Have we not all been touched in one form or another by today's unpredictable economy? The “credit crunch” is a reality to every company, including mobile operators. Long-planned investments are being put on the back burner in an effort to conserve budgets, and operators are experiencing more customer churn as subscribers implement personal cost-cutting measures to weather the economic storm. This confluence of events is leading many operators to consider reducing service pricing just to maintain usage levels.
Tomorrow’s economy is uncertain, but subscribers will always be there and they will need to communicate more than ever. Fortunately, in some way, many developing countries are somewhat sheltered from this storm since their mobile penetration continues to grow, generating more voice and data traffic. But, the shelter stops there. Start-up operators in these regions are driving ARPU levels down, challenging established operators in the race to offer new high-value services that attract new subscribers and prevent churn.
But the economic storm is powerful referee – it keeps the playing field even by forcing all players to maintain strict budget controls. To stay in the game, operators must continually invest in their network and aggressively research innovative solutions that help them build market share while keeping a tight lid on spending. Moreover, some regulations, such as the Universal Service Obligation (USO), force operators to provide extended mobile coverage for remote populations. New strategies are needed to offer the coverage, quality of service (QoS) and enticing new services that are mandatory to remaining competitive and fulfilling legal requirements.
Growing Pains
One of the main areas of concern as traffic increases is the operator's transmission network. While the core of this network is based on fiber technology and therefore suited for the bandwidth capacity requirements it is a completely different story when it comes to increasing capacity between cell towers and the first point of concentration. There, we are likely to see many E1-centric communication systems. And they do not scale easily. With exponential data traffic, the deployment of additional E1s becomes crucial.
In the other hand, many operators must honor their prior commitments to offer mobile services in rural areas through the USO programs. When several aspects, including geographical and economical concerns made it difficult to deploy traditional microwave or wireline technology, satellite technologies were always a good, reliable alternative. But to make matters worse, many regions are now lacking satellite transponder capacity!
Your Bail-Out is Here!
More than ever, and certainly until circumstances ease, operators need a technology to expand capacity while controlling CAPEX and OPEX.
Considering Optimization, Compression and Aggregation (OCA) solution allows mobile operators to handle more traffic without any infrastructure upgrade investment. OPEX reduction and CAPEX kept under tight control, isn't that appealing?
A Mobile Operator in Africa was recently planning to offer 3G services. The deployment plan required 172 3G Node Bs for a total of 221xE1. The operator had already deployed four (4) STM-1 rings for its GSM network and was faced with two options: either acquire four (4) additional STM-1s OR optimize the GSM network to free existing E1s. After careful consideration the choice was obvious: optimizing the existing infrastructure would yield a $5M savings in OPEX over three years. This option offered a wealthy business case and allowed the operator to reduce its four hundreds (400) E1s to one-hundred-seventy-two (172), freeing over 50% of its existing E1s capacity - in just a few weeks. No impact on Qos; no subscribers churn; and the competitive advantage of offering 3G services before its competitors. Suffice to say, in just a few months the operator observed a significant gain of market share.
A win-win solution to surviving this credit crunch!
It is now clearer than ever: there is a way to ensure profitability in difficult financial times. Yes, all-you-can-eat service plans can still be launched, as well as premium mobile services. Today's networks don't need any major forklift upgrades to deliver more services, accommodate more subscribers or reach out to remote subscribers.
Optimization and Compression solutions deliver additional capacity without significant investment, and the payback is extremely quick! It is definitely time to capitalize on existing assets and leverage existing infrastructure. Enjoy a few more years without worrying about major investments on your current network. Keep your customers happy while the credit crunch period fades away… and ensure revenues keep growing!
