Another year and another Mobile World Congress, an event that just gets ever bigger and one this year which signalled that shifts in the communications landscape are bringing a new coherence to the industry. Key drivers such as monetization of 4G, the response to new EU roaming laws (that threaten to eat many an operators’ lunch) and a focus on how to make system estates more agile in order to capitalise on growth opportunity, were all key themes for the OSS/BSS segment of the show.

There is a marked shift in Europe to managed services and private cloud as a model, especially for BSS. These models offer service providers the opportunity to add key capabilities into their system estates at a much lower total cost of ownership and with the agility that does not mean a rip and replace strategy or high risk transformation. The ability to move with ...

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The utilities industry has undergone significant change over the past few years as legal, environmental and commercial issues have transformed a once-monopolistic market. Alongside these developments, increased market competition has proved challenging for utilities companies, and it has been widely referenced that the sector needs to adopt a more transparent, scalable and customer-centric approach if it is to prosper.

In one of my recent posts, I suggested that the telecoms sector has needed to respond to recent surges in consumer data usage – demonstrating a value-added service that is appropriately measurable and scalable for users. While Communications Service Providers (CSPs) have a way to go before this is achieved, the availability of sophisticated Business Support Systems (BSS) means that telecoms has the agility and functionality to provision, bill and manage customers across the spectrum of services they use. To respond to its own market challenges, the utilities sector could look to ...

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The recently announced changes to EU roaming charges bring about a great deal of fairness to the consumer, in that there will be less opportunity for unwittingly running up excessive charges abroad, and thus hopefully avoiding the subsequent bill-shock a month later. From the perspective of the operators there is a willingness to adopt network sharing models in order to drive cost efficiencies that help offset the associated fall in revenues but also the potential for a new business model that could see the introduction of network aggregators that bring more choice and fairness for roaming users.

A key factor in the success of the EU regulations is for operators to shape their services and charges to suit the consumer and their habits – simply adhering to the minimums imposed by the regulations will not deliver the benefits the changes in roaming charges is intended to drive, nor will it offer ...

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