Trends Most Likely to Impact Data Monetization for CSPs
By : Flytxt
Telecommunications technology is transforming our lives in ways beyond what we could have imagined few years back. With technology advancements, new services proliferation and explosion of connected devices, data is getting generated thick and fast. Communication Service Providers (CSPs) that operate in highly volatile and competitive environment have to use this goldmine of data, and monetize the same to succeed and gain higher customer wallet and market share. Going forward we believe that few trends are going to shape up how CSPs will monetize their fastest growing asset of data.
How fast the new technologies will get adopted?
Technology evolution happens at three levels in telecommunications world – network level, device level and service level. 4G and LTE technologies are establishing much faster communication possible, enabling seamless wireless connectivity across devices and locations. New technologies and communication protocols like Near Field Communication (NFC) and Machine-to-machine communication (M2M) are opening up a wide array of applications and services available on communication networks. Networks get faster, reliable and smarter with the adoption of new paradigms like Software Defined Network and cloud sharing.
How many users would get connected to the IoT landscape on mobile?
Mobile Internet is spreading like wildfire now. ITU estimates that 32% of population globally, and 21% in emerging markets accessed internet on mobile in 2014. With the connected world and larger ecosystem of Internet of Things (IoT) expanding rapidly and getting accessed from handheld smart devices, the plethora of services and business opportunities for CSPs seem infinite. Advancements in broadband communication technologies and availability of affordable smart devices are accelerating this trend. CSPs are gearing to become the reliable and smart backbone enabler for M2M and IoT to flourish commercially.
How efficiently Big Data will be integrated and put into use?
The first two trends lead to exponential growth in data in all its dimensions of volume, velocity and veracity. Cisco is forecasting mobile data to grow 18 fold higher in the next couple of years. CSPs need to develop expertise in putting in best practices for integrating and managing this multi-dimensional data. Matured Big Data Governance practices will help to establish high availability of any and all data with absolute quality too. CSPs would increasingly go in for a hybrid data processing architecture that goes beyond traditional data warehouses by combining it with big data frameworks like Hadoop. Need for deploying techniques and approaches like Data Lakes is becoming widely debated in the context of the need of analysing disparate sources of data in their native format with minimal IT infrastructure. In stream processing and in memory database technologies are already getting deployed on a big scale to overcome the challenge of integrating fast incoming data, so as to make it useful for analytics and decision making. 2015 is generally seen as a year, where cognitive computing will take off in a big way.
How quickly and deeper can analytics engines go in turning data to actionable insights?
Big Data Analytics is maturing in many directions within the CSP organization. Ability to consume any and all data irrespective of its form, type etc. is one of the dimensions. Use of advanced analytics models going beyond descriptive to predictive and prescriptive would help to leverage the best out of data in deriving optimal decisions at any point of time. Heuristic models combining human wisdom and judgement and machine learned insights will make decisioning faster, accurate and seamless across workflows and touch points. Data storytelling, governed data discovery and ease of accessibility to analytics over handheld and palmtop devices is gaining demand from business users and enterprises. The third dimension is of course speed of actioning/decisioning. Streaming analytics makes it possible to derive insights in real-time from complex events and also let business users to respond with appropriate action/decision again in real-time. Last but not the least is the ability of the CSP to mature their analytics practices to cover any of the data sources and streams on one side as well as any of the business workflows and decision points on the other side.
How effective and transparent would be the collaborative business models?
Business model innovation is of equal importance to CSPs, when it comes to monetizing data, and achieving success in the new age business environment. Two sided business models that collaborate with both supply and demand side platforms to ensure proper monetization of data assets is an imperative that CSPs need to explore. Partnerships with players like OTT service providers to monetize CSP data assets would create new revenue models for CSPs. This kind of partnerships through Open APIs will enable secure and user friendly sharing of information assets to third parties. These collaborative business models need to get matured not only in terms of sharing their core competencies and assets, but also transparent enough to come out with trusted and proven means of measuring and sharing the value generated. In advertising ecosystem, there is a clear inclination towards programmatic buying and selling where the rates are decided by the market in a Real-time Bidding scenario. Similar transparent market driven pricing and measurement models need to evolve to make these partnerships thrive and co-exist in the long run.
A strong urge for data monetization, coupled with technology capabilities, advanced analytics, good data governance and business model innovation can create transformational results for CSPs in the new age telecom market.