Confessions of a data addict
I admit it: I'm a heavy data user. I have the maximum plan available but even that sometimes isn't enough. At the weekend, particularly if I'm travelling, I use my tablet to watch the soccer highlights, although this can be frustrating as I often get a message that I've exceeded my daily video streaming limit. At times like this, what I would most want is an offer from my service provider of a temporary data top-up, just so that I can continue watching the games. I'm prepared to pay a premium to watch Premier League highlights.
In fact, dynamic service offers like this are a win-win for both the service provider and their customer: the service provider gets the chance of additional revenue, while the end user gets to enjoy the experience they're prepared to pay for. And it's not just bandwidth hogs like me that can be tempted with an in-service promotion. There are plenty of basic plan users who, if offered in real time the chance to upgrade their package so that they can access social networking sites on their smartphone, would be more than tempted.
It's important to understand that mobile data users don't just buy a device and a data plan, they buy a data experience. This could be anything from a social networking experience to a mobile business experience and the role of the service provider is to create and manage this data experience in the unique contexts of these customers.
Service providers have tremendous assets to leverage in this regard. First, each service provider has rich real-time and historical knowledge of their customers, including their plans, their usage habits, their location and what they're doing on the network right now. Secondly, each has significant network assets – their investment in high capacity networks, their ability to deliver Quality of Service (QoS) and their real-time knowledge of the current conditions of their networks.
Couple these assets with intelligent network and charging controls, and service providers can redefine the data experience by delivering true choice in many dimensions:
- Available plans to suit different wallets and different data usage needs. For example, casual-usage, monthly plans, data passes, departmental budgets.
- Speed of access – how quickly does the customer get connected or how quickly do specific applications get delivered
- Network quality – ensuring the right video or download experience or matching the network quality with the value of a business application.
- Applications – bundled as part of innovative data plans and delivered based on customer-specified conditions.
- Managing spend thresholds and budgets – for instance when the customer reaches a data usage threshold while roaming.
- New offers – service tier upgrades, try before you buy services or advertising-sponsored applications.
Delivering these data experiences requires bringing together a set of traditionally disparate functions ‒ policy control, online charging, and product catalogue ‒ that have typically needed significant customisation to work together. It is this integration of policy management with charging and billing solutions that will provide the catalyst to build new service packages that manage traffic while, at the same time, create innovative data experiences.
Policy management, if integrated with charging, product catalogue and subscriber data systems, can become the bridge that unifies the customer data experience across network and IT domains ‒ and enables me to watch as many video highlights as I want!
Ole Sorensen is the chief technical officer of Amdocs, APAC.