By: Jesse Cryderman

Over the past two decades telephone companies and pay-TV operators have evolved and abstracted to become communications service providers (CSPs). Now they’re transitioning into a new phase of existence, as digital lifestyle providers. 

Inherent to this new identity is the concept that CSPs provide experiences, not simply connectivity, giving rise to the industry-wide interest in customer experience management (CEM). Framing services and operations around the concept of experience delivery helps CSPs better leverage their unique assets while avoiding the pitfalls of commodification. Simultaneously, the range of experiences that customers seek from their digital lifestyles has greatly expanded, and from smart cities and digital farms to connected cars and mobile money, the connected ecosystem is expanding as well, creating new business opportunities for agile CSPs. 

For instance, many of the same tools and strategies used to ensure the quality and delivery of mobile data are perfectly aligned with what’s required to deliver experiences in new vertical markets. More importantly, these new verticals offer further room for growth in value-added areas beyond connectivity and quality of service (QoS). To avoid the dreaded “dumb pipe” designation and thrive in the new digital economy, CSPs must innovate in new verticals.

When you get right down to it, the only way forward is up.

Why new verticals?

Traditional services like voice and messaging have become a commodity but offer little promise for long-term growth, a reality that’s clearly reflected in the subscription plans of leading postpaid operators AT&T and Verizon. Gone are the days of tracking minutes and counting messages—today it’s buckets of data that are bought and sold. Customers, however,seek experiences, not bits and bytes, and whether it’s an improved level of streaming video or a home-monitoring solution, value is assigned to such experiences; the same goes for connected cars and digital wallets.

In each case CSPs have a deep cache of assets that can greatly enhance experiences in new verticals. A long-standing expertise in network intelligence and control is the biggest differentiator,as the QoS of connected experience in new verticals hinges on end-to-end network visibility. That’s because a cool mobile app that controls a refrigerator from a smartphone isn’t that cool if it doesn’t work properly when problems arise. And suppose there’s a small conflict in the signaling plane based on the way the fridge control app interacts with a specific make and model of smartphone and the connected hardware in the refrigerator. What kind of network insight could Google offer? And what’s the customer’s best recourse in this type of situation aside from posting a negative review on the Google Play Store app? 

Serving the new digital-lifestyle economy often means servicing that lifestyle, and it’s something CSPs are already doing even if they’re not monetizing it. We’ve seen it quite often with over-the-top (OTT) video: if a customer’s Roku box isn’t connecting to the internet properly or Netflix is going bananas, his or her internet service provider will most likely be the one to field the support call.