Event

OSS/BSS summit 2007

The Asian telecom industry is facing challenges in terms of managing OSS (Operational Support Systems)/BSS (Business Support System) as a number of companies especially incumbents are using legacy systems and finding it hard to migrate to new systems.

Frost and Sullivan organised a two day OSS/BSS summit in Singapore to discuss the issues faced by telecom operators. The event was focussed on the APAC market and was attended by telecom service providers and operators. The conference began with an opening address from Manoj Menon, Partner-Frost &Sullivan who focussed on the challenges faced by telecom operators with increasing convergence in the telecom space.

In a keynote on building a business case for moving to the next generation of OSS and BSS systems, C P Gurnani, President-International operations, Tech Mahindra said, “The end user is driving the shift in the market, and the growth of various new technologies.” He focussed on a move towards an all IP architecture and shortened product lifecycle for the next generation OSS. There will soon be competition between WiMAX and 2G, 3G and 4G. The OSS layer needs to adapt to these changes.

It was observed throughout the conference that Google and Skype can pose a threat to telcos. Fifty million Gtalk subscribers are a disturbing figure for this segment. However, Dr Lorien Pratt, Program Manager, OSS competitive strategies, STRATECAST, a division of Frost & Sullivan said, “Google and Skype are not a threat for the telcos right now. But in the future, when content and data become an essential part of a telco’s business, companies like Google will have to be taken seriously.” Operators should leverage revenues from search-based advertising, the way Google is particular in making forays into video search, print search, VoIP and municipal wireless broadband. The customer data that telcos receive when a call is made or received; information like the customer’s physical location, the make of the handset, the OS used in the handset etc can be used to target personalised advertising at customers which could also fetch a lot of money for the telcos.

Manoj Menon, Partner, Frost & Sullivan talks about the challenges faced by the telecom industry

Tony Kalcina, Chairman and Founder, Clarity International talks about the importance of unified communications

Competition is growing and profit margins are diminishing. To sustain their profitability operators have realised that they need to focus more on ARPU (average revenue per user) rather than on increasing the user base. This is because the APAC market is already reaching saturation in terms of customers (although the Indian market still has a long way to go). Now to increase the ARPU, they need to offer better services. They need to be more customer-centric rather than being technology or network centric. Offering new services comes with a number of problems, the first being billing. Since there are different applications from different vendors that do not talk to each other, the OSS faces problems with every new feature that is added. One way to escape this issue is through outsourcing services. However, due to heavy competition, margins are low and outsourcing services can lead to losses in revenue rather than an increase in profits.

There was a consensus that telecom is the least automated industry of all. Incumbents especially find it difficult and in many cases unfeasible to automate certain processes. Service providers suggest various methods to counter this problem. One way to tackle this would be through standardised applications and unified systems.

—Varun Aggarwal in Singapore