Keeping its focus around driving software led network innovations in India, Alepo is working with operators towards creation of better monetization techniques and ensure better return on their network investments.
Basharat Ashai, Director-Media & Analyst Relations,Alepo Technologies speaks with Zia Askari, Editor, TelecomDrive.com about the company’s key focus areas for India and its growth plans.
What are some of the key priorities for Alepo India operations today?
India is one of the most strategic markets for Alepo (www.alepo.com). We continue to bring software led network innovations in India. Ahead of Mobile World Congress 2015, Alepo announced its new Mobile Broadband Accelerator Solution to help wireless network operators rapidly innovate and monetize 3G and 4G mobile broadband networks.
Alepo’s Mobile Broadband Accelerator (MBBA) is an open, flexible solution that enables wireless network operators to introduce new mobile broadband use cases that accelerate revenue growth, market share, and business success. The solution enables operators to rapidly launch differentiated services, enhance the customer experience, leverage valuable network and business insights, and discover new revenue streams for mobile broadband.
With an Alepo MBBA solution, network operators gain a single platform that can support the most attractive and revenue-boosting mobile broadband plans and promotions on the market today. What’s more, Alepo’s flexible, open solution makes it simple to create new types of offers as they are designed by the operator’s marketing department. This means that operators can get to market faster with differentiated service offerings and stay ahead of the competition. Alepo’s MBBA solution enables a wealth of popular data plans and promotions out of the box, including tiered services, data rollover plans, pay-as-you-go, and more.
With Alepo’s Mobile Broadband Accelerator solution, operators in India can enhance their prepaid data business with advanced features like emergency top ups, recharge rewards, application-based refills, data rollover incentives, and more.
As telecom operators embrace next gen networks – what are some of the OSS innovations that can drive profitability for operators?
With the current pace of innovation, OSS/BSS should be highly flexible to be able to offer new services quickly. Alepo’s Service Enabler Suite of products is generic, GUI driven and extensible. Alepo’s platform can be configured through the product GUI. Say you want to launch a new service. You can create the commercial and technical service from the GUI itself, no need for customization. Defining service parameters – whether customer selected ones, fetched from database ones, retrieved from third party ones – is all GUI driven.
Alepo expects the OSS/BSS segment to strive further with ever more compelling technologies and services such as IMS, Video Steaming (Netflix spreading around), High Quality Voice and a wealth of VAS that bring real value to people’s daily life experience.
We also keep hearing about the power of cloud and NFV – what is your opinion on the delivery of OSS on cloud and virtualized platforms?
As cloud computing is moving inside the telecoms ecosystem delivery models, today operators can do many more activities around data services, while utilizing cloud based PCRF solutions.
With cloud delivery model, operators have clear advantages around better manageability and controls. Cloud based PCRF is increasingly getting adopted and helping operators reap the benefits of cloudifying applications and achieve greater level savings around hardware investments.
Alepo’s core network and IT software solutions are NFV / cloud-ready. We can and have deployed our products as VNFs within an operator’s existing NFVI / IaaS / private cloud environment. For example, a large carrier in the Middle East has deployed Alepo’s AAA, Web Self Care, Notification functions, and EMS as VNFs. What’s more, Alepo can and sometimes does deploy our full EPC, including policy and charging control (PCRF, OCS), subscriber management (HSS), and CRM, on top of an Alepo Self-deployed NFVI / IaaS / private cloud layer in order to promote greater reliability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. When appropriate, Alepo can provide managed services, including the management of the private cloud layer as well. Currently, NFVI platforms supported are VMWare (production) and Openstack (planned 1H 2015).
How is Alepo targeting the next level of growth for its Indian operations?
Alepo intends to offer a refreshing vision of OSS/BSS based on flexibility and quick time to market.
Alepo can provide software solutions and professional services that fit directly into the existing network infrastructure. Our market-ready solutions give operators’ faster time to market for new functions and business cases.
Our solutions are real-world tested and proven. And when I say that our solutions “bridge the gaps” , that is to say that we can work within the existing network, plugging in any missing functionality and integration points needed to achieve operator’s business goals.
For large, established operators like Aircel, Airtel, Reliance, IDEA Cellular, Vodafone, we advocate for zero-replacement solutions. So instead of having to wait for an upgrade or customization to your charging system (for example) to support some new business case, we can quickly deliver a more targeted solution that works seamlessly alongside the existing network to achieve operator goal.
Our solutions are designed to work in tandem with operators’ existing charging, billing, policy, and CRM solutions, adding functionality and flexibility without having to replace infrastructure.This means that, with Alepo, operator can design, test and launch new and more advanced data promotions and bundles quickly and easily ‐ even if they’re not currently supported by its charging and billing systems.
How does Alepo look at the growing adoption of Wi-Fi in India – what products and solutions does Alepo has for this growing segment?
The carrier Wi-Fi market is still in its infancy in India. We expect Carrier Wi-Fi to become another access technology for mobile operators alongside LTE or 3.5G. Wi-Fi is spreading out very fast and we see it in almost every market. It is no more limited to a specific geography.
In India Alepo sees a lot of growth coming from Wi-Fi within the mobile data revolution. The potential of Wi-Fi is far greater than the commonly perceived benefit of alleviating congestion. In the longer term, it can affect the industry and operators mobile internet strategies to stay relevant and competitive.
Mobile carriers have recently become more aggressive in their Wi-Fi strategies and will invest in expanding their footprints and penning partnerships with other Wi-Fi providers throughout 2015 Meanwhile, cable and fixed service providers will also continue to expand and strengthen their Wi-Fi offerings. Both will look for new ways to generate new revenue streams over Wi-Fi, especially as Wi-Fi calling and international roaming increase in popularity. Wi-Fi roaming, Wi-Fi offload, and Wi-Fi hotspot business models will be central to mobile providers’ Wi-Fi strategy, and I think we have barely begun to see the full extent of disruptive Wi-Fi opportunities and business models that will reshape the industry over the next few years.
Alepo offers a robust Wi-Fi Hotspot Manager that helps service providers monetize Wi-Fi services and offload Mobile Cellular subscribers to Wi-Fi networks. With a mobile data offload solution from Alepo, service providers can easily alleviate 3G network congestion by taking advantage of existing Wi-Fi networks and thus avoid a costly expansion of their 3G network infrastructure.
