A new report  from Ernst and Young says that Indian operators are losing out of revenues to the tune of 2.5 percent of their total revenues in a year. This is due to revenue leakages caused because of data loss between systems, external frauds and inadequate controls.
The report estimates this loss to be currently at $750 million.

It looks that the Indian operators have a revenue leakage problem, but of course at the same time they have a great opportunity. Hey, but I also found in a survey done by UK research firm Analysys, that

External fraud, internal fraud and fraud by other operators, grew from 2.9% of operators’ total revenue last year to 4.5% this year, said the survey by UK research firm Analysys. … Together this has driven the overall levels of revenue leakage among global telecoms operators from 12.1% last year to 13.6% this year.

So perhaps the Indian operators are doing a great job in regard revenue leakages (at least compared to the rest of the world) Go figure; let me finish with two linked paraphrases

The problem with Industry studies/surveys/reports is that there are so many of them, yet, you can’t live with them, you can’t live without them

Associated Press reported on Monday that,

AT&T customers who have seen mysterious charges for ringtones and other content show up on their cell-phone bills will be eligible for refunds as part of the settlement of a group of class-action lawsuits, a lawyer for the class said Monday.

Customers will able to claim refunds for spurious charges that appeared on up to three of their monthly bills between Jan. 1, 2004, and May 30, 2008, according to Jay Edelson, lead counsel for the plaintiffs.….

Vendors of ringtones and daily text-message services with horoscopes and jokes solicit customers to sign up by entering their phone numbers on Web sites or by sending text messages. The charges, which can be hidden or poorly explained, show up later on cell-phone bills, often as recurring charges.…

The cell-phone carrier keeps some of the fee and passes the rest to the content provider.…

Richter had no estimate for how much the settlement will cost AT&T. Given that the company already let customers contest spurious charges, he said the number who will get refunds through the settlement will be small. The company will pay the plaintiffs’ lawyers $4.3 million

Interesting, and raising many questions

1.      The legal responsibility of the SP, for services and charges, supplied by a third party, but billed by the SP.2.      Will the SP get back the unjustified fees it passed to the content provider

3.      What content consumption reporting mechanisms are in place to permit the SP to verify the content provider  claims, and vice versa to permit the content provider to check that it is receiving the due sums

4.      Now AT&T acknowledges the problem, do their existing mechanisms permit to discover which customers where unjustly charged, and if not, what mechanisms are needed?  It seems that AT&T will wait until the individual customers complaints. Is this approach something that regulation can permit in the long run?

5.      Don’t $4.3 million to the plaintiffs’ lawyers + whatever payments (which I assume will be higher) to the customers + the cost of handling all the individual claims justify some investment in RA tools, and proactive RA methodologies, to prevent such things from happening?

Content is out there and it is a mayor opportunity for SPs. Just supplying it without taking appropriate practices is a mayor risk – it is the SPs responsibility to mitigate the risks, to really enjoy the fruits of the content revolution.

Need I mentioned, proactive Revenue Assurance when launching new services, reactive Revenue Assurance for monitoring unexpected problems, and active Revenue Assurance for solving issues before they affect the bill (without waiting 3.5 years!!!) – Or perhaps these well established paradigms do apply only to new generation services?