Mobile World Congress, Day 1: Putting the End-User Experience Front and Centre

Posted: February 14th, 2011 | Author: Olivier Suard | Filed under: Events | Tags: , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Today marked the long-awaited start of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Earlier this month, the GSMA predicted that the mobile industry trade show would be its biggest and best ever—and that’s certainly proving to be the case for Comptel. We had well over pre-set 100 meetings with customers, prospects, partners and media and industry analysts, and are very much anticipating this to be a successful event.

After walking around the Fira Barcelona for only a few minutes, it became clear to me that Google’s Android was everywhere! That little, green robot (which surprisingly resembles our own Comptel Control and Charge Franken-Network) covered everything from Huawei’s and Samsung’s expo hall booths to t-shirts and other giveaway goodies and more. It definitely lived up to its status as the current, high profile smartphone operating system in the world.

What the prominence of Android demonstrates is how much the customer experience has taken centre stage—and the Nokia / Microsoft tie-up can be very much seen in that context. As our research demonstrated, consumers see quality of experience (QoE) as a key driver that will influence their allegiance to their communications service provider, handset manufacturer, operating system, etc. And of course, looking at it from our own OSS perspective, it is clear that policy and charging control provide key levers to deliver that QoE.

What have you thought about Mobile World Congress so far? What other key themes do you see emerging throughout the week?

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Consumer Research Confirms Importance of Policy and Charging Control to Operators

Posted: February 3rd, 2011 | Author: Arnhild Schia | Filed under: Around the World, Events | Tags: , , , , | 5 Comments »

Mobile broadband has become a part of everyday life, and with so many people depending on—and demanding for—mobile connectivity, we at Comptel wanted to explore consumers’ evolving relationship with providers of mobile broadband services and their levels of satisfaction with operators’ service and price plans and flexibility.

Last month, we commissioned independent research firm Vanson Bourne to survey 2,000 consumers from across the United Kingdom, France, Germany and United States, and found that mobile broadband users are now ready and willing to pay for a higher quality of experience (QoE).  Seventy-four percent of respondents who are willing to pay for a higher QoE said that they are prepared to spend more money just for faster download speeds.

Which of the following would you be willing to pay more for?

And, 61 percent indicated that they want their CSPs to offer more personalized yet simpler service plans, such as having pricing based on individual usage habits while getting just one bill for all Internet and broadband services.

Would you like to see your CSP offer service and price plans that are simpler and bespoke?

Further to this, 87 percent of consumers see QoE as a key driver that will influence their allegiance to their CSP, and the majority of them would not only move but also pay more money for faster and personalized services.

Is a high QoE a key driver for you when it comes to changing CSPs?

In today’s highly competitive market, providing high QoE could be the most powerful mechanism for gaining or even just keeping customers—and the demand for a better mobile broadband experience presents a major revenue opportunity for CSPs.

Policy control and charging is key for operators to capitalize on consumers’ demand for faster download speeds and more personalized yet simpler service plans.  It can help them optimise QoE by smoothing data usage more evenly across their networks, while dynamically adapting and simplifying service bundles based on individual customers’ wants or needs, and introducing progressive pricing strategies that monetise this consumer demand.

Full copies of this research report will be available at the Comptel’s booth at Mobile World Congress (14-17 February in Barcelona ) in Hall 1 at Stand 1C06—be sure to stop by and say hello!


New Business Models? What New Business Models? Part II

Posted: September 6th, 2010 | Author: Bob Machin | Filed under: Telecom Trends | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

Part Two

In my previous post I discussed some ideas that were stimulated by a UK business news piece on Tune hotels.

The second piece in that bulletin concerned Hamleys, the biggest toyshop in London, and arguably one of the most famous in the world. The CEO was being interviewed about the impact of the recession on the store, which doesn’t discount its items. Wasn’t the recession driving their customers elsewhere, asked the interviewer – to go online, for instance, or to visit “stack-‘em-high, sell-‘em-cheap” out-of-town retailers, like Toys‘R’Us?

No, he replied, that hadn’t been their experience, and nor had they been forced into price wars with low-cost rivals.

What kept people coming to Hamleys, he said, was the unique experience that the store could offer, and the company had focused even harder on that. Rivals had a lower cost base and could always beat them on price, even on stock and range, but they couldn’t match the experience of visiting the biggest toyshop in the world, right in the middle of London and all the fun that went with that.

Again this is something that we seem only slowly to be coming to terms with in telecoms: that price doesn’t keep customers loyal – there’s always someone cheaper, and over time the price differentials get smaller and smaller. Nor does technology and products – any new product is quickly matched by rivals, particularly in these digital times, and rarely justifies switching.

What really differentiates a telco – or any other company – is the customer experience.  This is slower and harder to develop, for sure, but is also much harder to imitate, which in the long term makes it a much more effective way of generating customer loyalty and spend.

The telco’s interactions with its customers, at critical points in the customer lifecycle, are likely to be much more influential on their loyalty and their inclination to spend than a discount of a few percentage points. As a customer, how I feel about my telco is more likely to be influenced by how fast and how accurately my new handset or DSL line was delivered, whether it worked first time, how quickly customer service responded to my query, whether they knew what products I had and how I used them, whether they offered me an upgrade to a new handset without me having to ask… by any one of dozens of possible interactions where the telco has a chance to impress – or disappoint me.

So what did I take away from listening to these pieces?

Telecommunications is an increasingly open and competitive business – telcos compete not just with other telcos but with many other providers of apps, content and services. Utility-oriented business models and supporting systems won’t cut it any more.

New business models are needed if telcos are to be competitive in this new world, but maybe there’s less to fear than the industry sometimes seems to think, as whatever issues we’re struggling with, other sectors have often been there already and have found ways to be highly successful. In processes and systems there’s a lot we can learn, and maybe copy, from the wider economy.


New Business Models? What New Business Models? Part I

Posted: September 1st, 2010 | Author: Bob Machin | Filed under: Telecom Trends | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment »

At Comptel we spend a lot of time talking about the ‘new business models’ that telcos are adopting to face a new generation of communications, and how these are likely to affect their OSS and BSS. But listening to the UK business news this morning made me wonder how many of our challenges are actually new, or unique to the telecoms industry.

This two part series will look at some surprising similarities between the business challenges under discussion and some key issues of the day in telecoms.

The first piece concerned Tune hotels, a chain that offers ‘5* hotels at 1* prices’.  Tune has just brought its proposition to London. It consists of a basic room with a shower for a low, low price – averaging around £40 to £50 for a double room. Though you’ll pay more at weekends and other busy times, these prices are pretty good for London, where a single room in a 3* hotel would typically set you back over £100.

The rooms look clean and decent, but for your money, that’s pretty much all you get – a room. Anything extra is, well, extra – and not just breakfast. You want aircon? There’s a charge. TV or WiFi? Ditto. Towels? Toileteries? They don’t come for free either.

So it’s the budget airline model. You can keep it cheap if you’re determined and self-sufficient, but most people won’t and will rack up the bill with those many extras.

Listening to this, I couldn’t help thinking about the very similar issues we face in telecoms – in particular, how to attract and retain the customer in a competitive market, while at the same time turning a profit on our costly investments.

This seemed like a great example of a service that did all that. Customers can genuinely personalise and tailor it to their own needs and preferences, so they feel like they’re getting a good deal, a good service and that they’re in charge of their spending. Most importantly, it allows Tune to offer a great headline price while still turning a profit and to fully exploit the resources at their disposal. So how do they work this magic?

Their business model requires a flexible tariff, with many individually priced components and rates that can be easily changed, in response to shifts in the market. It requires a customisable offering – so that they can easily add or change the items available to the customer. It needs to let the customer self-configure their service and see it fulfilled on demand with minimal human intervention (got to keep those costs down!). It needs to support payment in advance and in real time – and immediate charging for those extras that suddenly seem important when you’re in the room.

As with budget airlines, it also needs to recognise and balance demand for, and availability of, resources – or ‘rooms’ as they call them in the hotel business – and control and exploit those two forces, with charging that maximises return in peak times and occupancy in off-peak times – or what we in telecoms like to call Policy Control.

So Tune seem to be well down the road towards effective control and charging which can balance the often competing forces of supply and demand, availability and price, in a way which attracts customers and turns a tidy profit. Are the legacy chains of established, incumbent hotels looking over their shoulders at Tune? You can bet they are…

In the next post I’ll look at the other item that was covered in that bulletin – what Buzz Lightyear has to tell us about how you hang on to customers and business in recessionary times… Stay tuned.