Mobile data continues to be a success story for today's hard-pressed communications industry. Driven largely by flat-rate pricing, the increasing consumer appetite for mobile data services shows little sign of flagging. By 2013, nearly 38% of European mobile users will be accessing the Internet when out and about (1). Nokia Siemens Networks forecasts an 800% rise in the volume of data transmitted over mobile networks over the next four years.
Making the most of this opportunity demands a full understanding of customer mobile Internet behavior based on the real-time analysis of subscriber data. Yet a recent Nokia Siemens Networks survey of 100 senior executives of mobile operators and mobile Internet portals has revealed widespread recognition of the need to invest in improved subscriber data systems.
The study found that more than half of respondents thought that their existing customer data infrastructure didn't enable analysis of customer behavior, while almost as many say that data is not being analyzed quickly enough. The key issue is that most subscriber data is held in fragmented databases and legacy data management platforms.
Nimble service launches
"I was traveling in Europe recently when my communications service provider (CSP) called me to offer a new pricing plan for its mobile data service," relates Rick Halton, Head of Profile Solution Management, Nokia Siemens Networks. "I was not impressed because I was paying the roaming fees for the call. The CSP would have known that I was roaming yet even this basic data from my profile was not being used to improve my service experience."
A unified picture of subscriber data significantly improves a CSP's competitiveness in today's intense markets. The growing demand for mobile data is creating pressure on CSPs to bring mobile applications to market much more quickly. While the average time to market for a mobile application has improved from 10 months in 2007 to 7 months in 2008, the study shows that CSPs want to reduce this even further to 2.6 months.
"The solution is to combine all subscriber data into a single database that can be accessed through open interfaces by any application. Applications can then become 'dataless', needing only to be connected to the common directory, eliminating the integration costs and delays that dog service launches," explains Halton.
However, the benefits of real-time access to the wealth of subscriber data held by mobile CSPs are far greater than simple efficiency improvements. Novel ways to enrich the customer experience and generate new revenue sources exist through data brokerage.
Sharing data, winning revenue
"To give another personal example, when traveling in eastern Europe, my credit card was blocked for security reasons. Had the bank been able to access my roaming data, they would have known where I was and not cancelled my card, improving my service experience and saving them the cost of issuing a new card and a month of lost income," Halton says. "Using subscriber data in more creative ways by adopting a two-sided business model, with subscribers on one side and business partners and advertisers on the other, opens up many revenue-generating opportunities for CSPs."
It's a prospect that the study also addresses by highlighting the difference between mobile portals and mobile operators in their approach to data brokerage. Due to confidentiality requirements and longer-term customer relationships, only 4% of mobile operators currently offer incentives to their customers to allow their data to be shared with third-party businesses. The comparable figure for mobile portals was 27%, highlighting their greater success in convincing customers to allow personal data sharing.
Mobile advertising is another much-hyped topic that will benefit from detailed real-time subscriber data from CSPs. As Halton says: "Most people have been talking about demographic-based advertising. But behavioral-based advertising that takes into account a customer's current status and behavior would be much more successful."
(1) Forrester European Mobile Forecast 2008 to 2013
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