Wired network operators should look to tap their current infrastructure to provide an enhanced wireless experience.
Editor’s Note: The RCR Wireless News Reality Check section is where C-level executives and advisory firms from across the mobile industry share unique insights and experiences.
Converged access networks are becoming the norm for today’s communication service provider as the traditional wireline and fiber operators look to support the changing needs of their customers in an increasingly wireless world. What does a converged network look like for the subscriber when it includes a transparent layer offering seamless handoff between wireless and wired access? How does the CSP provide that seamless world between the wireless access within the home and abroad? These important questions need to be answered as we enter this new industry landscape that’s poised to impact customer service and provide opportunities for CSPs to launch new services.
Subscriber-aware network intelligence
Analysts currently project there are more than 8.4 billion wireless devices connected to the internet today. Without having visibility within the home, it is almost impossible to determine the root cause of any customer’s issue.
The Broadband Forum TR-069 protocol provides a wealth of data and a more holistic overview of the subscriber network than piecing together metrics from diverse streams of information, such as statistics from the CMTS, bandwidth consumption records or the subscriber provisioning stack. However, augmenting this edge intelligence with network level visibility can provide sophisticated insights, enabling for example a customer service representative to determine if issues are caused by Wi-Fi congestion, a localized outage, or low negotiated speeds between the access point and the mobile device. In many cases these root causes can even be resolved remotely without affecting the user experience or requiring a truck roll.
In a typical service provider’s organizational structure there are multiple tiers of support representatives. Much like network operations, these different tiers have differing needs and security requirements. A CSR dashboard not only needs to adapt to support various subscriber device capabilities, but it also should be configured to provide different dashboards for different user groups. Even if a CSR had all the device statistics and settings, a support call – be it troubleshooting or otherwise – could be significantly expedited if the CSR had access to a full set of data.
What is needed is a dashboard framework that can easily import data from third-party systems in the operating support and business support systems stack. Data monitored from network operations tools, such as whether the subscriber is over quota and being rate shaped from a policy enforcement service or whether they are affected by a localized outage, is invaluable to a CSR rep and greatly improves their performance if everything they need is on one screen.
The picture changes dramatically when the CSR can inform the customer the root cause of the issue, for example due to being over quota or localized network outage. The customer is more likely to be satisfied with the reason and can make an informed decision on what to do next. In fact this is an upsell opportunity for a peak hours, high bandwidth package.
Self-driving networks
Let’s face it, providing broadband services is more than just provisioning a gateway. No gateway is the same, provides the same management interfaces or supports the latest protocol of the respective access technology. Beyond the various nuances at the end of the day, there are specific business drivers that need to be solved: be it providing a new multiprotocol label switching circuit, activating community Wi-Fi, provisioning telephony, enabling a new service or providing proactive care. Today’s operators are keenly aware of the need for service agility. Automation is key to ensuring agile and reliable service.
Operating expense reduction
A network that can dynamically adjust to current customer services is fundamental to reducing operating expense. Specifically, a well-oiled solution can eliminate silos between OSS and BSS, reducing most manual processes for technicians and CSR agents. Network issues can be made visible to CSRs and network operating centers alike, and in most cases proactive adjustments can be managed via automated means depending on the situation.
Increased subscriber services
Today’s gateways, tomorrow’s virtual customer premise equipment or virtual service gateway offer a potential wealth of value-added services such as parental control, quota limits or internet of things management. As the number of permutations grow and customer needs change, relying on manual processes in this dynamic new world will not scale. Customers want to be empowered to make changes on their own – even temporary services such as prepaid transactions often experience higher quality of experience if the customer can affect the change by themselves. Event-based automation is key to agility and scaling.
Customer loyalty
With proactive care services, such as automatically optimizing Wi-Fi settings or proactively reaching out transparently to those approaching a quota to give them options to avoid the dreaded bandwidth cap, will result in fewer customer complaints, fewer truck rolls and happier subscribers.
Offering tailored promotions to improve return on investment
Visibility into usage habits and trends makes it easier to understand what new products should be offered and to whom. With the right solution you can identify when a customer should be offered a different package or media access, or a trial upgrade to better suit their bandwidth utilization history, traffic hours, traffic type and subscriber type (business or residential).
Increasing average revenue per user in a competitive market is always a challenge; however, with the increased volume of data and improved granularity, CSPs can generate new revenues from hypercustomized offerings for today’s increasingly unique customer profiles. Data analysis provides service providers the ability to deliver increasingly customized services, improving customer experiences and increasing the profitability of the deployed infrastructure.
One major advantage of these new services is that most of them can be launched using subscriber self-service portals. Configuring intuitive web browser-based portals not only helps you launch and market new services directly to your customers, it also improves the subscriber experience by heightening engagement levels and giving your customer more control over how they use wired and wireless services.
It’s a brave new world for operators as the transition to a wireless environment takes off. Instead of fearing this transition operators need to abandon their comfort zone and embrace new strategies to drive consumer growth and enhanced end user experiences. Data analytics, automation and the self-driving network concept will be the keys in making this happen.
