Mobile operators get serious about customer data

Posted by Kris Szaniawski Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Add a comment

In one sense it’s no surprise that CEO Simon Beresford-Wylie chose to highlight the fast-growing subscriber data management market at the NSN analyst event at this year’s Mobile World Congress. After all it was exactly a year ago that NSN announced the acquisition of subscriber data specialist Apertio.

But the fact that the CEO of a major infrastructure vendor devoted a sizeable chunk of his keynote speech to an area that not long ago wasn’t on anyone’s radar reveals how much networks efficiency and subscriber data management have come to the fore.

“Boy, are we pleased we bought Apertio” crowed Beresford-Wylie, pointing out that since the acquisition NSN had doubled the customer base for its subscriber data management (SDM) product to 62 customers, with 23 of the new deals having been concluded in the last six months of 2008. He says the rapid growth is a sign that operators have finally realised that data silos are a challenge they need to address.

But NSN’s successes over the past twelve months might be only the tip of the iceberg as subscriber data management emerges as a distinct industry segment.

All the major infrastructure vendors are looking to build on their legacy platform implementations by pitching evolved versions of the HLR to their customers. Those such as Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent with a large customer base in the HLR/HSS market are in theory well placed to upsell to their customers. NSN has been given a boost by the Apertio acquisition and other vendors attracting attention in this space include Huawei and independent subscriber management vendor Blueslice which has managed to clinch deals with the likes of Vimpelcom.

If the number of RFPs relating to SDM is anything to go by operators are finally getting serious about getting to grip with their customer information. Operators seem to have realised they need to restructure the way they store and manage customer profiles and other data in order to create a single view of the customer. As things stand it’s difficult to for operators to make full use of their subscriber data as it’s far too fragmented with multiple identities sitting in different locations.

In developed markets such as Western European it’s often fairly complex factors that are encouraging take-up, such as operators’ desires to integrate the HLR with the HSS, or to store SIP information in the HLR.

But in developing countries it’s often rapid growth that places severe pressure on operators. For example a HLR may be able to support 1-2 million subscribers but in a fast growing market - such as Indonesia, where it’s not unusual for an operator to add 1 million new subs a month - multiple HLRs accumulate pretty quickly. In Telkomsel’s case it now has around 45 independent HLRs.

Adding new HLRs at that rate is not necessarily conducive to seamless data management, so it’s no surprise that four Indonesian operators currently have tenders out for new SDM systems.

But for an operator in any market one of the biggest challenges is how to get valuable subscriber information out of the network and into the hands of those making marketing decisions or responsible for customer relationship management.

There’s a lot that can be achieved internally by correlating subscriber information and usage profiles to gain a better understanding of subscriber preferences and usage patterns. A single view of the customer can generate customer insights. Operators can also use the information to conduct complex queries – for example identifying which subscribers with a particular type of handset are not using Wi-Fi and so might be receptive to marketing.

The next logical step is to enable third parties to use this data. With powerful players such as Apple, Nokia or Microsoft looking to muscle in on the operator’s customer and billing relationships it is becoming increasingly important to have customer information organized in a way that allows operators to share or sell it.

But in the short term operators are likely to implement SDM for more pragrmatic reasons: to make internal processes more efficient and gain insights into the behaviour of their customers.