At a time when telecom operators are finding it difficult to cope up with the ongoing backhaul pressure coming from OTT driven data surge, the year 2015 might prove to be year of the communications service provider community when they start winning the argument around net neutrality.
Quite recently, it happened in India with Airtel announcing separate plans for VoIP services, however the operator was quick to take the scheme back as India’s telecom watchdog is likely to release its recommendations on the issue of Over The Top or OTT model.
MYCOM OSI, a provider of best-in-class Service Assurance solutions to the global Communications Service Providers (CSPs), has revealed the keystones of its commercial success in 2014 and set out its predictions and expectations for the year ahead.
“The network is in danger of becoming estranged from the very customers it is meant to serve because of the difficulty faced by operators in correlating customers and services to the tangled network mess created by more and more technologies, vendors and device types. Network and service quality has the highest impact on customer retention, yet many operators struggle to manage it effectively,” said Mounir Ladki, President and Chief Technology Officer, MYCOM OSI.
“As our acquisition of OSI aptly demonstrated, for us 2014 was all about doubling down on our mission of helping operators with an end-to-end, integrated Service Assurance solution that could bring order, visibility and efficiency to their business at reduced complexity, risk and cost. What is clear is that emphasis on network and service quality will continue to be a defining trend in 2015, because networks and services are only getting more complex – and the risk of subscribers churning is only increasing.”
MYCOM OSI’s predictions for the year ahead include:
Net Neutrality
Operators start to win the Net Neutrality argument. The industry and regulators will finally accept the inevitable – that you cannot have an open and unlimited Internet but still expect mobile operators to invest billions in their infrastructure.
CSPs will start to win the Net Neutrality argument, with developments potentially taking place in Europe first, following the model of fixed-line Internet where speed restrictions determine the price of the broadband package. Customer and application aware traffic management has to be expected if the industry is to continue to develop. Otherwise, it will be innovation itself that is throttled.
NFV
The trend towards virtualization will continue with Orchestration as the major priority. As NFV moves through its own hype cycle, we will see virtualization begin to transform the core network and service delivery.
However, NFV itself will remain in the evaluation phase in 2015 as operators and vendors work with bodies such as the TM Forum and its ‘Catalyst Program’ to establish the best practices and standards needed to create solutions that will really deliver on the NFV promise and successfully address the complexity that NFV introduces. Service and Network Orchestration will be a major priority, and operators will start planning the transformation of their existing OSS to cope with the stepped introduction of NFV.
Mobile TV
After years of hype and unfulfilled promises, streaming mobile TV will finally arrive with LTE and eMBMS. The sign of things to come is clear. For example, in the UK, BT is lined up to buy Everything Everywhere, while Vodafone is already bundling its 4G offering with Sky TV and Netflix subscriptions. In 2015, the perfect storm of LTE networks and the changing balance of power in the broadcast industry will blow the industry towards finally delivering on the ‘mobile TV’ promise.
M2M
Context-sensitive communications will begin to change the nature of app traffic over the network. The rise of contextual information, m-payment, Internet of Things and M2M will shape not only the apps that we use, but also the data traffic they create.
From digital advertising delivered when you walk past a small cell enabled billboard to context-aware ‘To Do Lists’ and alarms that deliver the relevant information at the relevant time, the sophistication of the services will change how apps, users and networks interact.
Big Data
Big Data Analytics will start to win over ‘skeptical’ CSPs. Aside from the hype around Big Data and Analytics, many CSPs will realize the intrinsic value of their network, service, device and customer related data that they can already apply analytics to. In 2015, such data will be used to support optimal business planning and decision-making, such as value-based capacity planning that aligns expensive network CapEx investments with customer and service usage.
Increased complexity will see independent vendors disrupt the Service Assurance market and prompt the exit of a major one-size-fits-all generalist. The established order in the Service Assurance industry will be disrupted. The increasing pace of telecom infrastructure innovation and changes coupled with the breadth of disparate systems from multiple vendors will require Service Assurance vendors to simplify network complexity and reduce operational costs through advanced telecom-specific software features rather than relatively expensive-to-evolve bespoke solutions by Professional Services teams.
No longer able to shape an industry by virtue of their own incumbency, we expect to see at least one major multi-vertical sector IT software giant accept that it cannot deliver the innovation demanded by its telecom sector customers and so exit the Services Assurance market.
