By Moshe Peterfreund, Director of Marketing, FTS
December 21, 2015
Last year, we made a number of predictions for the telecoms market. One of our predictions for 2015 is now the one we think will have the most impact on operators, MVNOs, OTT and M2M/IoT providers – in fact, across the entire telecoms ecosystem – in 2016.
And the prediction that we believe will make the most difference? Smart revenue sharing. Partner management and smart revenue sharing will enable operators to deliver on all of the transitions that the industry is currently undergoing. As communications services providers (CSPs) continue their evolution to digital services providers (DSPs); as MVNOs continue to proliferate globally; as the Internet of Things becomes a reality, so smart revenue sharing will enable communications, content and M2M service providers to work smoothly with all the partners within their ecosystem.
Players in every segment of our industry face the same challenges: being able to bring new partners on board quickly; launch new, bespoke contracts; rapidly adjust existing contracts; understand and respond to the different needs and business logics of each industry; and to create revenue sharing schemes to fit various segments.
2016 will be about personalized relationships with partners as the telecom market becomes increasingly sophisticated, irrespective of whether they are MVNEs or MVNOs, OTT providers, content aggregators, application developers, mobile money and payment service providers, utilities or banks.
The benefits of smart revenue sharing are many. Service providers that implement solutions that can facilitate these complicated partnerships and revenue-sharing relationships will increase revenue, become more attractive to partner with, reduce total cost of ownership and ultimately, be able to cope and scale with any demands they are presented with.
We’re already well aware of how digital is transforming the telco market. 2016 will, we believe, be the year of the digital service provider (DSP). Operators are being forced to rethink the way in which they sell their products and services, market themselves and fundamentally operate.
Subscribers want data-heavy seamless services in real-time. Service providers need infrastructure that can handle high proportions of online customer transactions; offer the same service experience across any device at any time; think of users as accounts rather than individuals, with multiple devices and services at their disposal; and that can roll out new products or promotions in much shorter timeframes.
DSPs will have to manage a vast network of partners including OTT players, app developers and more. The same issue will be faced by MVNOs and MVNEs, who need to be able to offer innovative branded telecom services through real-time promotions and pricing plans, loyalty programs, and more.
We predict that 2016 will be the year of the MVNO, especially in emerging markets such as Eastern Europe, LATAM and later on Africa, markets in which regulators are keen to introduce further competition to the telecom market.
Some MVNOs will be looking to offer application-based plans (for example, video- or Facebook-based) to enhance the customer experience and meet user demands for personalized pricing tiers and flexible data plans. To enable this, MVNO billing requires real-time policy control and charging capabilities in order to rapidly deploy personalized plans as quickly as the marketing department can create them.
MVNOs will also be looking for ways to manage their relationships with an ever-expanding number of business partners within the Internet of Things world. They will need to be agile enough to support a great variety of M2M verticals, each with its own business model, to ensure overall low TCO in a low-revenue, high-volume transaction environment.
2016 looks like it will be an interesting year, and we for one are looking forward to seeing how smart revenue sharing becomes a service provider’s best friend.
Read more about FTS’ telecom billing solutions.