be able to hand over tasks seamlessly.

“The system ensures the correct data is captured, so employees always have the information to accurately complete their tasks,” Hegazi added. “The statistics and forecast information also mean that managers have business intelligence data available so they can continue to drive improved performance well into the future.”

“Effectively managing the substantial investment made in network upgrades and changes is a logistical challenge for most service providers,” added Tony Garcia, VP Global New Business & Alliances at Clarity. “Investing in tools that guide and manage the deployment of these assets has a direct impact on the bottom line – the sooner an asset is operational, the sooner revenue is generated.”

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Welcome to our regular Jobs column, Brought to you by Kineticom,Sponsors of VanillaPlus People News I’ve started an epic journey – watching all of the new Blu-ray Star Wars trilogy - The Complete Saga. It’s a geek’s dream; I love all the extra’s, there’s hours of fascinating documentary, and the sound and picture quality is fantastic. The battle between good and evil doesn’t get much better than this. The more I watch, the more I begin to Jason Bandy acknowledge the incredible collaboration involved in creating such astonishingly complex movise. And what a wonderful way for George Lucas and his team to squeeze more Star Wars cash out of me.

The telecoms value chain is becoming vastly more complex with multiple channels, partners, technologies and organisations now co-operating to release and share new revenue streams. Increasingly telecoms organisations wish to hire people who understand the larger commercial ecosystem of regulator, carrier, MVNO, peer, OEM, OSS & BSS vendor, systems integrator, content and service provider.

The ability to understand the business models and internal workings of all of these parties is becoming very necessary and highly sought after. Individuals who have gained skills and experiences across the broader value chain are in high demand.

I see a growing need for individuals who have worked not just within the carrier or vendor perspective, but across a broader slice of the market.

Individuals who have worked effectively within an operator and a vendor and an integrator and a content or service provider are benefiting from this change in the telecoms dynamic and are finding themselves being presented with a broad range of exciting opportunities.

Individuals who have picked up experience across OSS/BSS platforms such as billing, fulfilment, assurance and CRM/ERP are highly sought after. Despite the economic uncertainty we continue to witness an increase in the number of people moving company.

The need for CSPs to cooperate and share revenue, technologies and resource in order to win and retain revenue (and customer loyalty) is unlikely to recede and so for many people, what was once an unpalatable move to the Dark Side has proved to be enlightening. If you are feeling the force and wish to explore ways to accelerate your career, we would very much like to hear from you.

Jason Bandy, Director identify Group Ltd jason.bandy@kineticom.co.uk Mobile: +44 (0) 750 001 3084 Tel: +44 (0) 845 370 2900

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VanillaPlus welcomes two operator appointments to its Editorial Board, BT...

VanillaPlus is delighted to announce that John Cummings, director, Software Engineering, 21CN, Global Networks and Computing Infrastructure, BT Innovate & Design has joined the VanillaPlus Editorial Advisory Board. We are also proud to welcome on to the Board Dr Reinhard Zuba, representing Telekom Austria.

As the software engineering director for BT 21CN, global networks and computing infrastructure, John is responsible for delivering the operational support systems (OSS) for network plan and build; service design and inventory management; network activation and configuration; and the associated platform-based IT strategy for all the businesses within BT Group.

John’s IT platforms are at the heart of BT’s plan and build, lead-to-cash and trouble-to-resolve processes for all of the firms key products and services such as superfast broadband. He works with many IT application vendors and system integrators in order to meet the requirements of BT Group as a whole, leading a global team with people based in the UK, India and China.

John has 25 years’ experience in IT systems implementation and was previously the IT director responsible for BT’s application integration infrastructure, including creation of BT’s business-to-business gateway capability which enabled CSPs to trade electronically with the firm.

...and Telekom Austria

Dr Reinhard Zuba

The other appointee is Dr Reinhard Zuba, the chief marketing officer of Croatia’s Vipnet d.o.o, a subsidiary of Telekom Austria who he will be representing on our Advisory Board.

Dr Zuba was born and educated in Vienna, and holds a doctorate in Business Administration from Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. He is a regular speaker and writer (in English and German) on service quality, customer satisfaction, and marketing in telecoms.

Prior to his current position he worked at mobilkom Austria and Henkel Austria. Reinhard Zuba is married with four children.

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VanillaPlus Hot List: October/November 2011 The Hot List below shows the companies informing us of recent contract wins or product deployments.

If your contract is not listed here email the details to us now marked "Hot List" <editorial@vanillaplus.com> Vendor(s) Actix Alcatel-Lucent comScore, Europe Convergys Cryptography Research Cryptography Research CSG Systems International Entone, Inc Evolving Systems Evolving Systems Evolving Systems Horizon Globex Huawei Huawei Interactive Intelligence Junifer Systems NetSapiens Newtec Nokia Siemens Networks Redknee Sierra Wireless Sigma Systems / GENBAND Subex / Gantek Syniverse WeDo Technologies

Client, Country

Product / Service (Duration & Value)

Awarded

Tier 1 mobile operator, Middle East Olympus KeyMed, International Association of Online Publishers, UK Telekom Deutschland, Germany Trident Microsystems, Inc., USA

Network optimisation system to improve customer experience & operational efficiency Corporate-wide advanced data centre switching and contact centre applications To study how trusted websites can deliver higher returns on advertising investment Ends Phase 2, migration to Smart Revenue Solution with rating & billing manager Integrates CryptoFirewall security technology into Trident’s TSC100 STB SoCs

MStar Semiconductor, Inc., Taiwan

Licenses CryptoFirewall security for its multimedia SoC set-top box chips

9.2011

Tunisiana, Tunisia

Implementation of CSG Interconnect settlement system

8.2011

Telekom Srbija, Serbia Unnamed wireless operator, Africa Tier 1 wireless carrier, Russia LightSquared, USA SingTel, Singapore Wireless City Planning,Inc., Japan Turkcell, Turkey Policy Expert, UK

Chooses Amulet™ HD IPTV Receiver with digital video recorder (DVR) capabilities Upgrade order for DSA, supporting mobile broadband and number selection Implementing the Dynamic SIM Allocation™ (DSA) system Tertio™ Service Activation to be provisioning layer for mission-critical B/OSS Bandwidth-efficient VoIP platform with optimised data apps for low-cost comms To deploy large scale LTE TDD-compatible AXGP commercial network Selects PN544 NFC radio chip for recently launched T20 smartphone Provides Communications-as-a-Service (CaaS) hosted contact system

8.2011 9.2011 10.2011 10.2011 9.2011 9.2011 9.2011 9.2011

PowerCo, New Zealand One Source Networks, USA SES, Luxembourg & Belgium Bharti Airtel, Africa

To provide its Utility Billing system VoIP service delivery platform for enterprise solutions Supplying next generation Ka-band terminals and hubs for satellite communications To expand its 2G networks and deploy 3G networks in seven African countries

10.2011 9.2011 8.2011 9.2011

Telefónica Spain GÖRLITZ AG, Germany Bell Aliant, Canada

Analysis via Price Simulator integrating billing, customer care, pricing & market data Provides wireless connectivity for Ethernet / GPRS router connection to energy meters To provide residential service fulfilment support for the operator's FTTH network

9.2011 10.2011 8.2011

Avea, Turkey Aircel, India Vodafone, Czech Republic

Revenue Operations Centre (ROC) Partner Settlement solution GAIN Roaming Business Management services & expertise Implements Rating Validation Module of RAID 6.2 business assurance software

10.2011 9.2011 10.2011

Key: AXGP = Advanced eXtended Global Platform B/OSS = Business or Operational Support Systems CaaS = Communications as a Service FTTH = Fibre-to-the-Home GPRS = General Packet Radio Service

9.2011 9.2011 10.2011 8.2011 9.2011

NFC = Near Field Communications OSS = Operations Support System ROC = Revenue Operations Centre SoCs = System on Chips STB = Set Top Box

Tango Telecom looks beyond policy NEWS IN BRIEF

BEYOND PUNISHING USERS: TIME FOR A LOW COST, INCENTIVES – DRIVEN PRICING AND POLICY ADJUNCT IN MOBILE NETWORKS

Go to www.vanillaplus.com to read Tango Telecom’s Special Report on Policy.

Available as a free download.

Produced in association with: Dan Baker of TRI (Technology Research Institute) & VanillaPlus.

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Sudeesh Yezhuvath, Chief Operating Officer and Wholetime Director of Subex

The future lies in Business Support Systems, says Subex COO

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Sudeesh Yezhuvath is Chief Operating Officer and Wholetime Director of Subex, the provider of products and managed services that encompass the operator revenue chain. Subex has been market leaders in Business Optimisation for four consecutive years according to analyst firm Analysys Mason. Here, Yezhuvath, who has been with Subex since 1993, tells George Malim of the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strategy following disposal of its activation product to NetCracker. As the telecoms industry transforms, network operations remain broadly the same so he sees the dynamic opportunity in helping operators to transform and manage their business processes.

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“What’s VanillaPlus: Subex has been emphasising changing is not the network or technical capabilities; it is the business models.”

the benefits of its Revenue Operations Centre (ROCTM) for several years now.

Bringing the disciplines of revenue assurance, fraud management, partner settlement and data management together, clearly resonates in the market because it streamlines and simplifies the revenue business chain. How do you see the ROC concept developing as CSP value chains become more convoluted and complex?

Sudeesh Yezhuvath: This is exactly why we believe the ROC will play an important role in the future of telecoms. CSPs today think twice before launching complicated and tailored services due to their inability to delve, analyse and manage operations at a granular level. Everyone believes that bundled services are the future but how does one do it if you do not know the cost per plan item?

Driving cost efficiencies is important in these times since revenue growth is not certain. CSPs need to be on top of the customer experience, in order to grow and compete, by being able to offer attractive propositions which will help them attract customers. This is new to operators since there has always been growth in the business.

That isn’t necessarily going to be the case any longer and for that reason we believe the ROC’s time has come.

VP: Can you tell me more about the ROC? Is it just a means to consolidate systems?

SY: Classical cost reduction focuses on reducing the number of IT operational systems. This will continue but is not necessarily the name of the game. Those IT operations cost reductions on their own will not give operators the benefits they seek. When Subex brings these solutions together in the ROC, operators suddenly have access to a lot of information on their network.

Information on who’s using what and when, how the network is performing and what is being monetised effectively, etc. Information in an actionable environment is delivered in the ROC. For example, the product performance management solution allows the operator to understand from day one what margin a product will deliver after its launch or how it performs against the business plan. Overall, the ROC allows the operator to gain valuable insights and intelligence from the correlation of data, allowing them to grow their revenue and reduce their costs.

VP: You have recently sold your activation business to NEC-owned NetCracker. What are the reasons behind this move?

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support systems and that is our strength. If you look at operators, what’s changing is not the network or the technical capabilities; it is the business models. And we believe that is where greater efficiencies are required and that will be our key growth driver.

VP: Why have you retained your data integrity management solution given your strategic focus on your core products?

SY: We don’t look at the Data Integrity Management as an OSS process, not even when we acquired the activation piece from Syndesis.

It might manifest as a delay in activation but we see it more as part of an activity of reconciling your assets.

ROC Data Integrity Management supports CSP processes like Asset Management, Leased line cost recovery, Capacity management, etc. ROC DIM also has positive synergies with many of Subex’s existing BSS solutions (like ROC Revenue Assurance, ROCware) and we see growth opportunities involving this combined solution approach. Subex remains fully committed to DIM as it has a key role to play in the Business Optimisation space.

VP: Do you think there's still appetite in the market for a vendor that can do it all when it comes to the back office or are areas of expertise, such as the ROC in your case, becoming the norm?

SY: We do it all from the perspective of ensuring that an operator’s revenue chain is working and growing. A lot of the problems in the telecoms space are primarily because back offices are siloed. There are different types of customer data underneath these siloed systems and effective usage of that data is needed in today’s complex business scenario.

To be fair, nobody anticipated this problem to crop up. When an operator is growing quickly, they are not focused on efficiency, but on managing growth. However, today operators understand the inherent issues caused by these silos and they are now looking at ways to reduce the number of systems and break down the silos.

For instance, Subex is not just a fraud management or revenue assurance system vendor, we offer operators the ability to go beyond this and ensure they can stretch their dollar if they invest in the capabilities that the ROC can provide.

VP: CSPs increasingly are turning to managed services to drive efficiencies in their operations, ease the integration burden and offset the capex requirements of system upgrades. What's Subex' view of

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SY: We believe that the future is in business

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this shift? What is your managed services proposition?

SY: Fundamentally Managed Services are in demand because operators want to reduce risk by assuring the business outcome they want.

Risk represents cost and risk reduction will help them with their cost management plans. We definitely see that happening. We are not talking about running the IT operations as a managed service, although that could be one aspect. We are talking about taking over and managing the operations of a particular function. Operators recognize that this does not have to be their business. They can outsource these operations and focus on branding and other core activities.

VP: What qualities does a solution vendor need to deliver managed services effectively? It's a term we've all heard bandied about but it seems to mean different things to different people. What do you see as the critical skills and resources needed to deliver managed services effectively in your sector?

SY: Our underlying value proposition is that we deliver managed services more effectively than the operator is able to, and can provide better assurance on the outcome. We have to convince them that this is because our domain expertise is greater than theirs. In our sector, coming from a product vendor perspective, delivering an outcome is different from delivering a product.

Few product companies can make this shift, so it is important to have people in our organisation understand what outcome the operator wants and to deliver that outcome. We at Subex have strict SLAs that govern these relationships.

VP: The market is going through a seismic shift as the services CSPs offer proliferate, new network technology cycles begin and

consolidation continues in both the vendor and CSP communities. How do you see the market conditions at the moment and what implications do they have for Subex? What attributes are necessary for success in these market conditions?

SY: We are seeing this shift. The telecoms market is undergoing another phase in its evolution. Telecom as a business is probably only 30 years old. The business has really existed only since deregulation started and it is now going through its pangs of maturing. Operators went through a phase of fast growth and now their businesses resemble that of any mature business. When this happens to an industry, it goes through significant shifts and business consolidation is part of that shift. When growth is slow, companies look at acquisitions to achieve growth, and then there is also the consolidation of players and departments within operators.

Companies also shift focus from their networks to their business. We see all these changes happening and they are good for a vendor like us because they require what Subex is good at â&#x20AC;&#x201C; delivering efficiencies.

There is a fundamental change in how the telecoms industry is going to be managed as a business. There will be two kinds of operators in the future - infrastructure providers who will focus purely on creating and driving efficiencies and players who will thrive and survive because of the differentiated value propositions they are able to provide to customers. They will be nimble, fast and extremely agile.

Both types of operators would need to be in good control of their back office and data. That is why Subex is completely focused on Business Support Systems (BSS) and we look at ROC and Managed Services as key elements of our strategy.

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Mobile money. Where’s it at?

When mobile money transfers were first proposed there was a common assumption that such sophisticated services would first come to market to benefit high value customers in highly developed economies. The truth, however, was quite the opposite. Mark Dye reports.

The author Mark Dye, is associate editor of VanillaPlus.

When successful mobile money transfer services developed fastest among ‘banked’ and ‘unbanked’ subscribers in countries like Kenya, Sudan and Bangladesh the initial results were surprising to many. In reality, perhaps this response should have been rather more expected in those countries that were sparsely populated by banks and where, for many, the mobile phone represented the only form of connectivity.

As Anandan Jayaraman, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Connectiva Systems, says, “Mobile banking has become the key to opening the bank doors to a significant chunk of the unbanked population, especially in emerging economies.”

Indeed, Africa has led the way by far in terms of creating successful m-banking models. Consider Kenya, where Safaricom, the leading mobile service provider, has access to 85% of the population, only 19% is banked, while another 38% have no access to financial institutions of any kind.

“With less than 500 bank branches in the entire country the reach of the banks are limited,” explains Jayaraman.

Here, where accessibility is a major concern, it’s conceivable that someone might have to travel for days through challenging terrain before locating their nearest bank branch.

First and Third Worlds in one Another interesting example comes in the form of South Africa, a unique country, which Jayaraman remarks contains, ’First and Third Worlds, Switzerland and Kenya, in one’.

While 33% of South African adults are financially excluded, 49% are currently ‘unbanked’.

However, 31% of those who are ‘unbanked’ have a pre-paid phone, with a further 17% having access to a phone through friends and family.

Indeed, South African mobile penetration is estimated at 96% with MTN having the largest piece of the pie.

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“Most developing nations have a huge pre-paid customer base which means that service providers are already well positioned to manage online debit and credit transactions, balances and so on,” adds Jayaraman. “The mobile money transfer is a natural extension of the prepaid infrastructure which is significantly evolved in developing economies, as compared to developed nations where the subscriber base is predominantly post-paid.”

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“In some cases access to key platforms is being made from public areas of an operator’s building.”

Simon Collins, Praesidium

Hot bed, not test bed As the analyst, Hugh Roberts, confirms, “CSPs in the developing world have not been the test bed for mobile money transfers, they have been the hot bed. When it comes to the development and marketing of innovative new services, high-growth low-ARPU markets have in the recent past consistently demonstrated more flexibility and lightness of touch in their business modelling than their 'richer' cousins.”

With CSPs in Africa like MTN and Safaricom having launched hugely successful mobile banking products – MTN MobileMoney and mPesa respectively – timing has proved to be of utmost importance to their success. While MTN MobileMoney was launched in 2005, it did not gain traction until 2008. Safaricom’s m-Pesa which was launched in 2007 quickly gained momentum and has, over time, acquired the largest customer base by far. Since then ZAIN and Etisalat have launched various m-banking products but none has been able to generate the kind of traction seen by m-Pesa.

Right now, Paul Makin, Head of Mobile Money at Hyperion, believes we’re moving into the next stage of the mobile money evolution. In Kenya, where m-Pesa is dominant, the financial regulator has made it clear that it expects interoperability with competitors to begin soon.

“This is not unexpected. m-Pesa has had five years to establish itself, and it's obvious that the regulator's view is moving from it being an experimental system, to business as usual,” says Makin.

Other successful schemes are springing up in emerging markets all over the world, each with features specific to the local market. For example, m-Pesa’s initial move into Tanzania was less than successful, until it was restructured to meet local needs, and now it's another success.

“South Africa,” says Makin, “is another story.

They've had multiple money transfer services for a few years now and none have been a resounding success due to local market conditions.”

Becoming simple bank accounts The more advanced providers are moving away from pure money transfer services, adding

features such as access to savings accounts, small loans and insurance, bill payments, salary payments and even face to face payments in shops. Essentially, says Makin, such accounts are becoming simple bank accounts, but without a bank being involved.

CSPs though don’t think like banks though, and security and risk management are significantly weaker than in the banking environment. Often, as Simon Collins, vice president at Præsidium, explains, internal controls and storage of the funds either in pre-paid service platforms or mobile money platforms is very weak.

Hugh Roberts: High-growth low-ARPU markets more flexible

“In tests that we have carried out, many operators fail to have adequate separation and control of the differing security and service domains,” says Collins. “In some cases access to key platforms is being made from public areas of an operator’s building. This is not what you would see in a banking environment, where secure vaults, both physical and for the servers, exist. CSPs need to have a far better strategy for the control and internal management of these types of services.”

Having said that, there are good solutions in place where control and management have been successfully deployed, but these tend to reside outside the large group players who have complex and legacy issues in their business to overcome. Nowadays, there are also very few group operators that have staff who fully understand the end-to-end process and system.

Paul Makin, Hyperion: Regulator says m-Pesa is no longer experimental

“A strategy that understands the risks is key to understanding the controls for the business,” says Collins.

In the end, the issue with mobile money, is that all financial transactions are based on trust and if that is lost or broken it’s very hard to recover from this. With mobile, many CSPs have significant issues proving the identity for the terminal device, (SIM or fixed CPE terminal), the location in the world, if a data session is using an IP address, and the identity of the person carrying out the transaction.

“The key item that CSPs need to consider is how to control the technology interface and the significant issues associated with the human on the other end who can’t remember usernames or passwords and therefore uses repeated terms that are simple to compromise. This is how the fraudster gets his cut, and operators need to have control systems that can monitor and control fraud and revenue loss in place,” adds Collins.

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B U S I N E S S A N A LY T I C S

EXPERT OPINION:

Analytics is about monetising insights Anandan Jayaraman (AJ) is chief product and marketing officer of Connectiva Systems, a key provider of analytics systems for CSPs. AJ has worldwide responsibility for Connectiva’s corporate and product strategy, product management, marketing and sales consulting. He has extensive management experience in leading change, managing global business development and driving revenue growth at enterprise software companies including SAP, Epiphany and Siebel Systems. Here, he explains the importance of analytics in providing actionable insights that enable CSPs to monetise their subscriber data.

VanillaPlus: How is the role of analytics changing as the telecoms value chain itself changes?

Anandan Jayaraman of Connectiva Systems: Accurate data is... a prerequisite for making smart business decisions

Anandan Jayaraman: As we all know, with the increasing commoditisation of connectivity, CSPs have three strategic imperatives: a) Increasing operational efficiency by squeezing costs and reducing waste, b) maximising customer life-time value by delivering a differentiated experience and c) driving new business models such as telco 2.0.

Customer data and analytics related to it are becoming critical for CSPs to succeed in all these initiatives. In the past, analytics was just about reporting and dash boarding – now it’s about embedding intelligence into your business processes and driving tangible outcomes. It’s about understanding the intent of each of your customers and delivering an experience that consistently exceeds expectations.

VP: To what extent have analytics capabilities been highlighted by the complexity of the value chain?

AJ: The changing ecosystem is driving telcos to innovate on new analytics applications that can leverage the goldmine of customer data they have and help them carve out a role for themselves in the advertising and commerce value chains.

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VP: CSPs aren’t known for adapting rapidly to change. How can they change their processes and execute on what analytics systems are telling them about their business?

AJ: The challenge is more political than technical, although there are clearly some technical challenges as well. Customer data is incredibly fragmented across the different operations of a CSP and also across the different channels such as web, call centre and retail. These data are owned by certain groups and they don’t share it. That’s not because they don’t want to but because there’s no enterprisewide plan to enable it.

There also needs to be a flattening of boundaries across the operations and channels.

In some cases, customers of the same CSP still have different identities for different product lines. Ensuring you have clean, accurate data, that is correlated and available as close to realtime as possible is a critical pre-requisite for making smart business decisions based on analytics.

VP: Assuming data can be cleansed, or at least made usable, what’s the next step for analytics?

AJ: Analytics has generally been implemented as a tool that helps you perform analysis in a batch mode but, increasingly, people are finding it’s not effective if you can’t involve it in a realtime transactional process. If a system is helping you analyse things 48 hours after

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The volume of customer data that CSPs process is quadrupling on a yearly basis. In addition, the smart phone proliferation has resulted in huge amounts of unstructured data that needs to be dealt with in an intelligent way, wherein only

the “interesting” insights need to be stored without all the noise.

they’ve happened, it’s too late to be useful.

Next generation analytics is about skating to where the puck is going to be – knowing what customers want before they tell you, and making real-time intelligent decisions that can give you a genuine advantage over your competition.

VP: Integration is easy to say and hard to achieve. How does Connectiva help?

AJ: The genesis of Connectiva was on the revenue management side. We solved problems related to revenue leakage and fraud by performing data analytics across BSS / OSS. In order to do that, your solution needs to be integrated to multiple sources of data within the telecoms landscape, and over time we had so much data that customers were asking us to solve other problems beyond RA and Fraud.

Our customers helped us realise that revenue management systems, because of their unique vantage point, can play a far greater part and that we were well poised to play that role.

More than a year back, we launched our solution suite for Subscriber Data Monetisation – an integrated portfolio of analytics applications – to collect and correlate customer data, extract insights and monetise it effectively.

We help CSPs gain unique insights over the whole lifecycle of a customer and identify opportunities for delivering a better experience and upsell / cross-sell.

This isn’t your traditional data collection and reporting approach – it’s about smart correlation across the entire BSS / OSS landscape, generating intelligence and responding to it in real-time to effect business results.

VP: Can you give an example of how this works for a CSP? AJ: The idea is to help CSPs monitor, manage and monetise customer data in near real-time or even real-time. For example, if a customer is downloading a premium mobile video and experiencing severe buffering, we can identify and escalate the issue immediately. We can also detect opportunities by shadowing customer activity and inferring intent – for instance, a feature phone subscriber browsing smartphone upgrade options may receive a smartphone offer next time he or she walks into a retail POS or calls the contact centre.

We track outliers or anomalies in QoS and the over-all customer experience across all touchpoints and channels and generate alerts / insights on a continual basis. We also provide the 360-degree view of the customer as a service to transactional, customer-facing processes so that these insights can be consumed and monetised.

“Next generation

VP: Isn’t this a substantial shift in policy and mindset for a traditional operator to make? Are CSPs equipped to do this?

- Anandan Jayaraman, Connectiva Systems

AJ: A recent McKinsey study has predicted a huge gap between demand and supply in terms of availability of analytics practitioners. It’s not about just technology – it’s about the ability to understand the larger business context and learning how to leverage data to deliver business outcomes. The study expects a gap of 150,000 people in the US alone by 2013.

analytics is about skating to where the puck is going to be.”

We don’t see how operators around the world will be able to do this alone. There are just not enough people for them to hire so we believe they will start engaging “analytics providers” who do this for a living – be it SIs or ISVs - for managed services. I don’t see CSPs letting the strategic decisions out of their control, but the operational aspects can surely be outsourced.

VP: What’s Connectiva’s approach to managed services?

AJ: Managed services are the fastest growing segment of our business. Today, customers are not buying software alone, and deals are increasingly pegged to business outcomes. For example, we might get paid as a percentage of revenue leakage uncovered or an increase in data ARPU per user as part of a marketing campaign. We operate as a full end-to-end analytics provider who can deliver business outcomes for a fee.

VP: How would you explain the capabilities of analytics to a CSP? AJ: At its core, analytics is about generating actionable insights from data and enabling your core business processes to monetize them.

Analytics, if done right, can sense your customers’ intent and experiences and help you respond appropriately – and if you do that well, there is significant upside in terms of higher retention and increased ARPU – not to mention reduced fraud and leakage and better operational efficiency.

VanillaPlus Jargon Buster ARPU = Average Revenue Per User B/OSS = Business / Operations Support Systems CSP = Communication Service Provider ISV = Independent Software Vendors POS = Point of Sale QoS = Quality of Service SI = System Integrator

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Early adoption of policy management: A strategy to improve customer engagement and enable service innovation and monetisation In a webinar last week Corina Bulucea, Marketing & Alliances Director at Computaris, and Steven Hartley, principal analyst at Ovum, discussed how mobile operators can use a well-tailored policy management strategy to enhance customer engagement with an innovative services offering and monetise it with real-time BSS integration.

Corina Bulucea, Computaris: Adopt policy management sooner not later to gain pole position advantage

The discussion aimed to build a wider perspective on the challenges that operators face today regarding data traffic and how to balance these disparate requirements to increase their competitiveness. Furthermore, it analysed the consequences of the increased accessibility of data across access networks and devices and how this is reflected in service innovation. They also discussed how operators can monetise it before it becomes commoditised.

This analysis led to identifying drivers for early adoption of a policy management strategy and the criteria for choosing the best implementation approach for each business – as waiting is not an option.

Three key drivers As Corina highlighted, mobile network consumption is driven by three main factors – device evolution, content innovation and network enablement. Customers expect a seamless experience regardless of the type, size or number of their screens or the complexity involved in delivering the content. We are also witnessing online services worldwide cutting deals with content providers, as content is the main driver for consumption.

Operators ought to seize the moment and find innovative ways to take advantage of this data traffic growth. The key drivers for operators in the future are ENGAGEMENT of their customers and MONETISATION of the quality and innovation of services provided.

To improve broadband traffic monetisation, operators need to evolve towards subscribercentric bandwidth management and provide realtime interactivity to optimise the customers' mobile experience.

Tailored policy management strategy An efficiently tailored policy management strategy enables operators with relevant capacity to: • take dynamic decisions and grant differentiated access to services for different customer segments in accordance with their consumption patterns; • better allocate network resources and better

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manage congestion burdens, being able to offer an increased QoS for those customers that generate most of the data revenue; • empower subscribers to manage their own mobile data usage; • launch personalised promotions and take decisions based on the subscriber’s device, usage patterns, location, the source and type of traffic and other segmentation criteria.

In order to create a valuable proposition to the market, operators should look beyond cost control and regulatory requirements – which was the industry approach so far – because, although this might encourage consumption, it does not necessarily generate new revenue streams.

Moreover, the future growth of the mobile communications industry is essentially linked to developments in other industries. Operators need to drive these new opportunities, like M2M, M-Health, M-education, M-payments, through proactive engagement: operators can possibly perform roles beyond connectivity – such as management of the technology platform or parts of the customer experience, or acting as a route to market. Content players are very keen, and actively seeking, to exploit this new distribution path.

Pole position The discussion concluded that operators should implement a policy management solution sooner, rather than later, to take pole position advantage in the data-driven communication environment. The data revolution is here to stay and sooner, rather than later, operators will need to adopt an effective policy management strategy to maintain profitability.

Policy management goes beyond managing the supply capacity: it should be subscriber-centric.

The development of a new business ecosystem requires an entirely new approach: early adoption of policy management will bring competitive advantage and support generation of new revenue streams through real-time integration with the BSS, particularly with the charging function.

To view the Computaris webinar go to: http://bit.ly/nuPHve

CHARGING ARCHITECTURE

EXPERT OPINION:

Overcoming the barriers to rate-plan innovation Operators are being challenged by constrictive economic conditions and the entrance of new, market-savvy competitors. Over The Top (OTT) players have changed the game and forced operators to look to innovation in order to fight back. OpenCloud’s Mark Windle discusses how an operator’s charging architecture effects the time-to-market and cost of service innovation, and uncovers a common service-layer barrier that needs addressing.

Core communication services, like voice and messaging, have been commoditised. So operators are looking to service charging and rate-plan innovation as one way to differentiate their offerings. Operators have moved from ‘all you can eat’ data plans to tiered services and segmented offers. For example, offering unlimited Facebook browsing for a small, fixed monthly charge enables the operator to monetise data and offer subscribers real value. Dynamic pricing-promotions and hybrid pre/post-paid billing are also of interest.

Charging system support However, the implementation of low-cost, rapidly launched and differentiated services is being impeded by inflexible charging systems.

Traditional pre-paid Intelligent Network (IN) solutions usually pose the greatest barrier, as their service logic and service charging functionality are so interwoven that any service, or charging, alterations necessitate major development.

Conventional post-paid billing solutions, however, are better for innovation. The inherent offline nature of the charging-related processing makes the system simpler and thus easier to alter. Furthermore, the charging architectureis split between real-time Call Data Record (CDR) creation in the service layer, and separate offline back-end CDR processing and billing. This split in the charging architecture enables some innovations to be implemented in the backend, without complex service redesign.

Naturally, separate pre-paid and post-paid systems provide extra barriers to innovation; including the punitive cost of duplicating the innovation for both. Supporting hybrid charging is also not straightforward with separate systems. It’s unsurprising then that service charging and rate-plan innovation is often linked with converged real-time charging.

Modern real-time charging systems belong to one of two categories: those with a split architecture – a separation between service layer

charging and backend charging and rating – and those without. Without a split architecture, as with the classic pre-paid IN, significant system redevelopment is typically needed when implementing charging innovation.

Split-architecture systems, with charging functions in the service layer and separate Online Charging Systems (OCS), support simple innovation easily. Here, tariffs can be added, and tariff bands, discounts and bundles defined within the OCS with little difficulty, cost or time; and without impacting the service layer as the service layer and OCS charging functions are separate.

However, real service differentiation can be difficult, as the service layer must produce charging triggers to interact with the OCS in realtime in response to real-time events during service use. These triggers, and the information they contain, are also bound into the service in the service layer. For example, a promotion offering free calls from home requires the service layer to determine and provide location information to the OCS in real-time. So, as well as impacting the back-end charging/rating functions, service charging and rate-plan innovation also impacts the service layer itself.

Any innovation that needs a new trigger, or new information within existing triggers, needs service layer development.

Mark Windle, Head of Marketing, OpenCloud: Gulf between new business model conception, pricing and successful implementation

Operators must bridge the gulf between new business model conception, pricing and successful execution by implementing rate-plan innovation in the service layer quickly and cheaply in order to become more competitive.

An Asia-Pac operator, with over 100 million subscribers, is already using a service layer enabler to ensure innovative service charging models can be launched rapidly and costeffectively. So, the solution for innovation already exists; and operators can innovate quickly, freely and cost effectively to benefit their subscribers, their competitiveness and their margins.

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C L O C K I N G

O F F !

“Some free advice. Explain while you fix. Apologise when you have.

Recompense after. Handling so far woeful."

- Alastair Campbell

Customer experience goes full circle as BlackBerry torches its business These days we seem to have come full circle in the world of tech, writes Mark Dye. All I seem to be talking about now is customer experience and how firms could be having a better stab at this. After all, all the innovation and technology in the world doesn’t change the fact that the customer has been and always will be king. Once you get past that small but rather important fact things tend to become a little clearer.

The author Mark Dye, is associate editor of VanillaPlus.

Of course, you’ll regularly read in here about CSPs wanting to move beyond being just about the calls and how they’ve been attempting to add more and more value through data. That’s why you have to feel particularly sorry for Research In Motion (RIM) this month (well, it’s not nice to gloat when a firm is hammering nails into its own coffin and having a fair stab at reducing its market value and share).

The makers of the device formerly known as the CrackBerry for its nearaddictive following seemingly committed harakiri by subjecting users to more than three days of messaging and browsing downtime for services like BlackBerry Messenger. Had it happened in August, they’d actually have been doing everyone a massive favour, saving a few TVs and broken windows in the process.

Instead, the cruel hand of fate means they’ve been giving carrier partners fresh headaches and have done the old ‘hero to zero’ trick in a matter of days.

When server problems in the UK roller-coastered out of control, mobile operators like T-Mobile and Orange could do little more than post messages on websites referring customers tearing their hair out back to RIM.

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‘Don’t get in touch’ The funniest came from T-Mobile who told users that ‘BlackBerry are looking into this urgently and hope to resolve it soon, so there’s no need to get in touch.’ Chance would be a fine thing. Have you tried one of those IVR systems of late? It’s hard enough trying to get past the computer, let alone finding a real person to talk to. *sighs* Three days later, with little having come out of RIM, the Twittersphere went into overdrive and it looked like we might be heading for more riots as users began to air their frustrations. None other than Alastair ‘I never apologise for anything’ Campbell, former director of communications and strategy for Tony Blair, tweeted: "Day 3 of BlackBerry black-out. Some free advice. Explain while you fix. Apologise when you have. Recompense after. Handling so far woeful."

With BlackBerry continuing to pray in silence, its reputation took a further hammering as problems spread across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. Finally, on day four of its crumble, BlackBerry's UK managing director, Stephen Bates, broke cover to tell users that the company was doing all it could to restore the status quo.

Unfortunately for Bates and RIM, time waits for no man. One can only imagine what the late, great Steve Jobs would have made of it all had he still been around to see this. Apple have long been the kings of customer service and innovation and the Cupertino boys must be enjoying the continued fall from grace of BlackBerry. Jobs was a master of delivery who knew that timing was everything – traits RIM seem to have forgotten.

Carriers everywhere take note.

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Upcoming Events 4G World 24-27 October, 2011 McCormick Place, Chicago, Illinois, USA www.4gworld.com Smart Devices and Mobile User 1-2 November, 2011 Double Tree by Hilton, London www.deviceanduserexperience.com LTE North America 8-9 November, 2011 Fairmount Dallas Hotel,Texas, USA www.lteconference.com/northamerica TM Forum’s Management World Americas 2011 8-10 November, 2011 The Peabody Hotel, Orlando, Florida, USA www.tmforum.org/mwa11VP Consumerisation & Mobility Summit 10 November, 2011 London, UK http://ovumevents.com LTE 8-11 November, 2011 Copthorne Tara Hotel, London, UK www.ltedeploymentstrategies.com

Broadband Traffic Management 15-17 November, 2011 Royal Garden Hotel, London, UK www.broadbandtraffic event.com Mobile Roaming World Summit 16-17 November, 2011 Hyatt Regency, Churchill, London, UK www.roamingconference.com Hybrid IaaS 24 November, 2011 The Grand Connaught Rooms, London, UK http://ovumevents.com Customer Segmentation and Churn Management 28 November – 1 December, 2011 Copthorne Tara Hotel, London, UK www.segmentationandchurn.com/Event.aspx?id=56 3662&utm_source=Media

Tango Telecom looks beyond policy BEYOND PUNISHING USERS: TIME FOR A LOW COST, INCENTIVES – DRIVEN PRICING AND POLICY ADJUNCT IN MOBILE NETWORKS

Go to www.vanillaplus.com to read Tango Telecom’s Special Report on Policy.

Available as a free download.

Produced in association with: Dan Baker of TRI (Technology Research Institute) & VanillaPlus.

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Learning to pay for LTE; the marketing challenges outweigh the technical ones

George Malim, Editor: VanillaPlus

As the industry moves to LTE, there’s a real danger that yet another round of heavy investment by CSPs will happen without delivering the opportunity to generate a return.

Although, CSPs are being characterised as utility businesses by the financial sector in particular, they don’t even have the luxury of operating in a true utility market. Traditional utilities make money through providing a metered service. Your water company, for example, welcomes your increased consumption because it can charge you more and generate greater profit from the infrastructure it owns. That’s not the case for CSPs. Flat rate packages and bundles have meant that more consumption doesn’t equal greater revenue.

Guaranteed Class of Service?

That’s an obvious problem and CSPs are trying to attract customers to pay in different ways. That might involve paying a premium for reliable video download or an assured class of service. However, while the technology is there to enable a wide range of complex service propositions, classes of services and bundles which can be charged for pre-paid, postpaid and now-paid, users aren’t used to paying and there’s a massive marketing problem to be overcome because of that.

In a recent interview with Bob Lento, president of global information management at Convergys, I presented him with the parallel of the budget airline sector. While I understand and can rationalise that having the ability to cross Europe for €50 represents amazing value when contrasted with the traditional airlines, I still resent paying an extra €20 to take hold luggage with me. I’m also uninterested in paying extra to be at the front

of the queue. But that’s exactly what CSPs need to educate their users to accept if they are to re-align their usage with the cost of their network infrastructure.

Lento went further and pointed out that for CSPs the situation is more complex. “The difference between airlines and network operators,” he explained is that for airlines, bolt-on services are, “a way to segregate pricing – there’s no incremental capital increase associated with charging for luggage.” The plane already has a hold and charging for filling it generates useful additional income. CSPs’ customers on the other hand are used to having their luggage – in the form of bandwidth consumed – carried for them at no premium.

Carrying more luggage entails greater cost of network capacity investment.

Making sense of new capacity investment

So there’s a massive marketing issue to be addressed to make sense of new network capacity investment. And that’s before we consider the sub-25 year-old generation which has no understanding of the need to pay a CSP for a subscription connection. “You’re not going to go from 3G to 4G without changing the rules of engagement,” added Lento.

Perhaps all isn’t lost. While I won’t pay €20 for luggage, the €10 no frills airline gin and tonic is something I’ll buy. That’s the real challenge facing CSPs’ marketing professionals. They have to address the concepts of value that individual users attach to each premium proposition as they seek to redefine their businesses for LTE. George Malim, Editor, VanillaPlus

EDITOR George Malim Tel: +44 (0) 0208 292 4036 george@vanillaplus.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Mark Dye Tel: +44 (0) 0208 251 8908 md@vanillaplus.com DIGITAL EDITOR Nathalie Bisnar Tel: +44 (0) 1732 808690 nathalie@vanillaplus.com

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BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Cherisse Draper Tel: +44 (0) 1732 897646 cherisse@vanillaplus.com BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Mark Bridges Tel: +44 (0) 1732 897645 mark@vanillaplus.com

VANILLAPLUS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011

OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Charlie Bisnar Tel: +44 (0) 1732 844017 charlie@vanillaplus.com PUBLISHER Jeremy Cowan Tel: +44 (0) 1420 588638 jc@vanillaplus.com

CIRCULATION Circdata Tel: +44 (0) 1635 869868 DESIGN Jason Appleby Ark Design Consultancy Ltd Tel: +44 (0) 1787 881623

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© Prestige Media Ltd 2011

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Augere selects TD-LTE for ZHOOSH services in India

Lars Stork: A quality customer experience

Consumers in India are a step closer to experiencing the fourth generation of telecommunications through TD-LTE technology. Augere, with 4G licences covering more than 500 million people across emerging economies in South Asia and Africa, has selected Ericsson’s latest generation of radio base stations, the RBS6000 evolved packet core (EPC) and microwave transmission.

This will enable Augere, under the ZOOSH brand, to offer broadband services to residential and business customers in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in Central India. LTE (or Long Term Evolution to 4th generation networks, in full), the fourth generation of mobile communication technology, enhances the end user experience and enables faster data transfer. With increased speed and decreased latency, consumers can enjoy a wide range of applications, including internet surfing, online gaming, social media and video conferencing, thereby enabling a superior customer experience.

Augere particularly expects LTE to meet the demand among younger users for new and enhanced mobile internet

applications, creating a platform for them to usher in a new ‘Connected India’, using their laptops, tablets and smartphones. The roll-out of services will start from early next year, with soft launch planned for early Q2 2012.

To ensure optimum performance of the network Ericsson will also be responsible for providing managed services with network operations for a period of three years along with spare parts management and annual maintenance services. Ericsson will plan, design, build, operate and maintain the network for Augere. The contract includes supply, installation and commissioning of the network.

Lars Stork, CEO of Augere Wireless Broadband India Private Ltd, said: “We are delighted to be one of the first wireless broadband service providers to announce our plans for the launch of 4G services in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

LTE is a new technology that will enable us to offer high speed and a quality customer experience through a 4G wireless broadband service. India today offers one of the most exciting growth opportunities globally in wireless broadband services and we believe LTE will provide us with a network to offer a customer experience in line with the core values of our brand ZOOSH.”

LightSquared chooses Evolving for 4G-LTE service activation The Bath, UK-based provider of software solutions and services to the wireless, wireline and IP carrier market, Evolving Systems, reports that LightSquared, a 4G LTE network operator in the US, has selected its Tertio™ Service Activation system as the provisioning layer for its business and operational support systems (B/OSS).

Tertio will provide LightSquared with a unified service activation and provisioning platform for all of its services including LTE Data, LTE Voice, VAS, and Satellite. With Tertio, LightSquared’s clients will be able to provision and activate subscribers homed on the LightSquared network quickly, efficiently, and error free. In addition, they will be able to

manage the subscriber’s lifecycle through various states, add and remove services, and query status on demand in near-real-time.

“We are very pleased to have been selected by LightSquared as their service activation partner,” said Thad Dupper, chairman and CEO at Evolving Systems. “LightSquared’s go-tomarket plan as well as their choice of LTE technology promises to reshape the competitive landscape in the US by providing greatly enhanced connectivity options for people and devices.”

Thad Dupper, Evolving Systems CEO

Tekelec introduces integrated LTE systems Tekelec has integrated its session, policy, performance and subscriber data management products into new solutions for LTE. The company previously announced a win with an unnamed tier-one North American operator, that saw integration of Tekelec’s Home Subscriber Server (HSS) address resolution database with its Diameter Signalling Router (DSR). This allows the service provider to scale LTE services by routing Diameter messages to the appropriate HSS in the network.

In addition to those two products, Tekelec’s LTE portfolio includes: Policy Server, a Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) that integrates with the HSS and acts as the brain for policy co-ordination, dynamic bandwidth control, charging, consumption and other factors for a subscriber’s entire data session; and Performance Intelligence Center (PIC), a performance management system that converts network traffic information into useful business intelligence for service providers to improve the customer experience.

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The Performance Intelligence Centre integrates with the DSR to eliminate the need for additional probes and network elements to analyse how subscribers are using IP-enabled devices and applications. Tekelec has also added the PIC troubleshooting features to the core DSR platform to continuously monitor the DSR’s performance. Each of the LTE products runs on Tekelec’s Eagle XG middleware platform, built to meet the core network scalability needs of the world’s largest networks.

“LTE network build-outs present new challenges that require innovative solutions as operators add subscribers and network capacity to meet the exponential demand for mobile broadband services,” said Joe McGarvey, principal analyst at research firm Current Analysis. “Tekelec’s strategy is to replicate its 2G and 3G network successes in LTE by simplifying and streamlining complex network architectures to enable network scalability, flexibility and reliability.”

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Are you testing the right attributes for LTE? Nobody can ever perfectly predict usage patterns so, even when launched, LTE networks have to be a ‘work in progress’. That calls for a much more granular level of testing tool, says Nick Booth. What details should operators look for?

The author, Nick Booth, is a technology journalist

It’s arguable that few nations other than Sweden could support the pioneering approach to LTE taken by TeliaSonera. National pride in being a world leader in mobile technology invokes a sympathetic response from proud Swedish subscribers. They know the service needs some understanding as the weaknesses are gradually addressed.

In a country where the culture of management is less consensual, like the UK, that might not work.

Other operators are waiting to learn from the experiences of the pioneers.

Arne Schälicke, NSN: Sharing learning with customers

The first big test the LTE network operators will face is over standards. When the worlds of mobile operators and IT come together, there will be a clash of cultures – as has happened with LTE, warns Per Kangru, LTE business development manager for JDSU.

One standard, many interpretations Their understanding of the concept of standards is different, says Kangru. “There are lots of different players and they are all able to interpret the standard in their own way,” says Kangru. “If you buy everything from Ericsson, you know you’re likely to get something that works. But if you mix your suppliers, then you are likely to get problems.”

The efficiency of LTE needs to be tested. One of the earliest signs that not everything was right and that a more detailed, granular set of tests was needed, was the effect of quality of service on, well, the overall quality of service. In theory, an operator should be able to provide a guaranteed quality of service to a subscriber without having an impact on the network. However, tests seen by JDSU indicate that quality of service provision for one user then eats up 20% of the overall available bit rate. “That will be a disaster if anyone wants to monetise mobile broadband,” says Kangru.

The introduction of smartphones into a network has a completely different effect on performance than the previous population of this ecosystem, which were primarily devices connected by USB dongles.

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“The problem with smartphones is they’re very chatty,” says Kangru. Like their owners, the smartphone is constantly seeking attention and reassurance.

As the mobile user roams, the phone is constantly touching base with the nearest antenna. Whereas dongled devices only tend to connect when they need to send or receive data. A smartphone chatters 80% of the time, whereas a dongle is silent 80% of the time.

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Strong networks brought down “A strong network can be brought down by the introduction of smartphones,” says Kangru.

Throttling, of smartphones not owners, has been mooted. But these users, the pioneers of LTE, are needed.

Initial tests concentrated on download and upload speeds and drive-by testing of signals.

Performance matters, says Arne Schälicke, LTE marketing manager at Nokia Siemens Networks. In Sweden, LTE achieves downlink (48Mbps) and average uplink (30Mbps) throughputs. It tests the numbers of simultaneously connected users and the speed of response from an application server.

“The performance testing scope is always agreed between the network operator and the network supplier. When there are new challenges ahead we share this learning with our customers,” says Schälicke.

These basic foundations need to be built on, says Kangru. The next level of tools needs to tests LTE to the limits of optimisation, interference and congestion management.

The network operators have been shocked at how difficult efficiency is with LTE. Kangru says their confidence was misplaced. “It’s very easy to get hung up on the potential of peak speeds. But if you position that as the speed people can expect, you’re going to disappoint them,” he says.

If a user is alone, they will get 100% of the 80 Mbps on offer. But if 10 users compete in the same cell, they get on average 3.6 Mbps (according to JDSU) which is less than half of a tenth. But the focus for operators should be to test for different criteria. “They shouldn’t optimise on peak speed, they should analyse what bandwidth the applications actually need and optimise towards that,” says Kangru. But operators are a long way from that level of detail.

Measure end user experience It’s important to measure the end user experience to help identify where the problems are and why. “Only then can operators hope to anticipate and solve any problems effectively,” says Richard Stone at Compuware, which offers its Mobile Data Operator Solution for LTE networks.

When cloud services hit the LTE network we can expect even more challenges as, by nature, they involve thousands of interactions between the user device and the applications in the cloud.

Michael Flanagan, CTO of Arieso, says the metrics for studying user distribution are key for LTE capacity planning. Operators must take into account how well the network is optimised in order to support the actual LTE user distribution.

The early drive-testing of a network – which

gives expected LTE traffic distributions – has to be augmented by tests that reveal the actual distribution. This is because most LTE data communications will be made indoors with traffic distributions that are far from uniform.

Data traffic patterns are never even – the coffee shop effect (where smartphone users gather) is testament to that.

“Operators who rely on uniform weighting of drive-test results risk building the wrong network,” says Flanagan. Direct sub-sector level measurements can be extracted from the increasing numbers of actual LTE users (reducing or eliminating the need for drive-test data). These direct subscriber-centric measurements can be combined with indirect, UMTS-based measurements to account for both existing and anticipated LTE users.

Mike Flanagan, Arieso: How well is the network optimised?

It’s a moot point whether operators are actually testing the right attributes for LTE. You might test the correct variables but the manner in which they are collected and analysed needs to be right too. It’s a case of right metrics, wrong analysis, according to Flanagan.

Operators need to start using tools that will characterise traffic demand at a sub-sector-level (as is done for UMTS). Only then can they surgically introduce new LTE infrastructures and maximise the efficiency of optimisation activities.

The necessary detailed insight can be achieved by drilling down to individual call events for every LTE data call. This was once a labour-intensive luxury, the domain of drive-testing or a very limited number of call traces only. But this drilldown capability is a ‘must’ now, says Flanagan.

“It offers actionable insights that transform every call into a test call. This is particularly important for VIP call analyses,” he says.

Service providers need the right approach to test and measurement, the right methods and the right systems. This is where the aforementioned standards issue can come back to bite the industry on the bottom, according to Bob Hockman, VP of product management at Empirix.

“Having separate methods for measuring individual networks, protocols or services, possibly from different vendors, is no longer viable,” says Hockman.

Bob Hockman, Empirix: Standards can bite you back

“Like their owners, the smartphone is constantly seeking attention and reassurance.”

- Per Kangru, JDSU

The minimum requirements are complete visibility, fully integrated analysis of control and application layers, KPI- driven (key performance indicator) deep dives for rapid issue resolution, scalability and integrated analytics to identify trends patterns and usage, Hockman argues.

“Most importantly, they need a strong roadmap for the high bandwidth interfaces that will surely come,” says Hockman.

And they need to throttle those smartphone users!

VANILLAPLUS LTE GUIDE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011

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TEST & MEASUREMENT

EXPERT OPINION:

Automation puts the process in place for getting LTE testing right first time As CSPs across the world start to roll out LTE and other 4G technologies, the test and measurement opex burden has increased radically. Here, Walter Moretto explains how efficient test and measurement processes and automation can reduce that opex and simultaneously accelerate CSPs’ time to revenue on their new networks.

The author Walter Moretto is a product manager at EXFO www.exfo.com

Picture the problem: Your existing networks are creaking under the strain of radically increased bandwidth consumption so, logically, you’re moving to new network technologies to address that demand. LTE is the answer for many CSPs, but the technology is complex to deploy as it signals the full transition between traditional TDM based networks to a fully Ethernet based one. That leads to an increased test and measurement burden based on a new technology and greater opex associated with that. In addition, the new network needs to be deployed rapidly to address the CSP’s bandwidth consumption issue, satisfy customer demand and allow revenue to be generated quicker to offset the substantial investment involved in the rollout.

However, the test and measurement process is cumbersome and involves a series of potential points of failure that create delays in time to market as well as causing unnecessary opex.

In the past, Test and measurement is a largely manual process, relying on skilled technicians to interpret SLA requirements, configure test equipment, then generate and interpret the results. Inaccuracies inevitably have crept in and managing the test data generated in the field becomes a burden and in some cases is lost leaving no record of the service turn up.

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CSPs need systems and processes around test and measurement that enable them to address these issues. They need to reach out to and connect with their testing platforms in the field. They also need the ability to move data to the field to address issues such as platform upgrades for new features or even deliver real-time training. The upgrade process is part of any standard testing programme but is typically very labour intensive and manuallyoriented.

It takes up substantial technician time that could otherwise be spent executing test programmes or more importantly turning up new services so turning it into a highly automated process that is almost transparent to the technician in the field is critical to help address opex.

Solutions are needed to address the tasks that have been traditionally labour intensive and to enable managers to oversee their assets and see where their assets are. It is difficult for any field manager to have current and relevant information about their test tools mainly because of the manual nature of the data gathering process used to populate the

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Wasted testing investment With LTE and other network roll-outs, wrongly entered data not only gives a misleading picture of the network’s performance but results in wasted testing investment. LTE

deployments highlight the issues because of the speed of deployment required and the multiple service types running on the network.

Therefore the way CSPs interact with their test equipment needs to be refined and revised in order to accelerate the process, improve accuracy and control opex.

endless versions of spreadsheets typically used to tackle this seaming simple task of taking inventory of your test tools. Experience has shown that up to 5% of a managers time is typically spend trying to get information about their test equipment or simply tracking were the equipment is. This effort actually increases when undertaking larger tasks like coordinating fleet wide software upgrades.

The test result itself represents a substantial investment by the CSP in terms of the technician’s time, the equipment used, truck roll and the generation of the work order. All those costs culminate in the test result but if CSPs confine their interest simply to pass or fail, they are not taking advantage of the value of all the data collected.

Process automation At EXFO, we have developed a series of solutions and processes to address these labour intensive, manual activities. We have automated and removed human processes as much as possible and now these data can be extracted from the field automatedly. For example, we take what was traditionally a static report in a text-based file, convert it, automatically upload it to a database and make that data dynamic so individual metrics can be searched to identify specific results or parameters.

Managers can assess not only the results of the testing but also the performance of their testing programme. They can drill down into how many tests are being performed per day, how often equipment is used or who has done the testing, for example. For the first time, all this is now possible to CSR to take advantage of.

CSPs can use such systems to understand which of their testing equipment is available.

When it comes to 40GB or 100GB test equipment, they typically don’t have a large number of units that can perform such tests, so the system can be used to identify when to move the test set to a different city, as testing

in a particular region is nearing completion or to expedite the locating and transfer of an asset to deal with a network failure. Everything becomes more simple and automated.

“The way CSPs

What’s needed to enable this is a group of elements that all work together to reduce, and that contributes to reduce cost of inefficiencies and opex, like EXFO’s FTB Ecosystem. The ecosystem is comprised of a tight coupling of power test platforms, innovative software tools and a cloud based test management service call EXFO Connect to improve and even transform the test process.

needs to be

interact with their test equipment

refined.”

Traditionally, when a job is handed to a technician, the technician determines how to run the test, determine whether the test is passed or failed and then does the relevant paperwork – hopefully accurately. Then some more paperwork is done internally to allow the company to bill the customer at the end of the process. This can take several days. However, usage of the cloud enables us to automate that process very quickly. We can create a custom configuration for each type of test to be performed that the field agent can download at the start of the test. All the parameters for the test are preloaded into the work order ahead of time and the results are uploaded from the field for analysis by the OSS. The billing can then be done in a matter of minutes instead of days.

Our approach means we can turn a few days of test processes in hours and enable revenue generation for the customer very rapidly because the network is ready to run. From a test equipment perspective we’re chipping away at the opex associated with the testing process and we’re making significant cost savings, along with delivering a smoother process and the associated time to market advantage. LTE is all about speed, everyone wants it as soon as possible, so it is critical that each step of the process is made to perform at optimum efficiency. EXFO’s portfolio has been designed to achieve this for the test and measurement piece of your network roll-out.

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LT E E V E N T P R O G R A M M E

Making LTE a commercial success

8 - 9 November, 2011 Fairmont Dallas Hotel, Dallas, Texas, USA LteTM North America 2011 Now in its fourth year, LTE North America 2011 has established itself as a leading ‘learning conference’ in North American telecommunications. It brings together many of the leaders of the LTE ecosystem for in-depth discussion around the future of mobile broadband.

North America is at the leading edge of developments in LTE (Long-Term Evolution to 4th generation networks), making this an ideal time to gain feedback from those with significant early mover advantage on their services, in order to optimise your network performance in the future.

This year’s event is co-located with the 4G Wholesale Business Models USA Industry Summit, and promises to be a vital event for anyone with an interest in the field. Registered speakers and visitors already include the major international and regional mobile network operators, and all Tier 1 vendors, LTE-focused analysts and media.

The event programme and C-level speaker selection are detailed below. But the event also offers opportunities for networking, and learning opportunities though panel discussions, in-depth focus sessions, workshops, and a substantial exhibition floor showcasing the newest innovations and developments in the LTE market.

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A number of new features are being introduced for the 2011 event, such as: • • • • • •

AT&T Masterclass Session 700MHz Public Safety Focus Session Analyst Breakfast Briefing Session Test and Measurement Zone Application Developers Focus Session Dedicated Device Ecosystem Stream

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Among the highlights at this year’s event, the organisers point to more than 750 high-level attendees, over 100 speakers, approximately 60 Exhibitors and Hospitality Suites, and a carrier attendance level of more than 40%. In addition, they expect 40% of delegates to be made up of CxO and senior management executives.

But it’s not just a numbers game. The organisers, Informa Telecoms and Media, tell us they will be delivering over 30 operator case studies. These will be provided by top-level speakers such as: Kris Rinne, SVP, Architecture & Planning, AT&T, USA; Philip Junker, Executive Director – Business Development, Verizon Wireless, USA; Stephen Bye, CTO, Sprint, USA; Dave Williams, Senior Vice President, Wireless Technology, Comcast, USA; Malcolm Lorang, CTO, MetroPCS, USA; Bill Ingram, Senior Vice President Strategy, Cricket Communications, USA; Jack Weixel, Head of Service Provider Markets, Google, USA; Masaaki Meada, President & CEO, NTT DoCoMo USA; Tommy Ljunngren, VP System Development – Mobility Services, TeliaSonera, Sweden; Anthony Lacavera, Chairman, WIND Mobile/Globalive, Canada; and Marcio Avillez, Vice President of Network Operations, ipass.

The Conference Following the Keynote Addresses on 8 November, the conference is divided into six tracks, spread over two days, three on each day.

Track A – Sustainable LTE Business Models & Policy Control

Track B – LTE Infrastructural Challenges (Engineers Stream)

15:40 Embedding Carriers into the Ecosystem: Options for Creating New Revenue Streams John Wick, SVP of Network, Syniverse Technologies, USA

14:30 Architectural Migration Options for LTE: A Symbiotic Synergy between Legacy CDMA2000 and LTE Networks?

James Person, COO, CDG, USA

16:00 The Role of Policy and Charging Controls in the Evolved Packet Core’ Marc Price, Vice President of Technology, CTO Americas, Openet

14:50 Engineering your Network of the Future in the Networked Society Michael Coyne, VP, Strategy for Mobile Broadband Solutions and Principal Solutions Architect, Ericsson, USA

17:00 Exploring the Strategic Options for Optimal Network Sharing Moderated by Karim Taga. With Piotr Muszyski, COO, Orange Poland, Poland; Balan Nair, Group CTO, Liberty Global Inc, USA 17:20 Using Network Intelligence to alleviate capacity bottlenecks: PCRF functionalities Erik Neitzel, DMTS, Technology Development Group, U.S. Cellular, USA 17:40 LTE vs. HSPA+/Evolved: What is HSPA’s Future and Which Technology will Deliver for Customers?

(Lessons from an iHSPA+ Operator – Stelera Wireless) John Curtis, Advisor, Cavalier Wireless (Former CEO of Stelera Wireless), USA 18:00 Managing the Migration from HSPA to LTE: How is the cost/GB affected?

Jonathan Morgan, Senior Director – Product Marketing, Cisco

15:10 Voice and SMS in LTE – A test and measurement perspective Andreas Roessler, Technology Manager, Rohde & Schwarz USA, Inc 15:30 PANEL Beyond Data: Voice in the LTE network Moderated by Haig Sarkissian, Founder & Principal Consultant, Wireless 20/20, USA Ken Geisheimer, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, LTE, MetroPCS, USA; Jon Morgan, Senior Director – Product Marketing, Cisco, USA; Paul Feldmann, Executive Director of Engineering, Carolina West Wireless, USA; Ed Elkin, Director, IMS Solution Marketing, Alcatel – Lucent, USA; Arturo Pereyra, Oracle; Andreas Roessler, Technology Manager, Rohde & Schwarz USA, Inc 16:00 Looking Forward to LTE Advanced: What KPI’s will have to be Achieved?

Rasmus Hellberg, Director, Technical Marketing, Qualcomm, USA 17:00 Wireless Backhaul Options – Why Reinvent the Wheel Glenn Wellbrock, Director of Backbone Network Design, Verizon Wireless, USA 17:20 Meeting Backhaul Demand Through Fiber-to-the-Tower (FTTT) Network Sharing Hunter Newby, CEO, Allied Fibre, USA 17:40 Testing and Optimising LTE Rafael Andrade, Applications Engineer and Solutions Architect, JDSU, USA

For our digital edition, plus News, Features, Event Diary, Webinars and Videos go to: www.vanillaplus.com

18:00 PANEL Using Diameter Signaling Protocol for Complexity control and Advanced Service Enablement Joe Fried, VP Business Development, Traffix Systems, USA; Ronen Guri, Business Development and Solution Manager for Application Awareness, Wholesale and Mobile Backhaul Services, RAD Data Communications, USA; Zach Lovell, Product Line Manager – Network Protocol Test, JDSU Technologies; Dr Irina Cotanis, Principal, Ascom; Robert Duncan, Director of Strategy and Product Management, Transaction Network Services

Track C – LTE Device Ecosystem & Subscriber Management Chaired by Harry Wang, Director of Mobile Health Research, Parks Associates, USA 14:30 Examining the Entire Ecosystem of LTE Devices: What will the Future Device Landscape Look Like?

Asokan Thiyagarajan, Director – Platforms & Technology Strategy, Samsung Telecommunications, USA 14:50 Creating Embedded Connected Devices to Enhance QoS for the Individual User James Warden, Advanced Antenna & Electromagnetic Research, RIM, USA 15:10 Competition in the Device Landscape Brian Modoff, Managing Director, Deutsche Bank, USA 15:30 PANEL Beyond Form Factor: Key Considerations in Enterprise and Government Tablet Devices Rance Poehler, President, Panasonic Solutions Company 16:00 Creative Pricing and Paradigm Models: What is the Optimal Tiered Rate System?

Manish Singh, CTO, Radisys, USA 17:00 Mobile Device Evolution: Building Scale and Functionality Peter Karlsson, Head of Network Technology Lab, Technology Office, Sony Ericsson, USA 17:20 The LTE User Experience: A focus on LTE Devices, Mobile Security, Network Capacity and Signaling Optimization Tracy Ford, Executive Editor, RCR Wireless, USA 17:40 PANEL Tablet Computing: Will the Future Be Standardised?

Moderated by Brian Modoff, Managing Director, Deutsche Bank, USA; Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, Director, Strategy Analytics, USA; Marcio Avillez, VP of Network Operations, ipass, USA; Marc Price, Vice President of Technology, CTO Americas, Openet; Chris Osika, Senior Director, Internet Business Solutions Group, Cisco

VANILLAPLUS LTE GUIDE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011

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LT E E V E N T P R O G R A M M E

Track D – Maximising QoS through Network Optimisation

Track E – M2M Services & Vertical Applications

14:00 LTE Today and Tomorrow in NTT DoCoMo Masaaki Maeda, President & CEO, NTT DoCoMo, USSA

Chaired by Vicki Livingston, 4G Americas, USA

Chaired by John Byrne, Research Director, Wireless Infrastructure, IDC, USA

14:00 Leveraging LTE with in Enterprise Mobility Solutions Strategy Leon Bian, Director, Global Enterprise Mobile Solutions, LG Electronics, USA

14:00 Examining the Standards and Developments in LTE Stephen Hayes, Former Chair, 3GPP TSG SA (2005-2011)

14: 20 How to Understand, Classify and Predict Data Consumption in LTE Solyman Ashrafi, Staff VP of LTE, CTO Office, MetroPCS, USA 14:40 Not All Mobile Internet Traffic Is Created Equal: Best Practices for Flourishing in Tomorrow’s Mobile Environment Mike O’Malley, Director of External Marketing, Tellabs, USA 15:00 PANEL Providing Connected Performance: Could Dual Carrier Services be the New Differentiator?

Moderated by Michael Thelander, Founder & CEO, Signals Research Group; James Person, COO, CDG, USA; Mark Pecen, VP Advanced Technology, RIM, USA; Rasmus Hellberg, Director, Technical Marketing, Qualcomm, USA; Mike O’Malley, Director of External Marketing, Tellabs, USA 15:30 Enabling Mobile Broadband Operations and Evolution Philipp Deibert, Executive Programme Manager, NGMN Alliance, Germany 16:30 PANEL: How Ready is SON to be Fully and Effectively Implemented into the LTE network?

Moderated by Monica Paolini, President, Senza Fili Consulting, USA; Thomas Neubauer, Managing Director, Symena Software & Consulting; Arif Ansari, CTO, ReVerb Networks; Claus Hetting, CEO, Hetting Consulting; Munish Chhabra, Director - Business Development, Aricent; Stephane Teral, Principal Analyst, Infonetics Research, USA OPTIMISING NETWORK COVERAGE 17:00 Optimizing LTE networks Johan Valentin, Cellmax, USA 17:20 Enhancing Wireless Coverage through Distributed Antenna Jennifer Fitzmaurice, Director, Antenna Systems Group, AT&T, USA 17:40 What role will Wi-Fi play in the 4G era?

Marcio Avillez, VP of Network Operations, ipass, USA

14:20 Examining the Business Case for M2M Technology Alex Brisbourne, Group COO & President, KORE Systems Group, USA SPECIAL FOCUS SESSION – PUBLIC SAFETY Chaired by Jim Baker, CEO, Xenventure, USA 14:40 Creating Resilient Safety Networks in the Face of Disparate Networks Emil Olbrich, Lead Project Engineer, NIST, USA 15:00 Block D of the 700Mhz Spectrum – Why is this Spectrum So Important?

Andy Seybold, Vice-Chair, APCO Broadband Committee, USA OPERATOR VS. PUBLIC SAFETY AGENCY DEBATE 15:30 700Mhz: Re-auctioned for Commercial Availability or Reallocated for Public Safety?

Richard Mirgon, Past-President, APCO International, USA; Emil Olbrich, Lead Project Engineer, NIST, USA APPLICATION DEVELOPERS FOCUS SESSION 16:30 Exploring the Application Ecosystem John Huffman, CEO, Real Content Group, USA ROUND TABLE 16:50 Exploring the Diversity of Challenges Applications Developers will have to Face as The Device and Application Market Develops Jay Olearain, VP, nPhase, USA 17:10 Enabling a Smarter World by Realising the Business Benefits of M2M Jay Olearain, VP, nPhase, USA

Track F – Regulatory Spectrum & Het-Nets

14:20 Case Study: Can Rural Carriers Use Complementary 3G and LTE for optimal Quality and ARPU? Rick Vergin, CEO, Mosaic Telecom, USA 14:40 WiFi vs. Femtocell Offload: Which will produce better QoS in the Long Term?

Michael Calabrese, Director, Wireless Future Program, New America Foundation, USA 15:00 Increasing Cell Density through compact Base Stations including WiFi Offload Madan Jagernauth, Vice President, Wireless Marketing and Product Management, Huawei 15:20 Practical Learnings: Looking for Capacity in all the Wrong Places Chris Ebert, Head of Network Systems Strategic Marketing, Nokia Siemens Networks; Rick Mostaert, Head of Small Cell Product Management, Nokia Siemens Networks 16:30 Making LTE Work Everywhere: Small Cells for Rural Areas Rob Riordan, Executive Vice President, Nsight, USA 16:50 PANEL: What are the Most Attractive Broadband Solutions for Rural Areas?

Moderated by Keith Mallinson, WiseHarbor, UK/USA; Rob Riordan, EVP, Nsight, USA; Addiel Lopez, Founder & Managing Partner, Sling Broadband, USA; Dean Hardy, CTO, NetSet, Canada; Mohamed Madkour, Senior Director, Wireless Marketing and Product Management, Huawei; Wayne Hou, ZTE 17:20 How can Regional Carriers Compete Effectively Against Larger National Carriers: Changing the Market Dynamics Steve Berry, President & CEO, Rural Cellular Association, USA 17:40 Evolving Wireless Backhaul Services in Rural Areas Ronald Dibelka, Project Manager, National Exchange Carrier Association, USA

This year the exhibitors include: • Aeroflex Test Solutions • Ascom Network Testing • ATIS

30

• Bridgewater Systems • CellMax • Continuous Computing • Ericsson

• • • • • •

Gemalto JDSU Mentum NIKSUN OPENET Panasonic

VANILLAPLUS LTE GUIDE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011

• Qualcomm • RAD data communications • Reverb Networks

• Rohde and Schwarz • Samsung Electronics Co • Setcom • SYMENA

• • • • •

Tellabs Traffix Systems Ubidyne Vodafone Xceed Technologies

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