Amdocs looks to have stolen a march on its rivals with the launch of a product aimed at helping mobile operators to capture the multi-billion euro growth in mobile data.
In doing so, they are attempting to redefine the humble data plan: “Service providers need to offer customers a data ‘experience’ not just a data ‘plan’,” commented Amdocs’ David Sharpley in a briefing with European Communications.
Specifically, the US-based vendor claims its new Data Experience Solution will enable mobile operators to provide consumers with highly customsed offers more quickly.
The system is a mixture of hardware and software that includes a policy control and charging engine, a product catalogue and subscriber management functions.
Amdocs has pre-configured a range of what it is calling “market offers” within the system. There are two that immediately jump out: tiered services – data plans based on time, volume and applications; and a “shared wallet” – a data quota that can be shared between families or enterprises.
Other offers include a temporary add-on service that enables operators to automatically provide customers with features such as data roaming, and a bill shock prevention tool that enables customers to set a personal usage limit.
Sharpley said operators had total flexibility to configure the market offers according to their particular needs.
The system is also set up to offload traffic from 3G to WiFi and is preconfigured to work on LTE networks.
From a monetisation standpoint, Sharpley said he expected operators to benefit in particular from upsell opportunities such as giving customers the chance to buy more data once they approached their limit or offering roaming add-ons.
The company conducted research across the industry before settling on the offers it is coming to market with, although Sharpley added that they intended to launch new offers in due course.
It is the company’s first major launch since the acquisition of Bridgewater Systems and Amdocs says the system has been tested on operator networks serving more than 100 million subscribers.
“Mobile data is the single biggest opportunity for operators,” confirmed Sharpley. “The need [for new data solutions] is great as operators need to develop competitive differentiators.”
Currently, operators are either not offering many of the features this new system provides or if they are they are being done through one-off customisations of existing legacy systems, according to Sharpley.
Amdocs is selling its new system on a license basis and Sharpley said the company was “extremely bullish” about operators signing up to buy it.
This next generation of data plans and associated certainly looks like a winner from a customer’s point of view, but how easily operators can integrate them into their existing offers and whether they are fully sold on the promised monetisation benefits will ultimately seal this system’s fate.
Attention now turns to Amdocs’ rivals; it will be interesting to see whether they are able to come up with a compelling solution.
