Indian mobile operator fast-tracks prepaid subscriptions through Nokia Siemens Networks Managed IT Services

One of India’s largest mobile phone operators has come out ahead in the hyper-competitive Indian market after Nokia Siemens Networks took over the management of its prepaid operations. The move has contributed to 40% growth in its prepaid subscriber base. The operator is now much more agile within the marketplace as a result.

“Nokia Siemens Networks has leveraged its deep understanding of the prepaid domain to operate complex multi-vendor setups of our customers. Nokia Siemens Networks Managed IT Services have enabled the CSP to shift its strategic focus from tackling day-to-day operational challenges to pro-actively addressing its core business goals of acquiring and retaining customers in a hyper-competitive market. "

Ashwini Bakshi,
Head of Global Managed Services,
Nokia Siemens Networks

India’s mobile telephony market is characterized by large subscriber volumes, low average revenue per user (ARPU), intense competition and the dominance of prepaid subscriptions, which account for approximately 94% of the total subscription base.

Prepaid tariffs are consequently among the lowest in the world. If operators are to succeed in this market, they must increase their subscriber bases substantially, and also reduce churn with innovative, low-cost value added services.

Challenges

  • To stay competitive while reducing churn through innovative but low-cost value added services
  • Efficient & consistent business operations and superior service quality across multivendor intelligent network (IN) that serves millions
  • Little insights into subscriber behaviour as there was a lack of consolidated information on IT operations

Targeting rural and semi-urban markets

One of India’s largest communications service providers (CSPs), with a presence in all 23 telecom geographical areas, has enjoyed strong subscriber growth despite intensifying competition in the past five years. While the operator saw rural markets in India as a source of new prepaid subscribers, its penetration efforts in 12 of the most important subscriber growth geographical areas, covering most of the core of the Indian rural and semi-urban subscriber base, had only been marginally successful.

The challenge lay in providing consistent operations for millions of subscribers over the CSP’s extensive multi-vendor network, which is based on technology from Comverse, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks. The CSP had to operate and maintain more than 1,600 nodes deployed across 12 distributed sites, no mean feat when it was also working to capture the lion’s share of new prepaid business with new, innovative value-added services that had to be rolled out as quickly as possible.

Solutions

• Nokia Siemens Networks migrated over 100 resources and operates, maintains and supports the CSP’s multi-vendor prepaid services setup,including:

  • Voice and data prepaid services
  • VPN services
  • Calling card services
  • Personal number services
  • Local delivery services performing alarm, fault, configuration and performance monitoring

• Consistent SLAs/KPIs are guaranteed across the distributed operations
• A wide range of comprehensive customer insight reports to the CSP’s business teams

The CSP then decided to work with Nokia Siemens Networks, which would take over the management of its prepaid setup. Nokia Siemens Networks had been selected because its deep telecoms expertise could make a significant impact in the IT services domain. With a reliable partner in Managed IT Services running operations, the CSP would then be able to concentrate on the core activities of customer acquisition and retention, especially in its target markets.

Benefits

  • Outsourcing has allowed the CSP to focus on customer acquisition and retention; the prepaid subscriber base has grown by 40% over four years
  • Reduced time-to-market for innovative, low-cost value added services (VAS)
  • Timely customer segmentation information and focused VAS leading to increased customer loyalty
  • E2E visibility of IT operations based on business-centric SLAs and KPIs
  • Significant OPEX reductions through consolidation of resources

Single point of responsibility
Nokia Siemens Networks’ Managed IT Services agreement with the CSP is for a single ‘service provider offering where the company maintains, supports and operates the CSP’s multi-vendor prepaid services setup. This includes endto- end (E2E) business operations, configuration of the three vendor platforms, two of which are Nokia Siemens Networks’ competitors, and managing all third parties to resolve issues as required. Nokia Siemens Networks also rebadged over 100 resources and guaranteed consistent SLAs/KPIs across the distributed operations.

Nokia Siemens Networks’ best practices ensured that the CSP experienced no business process discontinuity in the transition.Today, Nokia Siemens Networks provides “best-shoring”: the optimum combination of in-sourced, near-shore and off-shore resources for the CSP as required. There are local delivery services for each geographical area, and a dedicated team running operations and looking after alarm, fault, configuration and performance monitoring.

Today, the Nokia Siemens Networks Managed Services team handles voice and data prepaid services; VPN services, calling card services, as well as personal number services for the CSP in one of the largest multi-vendor prepaid setups run with managed services in the world. These activities yield a number of strategic customer insight reports. Insights covered by the reports include the number of active subscribers in the installed base and related details, indications of churn, consumption patterns, how subscribers recharge their subscriptions, and a breakdown of subscribers by service classes.

Customer insights drive differentiation, uptake
With Nokia Siemens Networks’ Managed IT Services team ensuring that prepaid network operations run smoothly and providing the valuable customer insights to help the CSP grow its prepaid subscriber base aggressively, the CSP has gone from about 60 million customers in the 12 target geographical areas to about 90 million in four years.

The operator feels that it has gained considerable flexibility and efficiency as a result of Managed IT Services driven by Nokia Siemens Networks. The customer insights provided by Nokia Siemens Networks help the CSP develop market-winning strategies around customer acquisition and retention, and enable it to launch focused branding initiatives as well as new, innovative prepaid services more rapidly.

These marketing and branding activities have helped the operator to differentiate itself effectively in the Indian market, attracting new subscribers by increasing awareness about the operator’s services, and contributing to the uptake of value added services.

The CSP has also achieved significant OPEX reduction through the unified approach of having network and IT operations handled by a single vendor.