The combination of mobile, cloud, social, big data and the “Internet of things” is driving company efforts from many different industries, and telecom operators are in a good position to take advantage of these trends, according to Mike Riegel, IBM VP for mobile and WebSphere solutions.
“Telecom operators have to have the capability to handle massive numbers of mobile subscribers, and those mobile subscribers consume a lot more bandwidth than the traditional landline telephone,” said Riegel in a video interview during this week’s Impact event. “There are also great opportunities to provide new services, like something AT&T is doing. AT&T is creating a whole new set of cloud-based services so that companies that are developing mobile phone apps can call those functions in the cloud for geolocation or voice-recognition services. That’s a new revenue stream for AT&T and a great new differentiator for their network that they can offer to companies who are developing mobile apps. ”
IBM believes that mobile, cloud, big data and social will be the main trends pushing investment in information and communications technology. During the Impact event, the company showed how different enterprises from several sectors are embracing these trends and coming up with different solutions. (Read more here)
“When you think about big data and social, those are phenomenons are possible because of the cloud,” Riegel said. “So it is a great opportunity for telecos to drive new revenue sources.”
Riegel also described two opportunities telecom and big data analytics can bring to carriers: The first is the traditional form of telecom analytics and the possibilities brought by mining the enormous amount of data they have to better understand network performance and create new services; and the second opportunity is around user analytics providing insights on how phones are actually being used to improve customer engagement.
>>> Check out some pictures from Impact 2013.
Editor’s Note: IBM provided travel costs to attend its Impact 2013 in Las Vegas.
More news in the telecom analytics market:
- Actian announced the acquisition of ParAccel, a company that specializes in high-performance analytics. Actian said that the acquisition further strengthens its position to deliver business value from big data.
- O2 Ireland, part of Telefónica Europe, is using Cognos business intelligence tools and a Teradata data warehouse to analyze customer behavior. In an interview with Computer Weekly, Peter McKenna, head of business intelligence at O2 Ireland, explained how telecom uses business intelligence to reduce churn.
The telecom analytics series provides weekly insights on trends, new products and other topics that touch on the advantages and monetization opportunities of analytics tools for telecom operators, including big data, business intelligence, customer experience analysis and management, business analytics and network analytics.
>>> Be sure to check out RCR Wireless News’ feature report about how carriers can take advantage of analytics solutions to turn data into information assets and on how carriers can leverage big data, business intelligence and customer analytics to drive revenue, reduce churn and improve network performance.