Comptel’s Strategy Update – Turning Big Data into an Opportunity

Comptel held Annual General Meeting on Wednesday 20^th March. Our Board of Directors and management updated the company’s strategy and objectives for the next three years. The updated strategy for 2013-2015 focuses on accelerating the execution of the Event-Analysis-Action strategic framework we launched in 2011. Comptel is aiming at over ten percent growth in net sales annually and EBIT margin between 8 to 15 percent during the strategy period. This includes scaling up the sales with partners. Both of these focus areas facilitate Comptel’s growth strategy.

The market demands the communications service providers (CSPs) to better monetize the growing data traffic, known as Big Data, beyond the communications network data. This data can include for example usage data, social network data, location and customer relationship management data. Comptel helps the Communications Service Providers (CSPs) turn the Big Data into an opportunity. Today, Comptel already processes 21 terabytes (10¹² ) data per day.

Comptel’s differentiation strategy challenges the traditional operating and business support system (OSS/BSS) approach by bringing predictive, real-time analytics as an innovative element to help CSPs integrate technical, sales and marketing organisations and automate the CSP’s customer interaction. We commissioned a research earlier this year that revealed that nine out of ten customers desire personalised interaction with their mobile operators. The yearn for communication at every touch point—from the first interaction when joining the service to when they are experiencing issues with the service to when their needs are changing.

Key investments in the product and solution offering will focus on strengthening the Event-Analysis-Action approach. Big Data opportunity strengthens Comptel’s position in event data collection – applying analytics turns this data into automated actions that are carried out by Comptel’s service order orchestration.

By the end of 2015, Comptel aims to become a recognised thought leader and leading solutions provider in customer interaction automation space.

There Will Be More Than One Billion Mobile Phones in Africa…What Does This Mean?

A lot of telecommunications analysts have turned their sights toward the Middle East and Africa. That shouldn’t be a surprise, considering that, by 2016, analysts expect there to be more than one billion phones across the continent, with 991 million being feature phones. Indeed, Cisco expects that mobile data traffic growth will be fastest in this region.

It’s a particularly exciting time to watch these developments in Africa. The continent already has some of the highest mobile money payments in the world— in Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania and Uganda, there are more mobile money bank accounts than traditional bank accounts.

All of these trends point to explosive mobile use and increased connectivity in Africa as a whole. So, what’s one of the biggest changes we can expect to see here?

A new boom in African creative industries

One significant shift that was highlighted at Mobile Web East Africa by tech website MemeBurn is occurring in television and literature. Traditionally, both of these industries have suffered from lack of art-based, educational programmes in schools and from a lack of resources.

The CEO of BuniTV and Buni Media, Marie Lora-Mungai, spoke at the conference and said that having mobile access to films will revolutionise the space. She hopes that filmmakers will be able to distribute their work much further than before and create pieces for mobile consumption.

Likewise, the vice president of marketing at BiNu, Mark Shoebridge, talked about how mobile will affect reading habits. At Mobile Web East Africa, he claimed that 70% of female readers who are using World Reader, an app for smartphones, are reading over a thousand screen pages.

How this is going to affect data use in Africa

I think it’s safe to say that 991 million feature phones are going to bring about a radical change in data use in Africa. As we’ve mentioned before, changing data use doesn’t just make for a better mobile experience, the increased connectivity enriches consumers’ lives.

Of course, there’s going to be a vast range of different needs among customers in Africa. Communications service providers (CSPs) will be hard-pressed to customise service packages and personalise their interactions to accommodate these trends.

Africa is in an interesting position because of the sheer diversity of needs when it comes to data. It’s happening fast, too. Last October, for example, more Nigerians accessed the Internet on mobile phones than on desktop computers.

To really meet the demands of the next decade’s mobile customers, CSPs will have to invest heavily in contextual analytics that can segment customers based on their individual behaviours when it comes to mobile data use. This way, no matter how vast the customer base or different the use cases, it’s possible to meet individual needs and prepare for the future.

Mobile World Congress 2013: Guest Speakers on LTE, Analytics

As I mentioned the other day, Mobile World Congress was filled with excitement, with a robust exchanging of ideas among the various attendees and our customers and partners, as we look to the future of telecom. At the show, we were happy to further some of the discussions on LTE and analytics by welcoming a few guest speakers to Comptel’s booth.

The founder of operator benchmarking consultancy tefficient, Fredrik Jungermann, took us through how to pinpoint the right LTE customers. He first mentioned that not as many LTE customers are signing up as operators would like, but the numbers are rapidly growing. For example, 58% of Korea’s data traffic was over LTE in December 2012, and, likewise, Tele2 in Sweden saw an LTE penetration of 40%.

Fredrik explained that we’re transitioning away from a world of unlimited data, with more demand now put on unlimited voice and text. Of the smartphone data that is being used, 60% is through Wi-Fi, which is going un-monetised. With this in mind, he posed the question: what if operators could turn things around and monetise this traffic using LTE or operator-owned Wi-Fi?

The upsides include basic monetisation, which will mainly be based on volume, and as data traffic grows over the top (OTT) players can become an additional source of revenue. Further, offering shared data plans will help enable unused devices and drive revenues even further. The downside to this, though, is that it can be costly to supply LTE handsets, as they have the highest specs. Analytics can help match the expensive and rare handsets to the right customers – dynamically based on individual customers’ needs and behaviours. Overall, this is much more efficient than providing subsidised LTE handsets to everyone.

Additionally, we heard from Zain Kuwait’s director of management information systems, who delved into the various ways the company is improving the customer experience with analytics. If you are interested in learning more about this presentation, as well as Fredrik’s, please email [email protected].

What did you think of this year’s Mobile World Congress? We’d love to hear your favourite highlights and if you heard any interesting news or stats around LTE and analytics. Safe travels home to all!