New research reveals that 88 percent of Communications Service Providers (CSPs) believe that the convergence of mobile offerings with fixed, broadband and cable/pay TV will be key to future strategies. WeDo Technologies, surveyed more than 120 representatives from 62 operators across 42 countries worldwide at its ninth customer event in Oporto, Portugal at the end of May.
The research findings chime with the presentation delivered by NOS (formerly Zon Optimus) CEO Miguel Almeida at the event, who revealed that pay TV has been the anchor for upselling both mobile and fixed line contracts in Portugal, and that the CSP has achieved 5 percent market share growth by continuing to promote its convergence strategy.
The survey went on to reveal that the same proportion (88 percent) of CSPs regard Big Data technologies as a disruptive factor in Enterprise Business Assurance (EBA) functions and activities, with 51 percent having already invested in Big Data platforms for Fraud Management and Revenue Assurance practices. 36 percent had not yet invested, demonstrating huge potential for EBA vendors such as WeDo to help with the integration of Big Data technologies.
Following on from the 2013 User Group survey, CSPs also went on record to state which industries they felt would most likely deliver stronger win-win co-operation/partnerships with the telecoms industry. As in 2013, banks continue to dominate with 34 percent, while the healthcare industry made a first appearance, securing 14 percent of the vote. Other industries felt to have a positive impact were energy distributors/retailers (25 percent) and large retailers (18 percent).
WeDo CEO, Rui Paiva, was quick to point out, and rightfully so, that revenue assurance and fraud management have always been rooted in big data and that systems have become more efficient at managing it and can leverage tools such as Hadoop, Hana and Exadata.
On a lighter note, in a test question, WeDo’s User Group attendees also predicted that Brazil would be this year’s Word Cup winners, taking 21 percent of the vote – 7 percent ahead of second place Germany! Neither statistic however matched the largest proportion of respondents (22 percent) who stated that they had no opinion on the competition’s outcome, choosing the “Who cares about football?!” option.
This made me chuckle. I have heard communications providers saying convergence would be key to their future strategies for probably all 18 of my years working in billing. I agree that Pay-TV was a good anchor based on what you saw happen with Verizon and Comcast in the US, but that trick is going to quickly evaporate under pressure from streaming services displacing traditional pay-TV and may not have much longer to run even globally.