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| 1 | 2 | 3 | As the number of services consumed expands, authorization is not just about available funds in the subscriber balances, but also about subscriber control over spending and setting of preferences such as spending limits on specific services. Additionally, in a next-generation environment, operators will need to create pricing strategies that charge relative to consumers’ perceived value, making rating and charging ‘policy’ engines in effect. In regards to subscribers' various identities, the enterprise segment is an important source of revenue for operators. And yet employees' personal consumption remains an untapped revenue stream. Thus policy management around consumer versus enterprise identities should be explored. Finally, as the overall financial exposure of an operator increases with the addition of more 3rd party services, policy management around credit and financial exposure is becoming a prerequisite for running a healthy and growing business.
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For true convergence, the network and billing have to work as one unified system. |
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Financial control
With the increase in third party content and application providers in the service mix, operators face increased financial exposure and need to manage this risk without diminishing the end-user experience. One effective way is by mixing prepaid and postpaid concepts. There may be some services that operators prefer to offer on a prepaid basis (e.g. our premium video example from above) even if the customer’s account is postpaid. Another approach to managing the risk of financial exposure is to monitor usage for certain activities or the reaching of set thresholds. If a subscriber, even if on a postpaid account, hits a certain threshold of data or content usage, operators may want to take some action such as alerting the customer of the usage.
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Embracing this wider definition of “policy management” is a key enabler for an operator seeking to deliver a converged next generation user experience. For true convergence, the network and billing have to work as one unified system. In this way customer profile information can be blended with network knowledge to optimize the customer experience.
For example, if a customer subscribes to a premium video package, he assumes that he will enjoy video streaming with sufficient bandwidth. What if the subscriber is in an area with insufficient bandwidth? If billing and the network worked as a unified system, then the system would know that the quality of service would not be met and could react by providing the subscriber with options such as: watch the video at a lower quality, buffer the video or wait to view the video until there is greater bandwidth available. In this way, the operator offers choice to the customer, avoiding what could have been a bad customer experience.
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The flip-side of this is that end-customers also sense a financial risk of their own. The fear of bill shock - most often related to the inability to manage accounts - may prevent end-customers from signing on to new services. Offering an all-you-can-eat unlimited plan is not the only way of handling this situation. A more effective way is to allow subscribers to set their own spending controls. This may sound counter-intuitive to the business need to grow revenues, however if the alternatives are ‘some money’ versus ‘no money’ (i.e. a cancelled service), ‘some money’ usually wins.
A unified approach to BSS convergence – including in-network capabilities – enables this level of control: operator control and customer control.
Marketing Agility
There is a school of thought that Marketing will be the ultimate key to operator success.
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