Operators Eager to Create New Services to Meet User Needs, But Need to Focus on Right OSS/BSS System

With a rich background in the telecoms industry and having more than 13 years of experience in telecom professional services management under his belt, Yang Jiaxiao has been the vice president of ZTE’s service business division since 2007, in charge of ZTE service products management.

He has a key focus on global markets, while keeping a firm eye on ensuring the competitive capability is close to customer demands and promoting high-speed development of the company’s products in this sector.

GTB: In what direction are managed services developing?

Yang Jiaxiao: The traditional focus of managed services is on maintaining proper network operation and fixing faults of devices and networks. An operator lowers cost of operation and maintenance and strengthens its competitiveness through outsourcing network OAM.

With the development of the next-generation network, traditional OAM cannot any longer effectively monitor the operation of a single service in the network, and the impact of a network fault on service income is hard to estimate.

In addition, because of fast growth in the number of users, along with intensive competition in telecom markets and popularization of intelligent user equipment, data services are enjoying a boom.

Besides basic call services, users pay more attention to service quality and experience, which is a new challenge to operators, equipment providers and service providers.

A managed-services provider has to ensure proper operation of basic network key performance indicators. But it must also focus on monitoring and management of service quality and user experience. It must combine technical research achievements and OAM experience.

The managed-services provider should help an operator build a service-oriented and user-oriented OAM system by reforming the operator’s organisational structure and service flow. This will help the operator overcome rivals and make profits.

GTB: What do managed-services providers need to do for network integration of operators?

Yang Jiaxiao: The existing telecoms networks are experiencing technical and structural reforms. An operator must think about how to effectively and comprehensively support all-service operation as a result of network integration.

Changes and new OAM requirements are also the concern of both operators and managed-services providers.

A managed-services provider should centralise OAM of each subnet to implement centralised monitoring and management. Relying on abundant practical experience and complying with international standards—such as eTOM and ITIL—the provider should sort existing workflows, establish a new standard OAM system and build the end-to-end network management capability.

With a professional platform, the provider can accomplish OAM automation and informatisation. The OAM management level and efficiency are enhanced, while cost is reduced. The management and operation of the operator are perfectly supported.

GTB: How do the SOC and BIC motivate service innovation of operators?

Yang Jiaxiao: Thanks to the development of 3G and 4G networks along with mobile internet, data services have developed fast and they contribute greatly to operators’ profits.

But OTT services are bringing them great challenges and traditional services are challenged. Operators are eager to create new services that satisfy user needs—for example, cloud services and M2M services.

In this case, the service operation centre and business intelligence centre will provide end-to-end service quality evaluation and enhancement for these new services.

The user experience lifecycle management solutions provided by the SOC includes a VIP/VAP care solution, an end-user behaviour analysis solution and analysis and retention of user churn. It can assist operators in data service quality management and user experience management.

In the BIC, a big-data platform can be deployed to dig down into service data, which helps operators fully exploit service potential and increase profits.

Precision marketing is a typical application of big data, which has been proved in the IT and CT domains. Making use of network data and BOSS data, precision marketing filters and analyses data by using big data technology to obtain precise information about users, such as age, gender, vocation, address, preferences for user equipment and contents, and time schedule.

Precision marketing policies can be formulated based on this user information. Relying on existing marketing channels, operators establish the precision marketing capability and attract more partners for advertisements for goods, movies and apps stores. Value-added profits are greatly enhanced.

GTB: What reforms will be made for the next generation network management system (BSS/OSS)?

Yang Jiaxiao: Service innovation contributes the most in terms of enhancing operators’ profits. Operators need a flexible BSS/OSS system to innovate new services and user experience and to achieve marketing targets.

The evolution and flexibility of the BSS/OSS system determine whether an operator succeeds in market competition. Each new service needs the support of an integrated BSS/OSS solution.

In order to successfully and properly reform the BSS/OSS system, the managed-services provider must investigate the operator’s networks, supporting devices and systems, especially the existing BSS/OSS system, and learn about the operator’s service innovation plans.

The provider must then communicate with the operator to analyse the existing BSS/OSS solution and identify the strategy for reform. This will help them formulate a better solution for future services. The operator should collaborate with device providers and service providers to formulate the most suitable solution.

In general, providers are involved in the implementation of new products and services of the operator and the OSS/BSS system reforms are more likely to succeed with the collaboration of the providers.

Because the OSS/BSS system is intrinsically comprised of IT systems, OSS/BSS system reforms need involvement of systems integrators.

A device or service partner with a powerful OSS/BSS integration capability can ensure successful reforms of the OSS/BSS system. Conversion and reforms of the OSS/BSS system greatly affect telecom market changes and service provision.

I hope successful OSS/BSS system reforms will bring more opportunities to operators and help them win market competition.

GTB: The development of mobile network greatly enhances consumption of data traffic, but the profits of operators go down. Traditional services, especially the SMS service, are seriously affected. How do you think operators should cope with this trend?

Yang Jiaxiao: The fast growth of smart phones and mobile applications changes user habits, dramatically expands data consumption, and speeds up the arrival of the mobile internet age.

Communication is not targeted for a pure user but internet of things based on personal services. The statistics indicate that mobile phone users do not reduce the number of calls they make or answer—or the duration of their mobile phone communications.

Mobile phones play a greater part in everyday human life and demand far more bandwidth.

However, there is no obvious connection between the growth of data consumption and that of profits. The profits from the pure channel-charging mode increase or decrease slightly.

Though channelisation is an inevitable trend, operators can still play an important part. First, operators need to know channel details, including the services in operation, characteristics of each service, frequency and requirements for the channel. The answers to these questions prove the value of the channel.

Second, operators must make full use of channels to create added value for users. Services vary in quality-of-service requirements and future prospects.

Operators should provide different channel applications for different services. Take an express delivery company as an example: for urgent and important materials, the company can deliver by plane; for materials that are large and not so time-dependent, the company can deliver by train or ship.

Differentiated services generate value, which can be shown by the collaboration of Google and Orange.

After learning and controlling the services, operators obtain a larger development space. On one hand, operators can attract users to access a service more frequently through ensuring quality of key services and enhancing user satisfaction. On the other hand, operators can collaborate with over-the-top providers on promising strategic services to implement win-win.

Being rich in its experience of traffic operation, ZTE can ensure operators high service quality and user experience and help them learn and control channels that can contribute great profits.

GTB: Operators have enormous user data. How do they make full use of user data after ensuring user privacy?

Yang Jiaxiao: Operators own enormous amounts of user data. However, the value of that user data has not been exploited. Based on the premise of protecting user privacy and the target of satisfying user needs, operators and related enterprises will certainly make profits from data digging when user requirements are met.

Operators must dig down into big data themselves. There are many potential applications:

●    Relying on the cloud storage technology, operators can permit users to access, query and analyse data. New products and services can be embedded.

●    Through user data analysis and digging, operators can perform better user care and enhance user satisfaction. User loss can be reduced by data analysis and corresponding strategies.

●     Through analysis of user consumption habits, operators can perform precision marketing, which can not only enhance service consumption but also help users find suitable services and products.