The role of BSS in LTE monetization

As LTE takes center-stage in the overall operator strategy of delivering advanced communication services, there have been aggressive LTE roll-outs in major markets around the world. Most operators plan to launch 4G services by 2013-2014. Since, there is expectation that prices for LTE mobile phones will come down, carriers are looking for innovative ways to operate more efficiently in LTE while providing consumers with a richer communication experience. Despite the obvious advantages of LTE as a business enabler, operators want to know how they can turn that LTE investment in their networks into something meaningful for subscribers beyond speed – that’s where BSS comes in picture. A BSS platform can build the relationship between an operator and its subscribers, and  offer customers a wide range of personalized services and applications with increased focus on add-on packages/applications selling and customer choice of plans. These services and applications must be supported by the operator’s BSS to support faster rollout of new and innovative services such as VoLTE, VoIP and launch new business models like M2M, MVNO from any provider, across any device meeting customer expectations therefore, determining new revenue opportunities and sustainable growth. Operators can provide anonymous information on subscribers’ plans to help OTT/content providers to ascertain how they can deliver their service. For example, does a subscriber have a low or high-bandwidth LTE plan? If a subscriber with low bandwidth wants to stream HD movie, the service provider can bundle a bandwidth boost feature with its service to help in the download for better quality of experience. With subscriber plan information, along with an OTT provider agreement and integration, operators can dynamically provide the customer with more bandwidth and monetize those service offerings through an integrated policy and online charging platform. Operators can further monetize by providing differentiated services and an advanced customer experience through add-on personalized services, new pricing models and tariff options, real-time notifications, and customer self-care portal. The operator is able to build its competitive advantage, deliver an enhanced subscriber experience and accelerate its growth strategy. LTE roll-outs are thus, seen as an opportunity by the operators because of the need to better monetize data and support offerings such as family plans, tiered pricing and content or application based quality of experience. The need for a flexible and reliable BSS solution cannot be repeated enough as it can cater to the requirements of launching new service offerings and plans and enable rapid service rollouts in a highly competitive marketplace with a low total cost of ownership. The platform should be highly scalable and provide convergence capabilities to support monetization of 4G/LTE without which the operators would be handicapped! A BSS platform should enable operators monetize their LTE investment with end to end support of business processes. Such a platform should provide smart intelligence that fuels novel offerings such as Shared Wallet/Family plans, Ala-carte plans for Social Networking, Applications/Videos, Customer Centric Loyalty & Promotions such as Location based, and Device based Add on Promo & targeted promotions using integrated Policy manager, centralized product catalogue and real-time charging platform. With a Pre-integrated Billing & Revenue management, PCRF & OCS platform, the solution should provide convergence capabilities to support 4G/LTE, IMS while enabling adapt methodological transition to Next-generation IP-based platform, leading to seamless subscriber experience, faster integration and interoperability with the 3rd party/existing system. The platform’s open APIs ensure extremely short and cost-effective deployments while retaining flexibility to accommodate future next generation services such as VoIP, Triple play, OTT, etc. easily through reliable, scalable and modular systems delivering high performance.