Products and Customer Experience

The new Gaining Provider Led switching process in the UK took a major step forward recently. With the publishing of the proposed retail processes and the technical interface to the new industry switching hub (https://totsco.org.uk/resources/), this long-talked-about and fundamental industry change is now much more tangible.

While most industries faced financial difficulties due to COVID-19, Internet streaming platforms have seen record subscriber growth. However, demand for online video content has also led to greater VPN usage.

FTTP and gigabit cable will soon be the primary access options for most households in industrialized countries. What drives churn when speed is no longer a bottleneck and service incidents are reduced?

In this first of the Product Insights series, we’ve taken our learnings from engagements with some of the leading CSP brands across the globe to create new ways of tackling product transformation, supporting the digitised future. In this post we focus on the B2B market, exploring how to increase momentum by starting small in order to reduce complexity and win big.

Sharing account credentials for video streaming services has become the norm for many people today. How did password sharing become socially acceptable, what does this mean for video providers’ business models, and what can they do to mitigate the risks?

Sharing passwords for streaming video subscriptions isn’t a new issue, but how common is it? We recently conducted a survey to see how today’s consumers access streaming video content and their attitudes towards sharing account credentials. Read on to see what we found.

For many service providers, the way to prevent illegitimate account sharing and fraud is to employ highly restrictive access barriers. However, these tactics may prove impractical, worsen the customer experience, and prove less competitive compared to others. In this article, we look at an alternative approach to solving the credential sharing problem.

Having established the possibilities of using network data and artificial intelligence in Part 1 of our series on network analytics, in Part 2, we define a framework that telecom companies can employ to prioritize business use cases.

With consumers increasingly looking to outside support to solve their home connection issues, internet service providers are well-positioned to take the lead on Wi-Fi. The consumer home, however, is a territory with many unknowns. How should ISPs handle the challenges of in-home connectivity?

Much of what consumers experience of artificial intelligence (AI) has been focused on front-end customer use cases. But AI has the potential for so much more. This first of a series of articles on network analytics introduces how leveraging the vast amount of available network data can advance applications of AI customer care and experience, and the overall running of communications networks.

Up until now, consumers have shared their account passwords to streaming video services with little or no impunity. That era may soon be over, with Pay TV and OTT markets facing increasing levels of competition and a building pressure to retain revenues. Streaming video service providers should reconsider policies on credential sharing in 2018, both to convert non-subscribers to paid accounts and to reduce unnecessary operational and legal costs.

Network inventory and CRM systems should be an excellent source of information for regulatory authorities in a review of the business connectivity market. However, in practice, service provider data quality is often poor, and cleaning up these data sets can appear daunting. Referring to recent work by Ofcom as an example, we show that with the correct tools and techniques, these issues can be overcome. Regulators can then obtain a detailed understanding of the market, including geographic variations in competitive intensity.

Early-life churn often accounts for ten to fifteen percent of all customer losses – we look at the reasons why customers leave and how service providers can address the underlying drivers.

How business self-reflection aids in aligning long-term strategic priorities with continual business development for product-driven businesses.

The next generation of wireless communications is on the horizon, and the telecoms world is waiting to see exactly at which frequencies 5G will be implemented. Despite some unknowns and technological challenges, it is increasingly becoming clear that millimeter-wave (or millimeter band) will be a key enabler for 5G and it is going to be deployed in very early 5G use cases such as 5G fixed wireless. In this article, we explain the benefits of the different wave frequencies and delve into the activities of the key stakeholders who are shaping the 5G future from a new radio spectrum perspective.

Over-the-top (“OTT”) video providers today downplay the fact that their customers churn at far higher rates than traditional service providers. While OTT video has some important differences from traditional Pay-TV, increasing competition and slowing growth will make customer acquisition a more challenging, and expensive, proposition for OTT providers. Understanding the true causes of churn and implementing some best practices can help OTT providers maximize profitability.

While carriers would prefer to deploy scarce resources in support of fast-growing Ethernet-based services, they find that tackling the challenge of SDH/SONET obsolescence and transitioning to new platforms is riddled with uncertainty and complexity. This article considers what is needed for a holistic approach to SDH/SONET platform retirement.

This article delves into approaches to TDM switch migration including the customer pre-migration activations in decommissioning projects.

The MVNE market is crowded. Many firms – from large-scale vendors and system integrators to specialist and niche players – have entered the market to serve the needs of MNOs and MVNOs. The result is a fragmented and highly competitive environment. What does it take for an MVNE to stand out from the pack?