The Network as a Profit Center

Mission critical, mission command

While most carriers have focused their future network investments on developing the physical infrastructure and systems that can support demand and quality, profiting from the network also requires a second look at the mission-critical capabilities of BSS.

Seizing revenue opportunities, whether they’re wholesale backhaul, retail QoS-based pricing or enterprise-focused M2M, requires the ability to collect, monitor, manage, monetize, and settle. BSS remains the key to profitably exploiting and managing next-generation networks and services. The main requirements include:

• a high-performance mediation platform interfacing with multiple network types to collate and transform network and service information into chargeable/usable data, to recognize inter-network handovers and apply this information rapidly to high volumes of data, allowing for a dynamic response to customer behavior and need;

• an effective charging and billing solution for developing sophisticated tariffs and offers that can be used to shape traffic and user behavior driven by network-specific data coming through the mediation layer;

• a real-time charging and policy platform capable of dynamically altering pricing or proposing discounts and deals to customers based on real-time information;

• a reliable, scalable partner management and settlement solution that provides simple, flexible control of the many players, policies and partners constantly in flux, making the most of automation to efficiently bill, reconcile and settle.

BSS components such as these form the mission-command center for seizing current and future opportunities, and will be absolute prerequisites to profiting from new network investments.

Profit centered

Innovations in network technology have brought the internet to new and previously disenfranchised communities around the globe, and opened the door to a host of exciting new applications and services. However, connectivity is becoming commoditized as a host of other players encroach on carriers’ business and erode margins for voice and data services. 

For the network to reclaim its prominence as a profit center, a keen look at both revenues and expenses is required. Incremental and new revenue opportunities lie in providing backhaul, optimizing value by focusing on quality and exploring new network use cases such as M2M. Ensuring that these revenues don’t come at an unsustainable cost requires a reevaluation of existing back-office systems and processes so that the capabilities needed to capitalize on ever-changing market dynamics are firmly in place.