Legacy Systems Not Ready for LTE, Other Advanced Services

Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless broadband—although still in the early stages of deployment—is growing significantly, with more than 450 commercial rollouts of the technology reported in more than 130 countries around the world. It is extremely attractive to both customers and operators because of its incredible speed; LTE can reach 30 Mbps and advanced LTE nears 100 Mbps. For operators, higher speeds generally equals higher-priced data plans, but LTE also grants  operators the opportunity to create service bundles that also create new revenue opportunities. There’s no sign of things slowing down. In fact, according to a recent report from Allied Market Research, revenue from LTE is expected to reach $997 billion by 2020, with a projected CAGR of 58.2 percent from 2013 to 2020. The Asia-Pacific region possesses the highest potential for such services and is expected to generate highest revenue by 2020. However, like many advanced services, operators need to find a way to make LTE more than just about data speeds. The issue is that the introduction of services like LTE—and all the capabilities that come with it—is driving more sophisticated charging and billing requirements that legacy B/OSS infrastructures were not designed to handle. As operators seek to expand their product catalog to better serve customers and compete with next-generation bundled offerings and content-based services from over the top (OTT) service providers, they need a higher level of flexibility than their current provisioning platform may provide. The roll out of LTE services is seen by many operators as an opportunity to better monetize data and support offers such as family plans, tiered pricing, and content- or application-based quality of experience. A flexible, scalable B/OSS solution that can cater to the requirements of launching new services such as VoIP and voice over LTE (VoLTE) rapidly in a highly competitive marketplace with a low total cost of ownership is required. It also means the introduction of new pricing models and tariff options, real-time notifications, and customer self-care portals. Elitecore’s LTE Revenue and Customer Management platform was built with the next-generation requirements of LTE in mind. The solution offers pre-integrated next-generation BSS and evolved packet core components that provide convergence capabilities to support 4G/LTE, with a transition path to next-generation IP as well. Learn more about how service providers are monetizing LTE services with Elitecore.