Winning the OTT Battle, the Monetization Way

Today’s telecom operators are ready to partner with OTT players, rather than taking them as their competition – and create innovative monetization models Few years ago; to place a phone call, you picked up your phone, dialed a number and paid the operator charges. Today’s consumers have multiple choices on how they communicate via text or voice, and most of these services are completely free due to rise in OTT services. Applications such as Skype, Whatsapp, Facebook, Viber, Line can be downloaded and used for free, anywhere in the world. Owing to this large set of customers moving towards OTT or Over The Top services; when it comes to quenching customer’s entertainment and service needs, there has been a significant shift in mobile operator mindset regarding OTT communications today. Today, the earlier perception that OTT, communications is a threat has been replaced with a revenue-generating opportunity that is waiting to be realized. Keeping the above in mind, the next generation mobile operators have never been more receptive to the idea of partnering with OTT players to stay relevant and offer exactly new innovative content based services that customers are looking for, and at the same time increase their revenue potential by exploiting this nascent opportunity. As of today there are a number of monetization opportunities that can be worked out, including charging OTT providers for data and terminating IP traffic onto a mobile network, there is a fast growing list of operators who are investing towards strengthening their BSS systems comprising of Convergent Billing, Real Time Charging, Partner Settlement, Policy Control etc. in order to be in a better position to monetize such opportunities. How Operators can Strategize around OTT The OTT proliferation is occurring on four distinct areas such as MobileVoice, Messaging, Media and Cloud Services. While there is not denying the fact that today’s operators face immense competition from their counterparts, they are also facing a big challenge coming in from the OTT world. It is increasingly getting about delivering the right experience to the customers which will help operators regain their lost market share to OTT Players. When it comes to strategizing around OTT, operators can have a three pronged strategy. First and foremost, they need to understand that they are the ones to be having closer relationships with their customers, so they are in ideal position to develop next generation connectivity services and defend their core networking and infrastructure business. Secondly, operators can drive new age customer services around data analytics and personalized billing, this could be a great way to create market differentiation and move another notch closer to the customer base and at the same time gain on their mindshare. Then there is the third way, which is perhaps the most difficult where operators choose to develop new apps and other services and offer them directly to consumers. A lot of operators such as Airtel in India (Airtel Zero) or Singtel in Singapore (Wavee App) are already starting to work on these lines. While there is a threat to operators today coming from the OTT side, operators are the ones who control the networks that enable OTT business models. Hence, moving forward operators need to plan in terms of better levering their network investments and driving digital business opportunities for tomorrow. How Elitecore can help in such scenario? Elitecore enables operators to tap the OTT opportunity with Partner Management module that enables operators to offer complete solution from partner acquisition, management to termination. It offers a Single Carrier grade platform that supports diverse partnerships models such as Progressive Revenue Sharing based on Subscriptions or Data Usage, Application Specific Plans with various OTT partners like Ecosystem Players, VoIP and Messaging Players, Content Streaming Players, Contextual Players. For more info Click Here