Hola,
Quiero dar la bienvenida a todos nuestros colegas hispanoparlantes, el RA-Blog, pasa a ser bilingüe. Para entrar a la versión en español, vallan a http://ra-blog.org/spanish/ y por supuesto pueden seguir leyéndolo en Ingles en http://ra-blog.org
I want to welcome our Spanish speaking colleagues; the RA-Blog is now bilingual. You can read the Spanish version in http://ra-blog.org/spanish/ , and of course you can continue to read the English version in http://ra-blog.org
Gadi
OK this time you do not have to read me, you can just see an interview I gave to Mike Kelly from the TMF in Management Word 2008, just follow this link
What will be the future main source of Revenue Growth for Service Providers (SP’s)?
Until recently the answer was obvious, “call minutes and premium call minutes”, it seems that this answer is ceasing to apply. Drastic changes are taking place in the global communications industry. It’s no more a secret that the voice call revenues will drastically decline and will no longer be the main source of carrier revenues within the upcoming years.
It was a slippery slope downwards that caused the decline of call prices. First, starting with the downward pricing of call per minute, followed by the “the all you can talk” approach, then, the cheaper IP based “SP’s”, like Skype, and the movement of premium services to web-services, etc.
Moreover it seems that the lower pricing is still going on, with the Skype adaptation of the “all you can eat” approach to international calls. Skype is offering for €8.95/month Unlimited (up to 10,000 minutes) calls to landlines in 34 countries worldwide (0.000835 euro cents per minute if all the minutes are used).
What will be the future source of revenues for SP’s?
Commerce, content, and advertising (CC &A) are three obvious answers. But being obvious do not necessarily make them correct. The future is already up on us and it seems that the fix line SP’s, did not really manage to take their percentage from CC&A going through their infrastructures via the web. Example: How much money do you pay to your SP or ISP for each book you buy from Amazon or Barnes and Noble - ZERO.
Mobile operators are still hoping that NG services are part of the answer. IPTV also raised the hopes for wire line providers, but it still needs to prove that a semi “walled garden” approach will endure, and that they will manage to compete with web services like Apple TV in which the SP’s are deprived from their (due?) share.
Alternatively SP’s revenue model could return mainly to be transmission based. But SP’s do not seem eager to go in that direction, SP’s will not give up on revenues from CC&A without a fight. Will they succeed in the long term to get a portion of the revenue share from web based initiatives, or to create “walled gardens”, is far beyond my prophecy skills. However, I foresee that during their adaptation of CC&A as a central part of their revenue strategy they will do a lot of experimentation. This experimentation will pose many challenges to: Revenue assurance, Revenue Assurance’s solutions, methodology, and state of mind. For example: Understanding the flow of data through the SP’s systems; rethinking of new definition of the value chain; adjusting to different methods of billing; new process of defining controls and KPIs, etc. One thing is for sure all these parties will need to be a lot more flexible in order to meet these challenges. This certainly, will not be an easy period for Revenue Assurance, but at least it will be a challenging and interesting one.