If a mobile operator doesn’t have subscribers, it doesn’t have a business. If it can’t manage those subscribers effectively, it can’t have an effective business. However, the process is often characterised by disparate and disjointed systems pulling human resources in different directions and creating something of a financial black hole. Tony Wilson, operations director at Martin Dawes Systems explains why this doesn’t have to, and shouldn’t, be the case.

Mobile Europe: Why is there a need for operators to change the way they manage subscribers?

Tony Wilson: The motivation to change subscriber management systems already exists. Mobile operators and service providers need to be able to support new 2.5G and 3G services. This requires an element of change anyway as, at the very least, they will have to enhance what they have.

Mobile Europe: What are the key criteria that a subscriber management system needs to deliver to the mobile market today?

Tony Wilson: For all mobile operators and service providers and particularly the Tier 1 organisations encumbered with massive debts, the focus has to be on lowering cost — that’s the cost of customer acquisition and the cost of managing that customer. Furthermore, minimising churn has become priority for all.  A few years ago, the emphasis was on IP billing and the underlying requirement for technology still exists — indeed, we support fixed, mobile and IP networks — but the value proposition is what is key and that is where  Martin Dawes Systems (MDS) has a real edge.

Aside from driving down the cost of IT systems required for managing subscriber information, the systems needed now and in the future must help the organisation in its attempts to increase ARPU by launching new services quickly and efficiently; reduce churn by creating a positive customer experience and provide a tool in the subscriber management solution which can be leveraged to increase the value of the business as a whole.

The subscriber management system needs to be a strategic tool for our customers — something that improves the business, rather than hinders it.

Mobile Europe: What is the MDS solution?

Tony Wilson: Dise 3G is a pre-integrated end-to-end subscriber management solution. It covers all aspects of subscription-based management including billing, rating, CRM, self-care, order management, sales and marketing management and revenue assurance. 
The solution is modular and comes in the form of core and satellite sections. The core elements are those fundamental to subscriber management — order management, billing, revenue assurance, sales and marketing, self-care and CRM — and are common to all implementations. The satellite applications can be unique to each customer and include such things as additional connectivity to the network for provisioning and call/charge receipt, or connections to the customer’s bank for payment or to credit referencing agencies.

The strength of Dise 3G is the ability of this underlying architecture to meet the fundamental requirements for billing now and in the future. This is where so many organisations fail.  To do this you have to identify the fundamental functions which can be used as a base for the development of billing for all services. These include such capabilities as multiple tariffing, content billing, fixed and variable charging, bundling and discounting. Using these as a lowest common denominator, you then have the flexibility to bill for all services in any way you want to.

Mobile Europe: What alternatives exist in the market today?

Tony Wilson: There really aren’t many end-to-end solutions out there and a significant proportion of the market doesn’t even realise that systems such as Dise 3G exist. Indeed, many of our potential customers believe that their only option is to go for multi-vendor systems. Therefore, our biggest competition comes from systems integrators that piece together systems using elements from multiple vendors. However, due to the cost pressures on the market in general, we are now beginning to see interest in our product from systems integrators as it offers a definitive value proposition.

Mobile Europe: What makes Dise3G so different?

Tony Wilson: Dise 3G is modular so it gives our customers great flexibility but the applications are also pre-integrated which means they are easier and quicker to deploy. Perhaps even more importantly, they are also more efficient.  For example, if a multi-vendor solution is chosen and implemented with the help of a systems integrator, there will need to be a separate database for each applica-tion. Data could well be replicated across all the different vendors’ products and can, in the more extreme cases, increase the requirements by up to 800% and ironically, reducing the capacity of the system in terms of response times and number of customers supported. If you also bear in mind that different skill sets are then required for each chosen hardware platform and software option, then mobile service providers are looking at needing two or three times the in-house expertise to support a multi-vendor solution as opposed to Dise 3G.

Furthermore, Dise 3G has an inherent workflow engine that defines the work-flow processes. This is vastly different from the disjointed workflow of the type of  multi-vendor solutions that are offered in competition to Dise 3G.  All data is held on the same database which is accessed by all the applications. This means that all departments are looking at the same information, a function that increases efficiency and improves customer service at the same time.

A final point is that self-care and on-line account management are fundamental requirements now, particular for servicing the corporate market but it doesn’t have to be a separate system. We recognised this some years ago and delivered this function as part of the complete solution for the first time in 1999 to O2 (then BTCellnet). Initially, this function was offered to consumers but a corporate presentation layer was added soon after.

Mobile Europe: Do you offer any functionality that is specific to corporate mobile users?

The consumer and corporate requirements are different and the underlying design architecture of Dise 3G is key here in that it allows service providers to meet those different needs from the same system. The corporate option has more sophisticated functions and allows service providers to meet the billing presentation requirements of corporate customers. It can therefore handle complicated requirements such as discounting based on multiple services and multiple users with the ability to support multiple hierarchies found in the corporate environment, thus supporting the specific requirements of the individual to the satisfaction of the corporate entity in terms of care and cost.
Mobile Europe: Martin Dawes Systems may not be known to all our readers; how would you demonstrate you credibility to potential customers?

Tony Wilson:  Martin Dawes Systems  as a separate entity has been in the business of providing subscriber management systems since 1997. However, our experience and expertise goes back much further than that.

The first product was developed in-house for Martin Dawes Telecoms in 1985.  As a result, it, like those that have followed, were developed to meet the real needs of communications service providers. The second generation product, launched in 1989, attracted a great deal of external attention due to its effectiveness which ultimately inspired France Telecom to enter into a joint venture with us.

The creation of MDS as a separate enterprise was based on the efficiencies and value which the subscriber management product offers and came on the back of benchmarking work done in Germany. This demonstrated that the cost of ownership of each subscriber with Dise was 40% less than the systems used by other operators and service providers in Germany. Amongst our key customers are two of Europe’s leading mobile operators, O2 in the UK and Orange France.

Mobile Europe: How complicated is the integration process and how long does Dise 3G take to implement?

Tony Wilson: The implementation process is unique for each business because Dise 3G has to work with the network. Each network has its own individual switch environment for example. These create bespoke records for that network which we take and run through our system to translate them into common forms. Then, Dise 3G can apply what are, to all intents and purposes, individual charge requirements.

This works effectively for a single service provider but it is just as relevant for MVNOs. For example, the tariffing policies used by O2 and Orange are very different and so are the ways in which those networks present information to Dise 3G. But using our system, an MVNO could receive those records from each of the networks and collate, process and simplify them to allow the MVNO to charge as it wants to.
This is a prime example of how the experience of Martin Dawes Telecommunications has be leveraged.  We have connected to most Tier 1 operators in Europe, the USA and Australia and therefore we have a database of interfaces with those networks which makes the process much quicker and easier.  A new customer could be up and running with Dise 3G only six months after identifying the requirement for a new system.

Mobile Europe: How much does Dise 3G cost to implement and what kind of return on investment does it offer?

Tony Wilson:  The cost of the implementation obviously depends on the complexity of the solution the customer wants, as does the payback. However, the important thing is that a cost advantage can always be proved as Dise 3G provides an improvement on the cost the customer would see in the management and improvement of their existing system or over new multi-vendor systems.

There are cost benefits inherent to implementing a single integrated system over a multi-vendor solution, as has already been outlined, but the cost savings do not stop there. In a multi-vendor environment every change in requirements, such as the introduction of a new application, has to be integrated to every element.  With Dise 3G this only has to be done once. Therefore, launching new services is less complicated and this has a cost implication.

In short, we can turn round change faster than anyone else as we understand all the elements of managing a communications business. Cost savings can be drawn from increased workflow efficiency and the better management of subscribers in addition to the capital cost savings, and finally, revenue benefits can be derived from reducing churn and improving customer service. Dise 3G is a proven and cost-effective system.

The device will be marketed as an entry level mass market mobile internet device, but also one that offers the Android experience – including the Marketplace and Google apps and services.

David Kerrigan, Head of Internet Services at 3 UK, said, “We want to bring the 3G mobile internet experience to as many customers as we can. Pricing has been a barrier to that, by bringing the price down to £100 then that is the next step to the mass market.”

For 3, having an Android based handset at this level means that he can run services in a unified way across as many handsets as possible. The operator has to date targeted this segment with the Inq phones, which up to now have been based on Brew. O2 launched the HTC Smart earlier this year – a phone that was also based on Brew but also carried HTC’s Sense UI.

So how mass market is mass market? Well, ZTE’s Director of Mobile Device Operations, Wu Sa, told Mobile Europe that the handset vendor expects to ship “tens of thousands” of the devices this year.

So will 3 have the network in place to support the mass mobile internet market?

Those who follow these things will be interested in a couple of remarks from Kerrigan at the event. The first is that 3 bases its “entire strategy” on having the best 3G network in the UK. The operator plans to increase its number of sites from 11,570 to 15,949 by 201, he said. 3’s focus on its network has led to it having a live tracker on its intranet, telling employees whenever a new site comes on line.

“We’re all supposed to be able to talk knowledgably about the network,” he said, “even though I’m from sales and marketing,” he added.

Content is fundamental to the future success of Europe’s mobile operators, we all know that, but how do you identify, purchase and deliver that winning content? Catherine Haslam reports on the various technical and business issues that are being addressed to enable consumers to get their hands on compelling content they are willing to pay for.

The networks are now in place to deliver data effectively. GPRS is widespread in Europe and key applications have been implemented as well. Java downloads, MMS and even WAP are all technologies capable of providing the technical mechanisms to access content, are well on the way but without content they are nothing.

Content , however, is one of those all-encompassing terms that is easy to say but far more difficult to acquire in any meaningful way.  The Internet model — providing a single method for consumers to access a vast quantity of content, a browser, which they must then navigate their own way through, has grown steadily to provide more valuable tools such as search engines. The initial thoughts behind WAP were probably that mobile access to this vast store of content would drive itself, but the reality was that the mobile environment was, and still remains different.

Mobile specific

Reduced bandwidth, small displays and limited processing power and battery life meant that the Internet structure could not simply be ported to the mobile world. This created no end of technical challenges and, in finding solutions for them, most would now agree that the industry lost sight of the importance of encouraging content owners to want to enter the mobile market.  This manifested itself in the fact that applications developers and content owners needed to deliver content in a new language — WML — and in many different formats for the wide variety of handsets. This was always unlikely and the fact that mobile operators were unwilling or unable to develop revenue sharing agreements, put paid to developments at that time. Content providers were put off for some time but the fact that GPRS networks are now reasonably stable and MMS is rolling out, means that operators have been working hard on rectifying this situation.

In the UK, O2 has a long-running association with TV station Channel 4 and its production of Big Brother. This positive experience which began with text message alerts and has developed into a situation where, “On each occasion that a new technology becomes available, we have been able to showcase them with Channel 4.” The latest manifestation of this is cross-network MMS services providing consumers with text and images, talking heads and even video clips for those with the Nokia 3650.

Neither is O2 alone in its efforts to build relationships with content holders. According to Julian Zmood, head of entertainment for Orange World, there is now an “On going dialogue between Orange and major content holders with the aim to find a good fit for both sides.”
The level of such discussions has become obvious with the announcement of a content deal with one of the biggest content brands, Disney,  for the delivery of multimedia content across a number of Orange businesses. However, he also recognised that this is just one element of the process. 

“This is a very different environment with a wide range of handsets, colour options, and sound variations — mono and polyphonic sound in a range of formats. 18-24 months ago, people hadn’t thought through this but now they have. It’s a step change,” Zmood explains.

The key issues that have to be addressed are how you can take existing content, whatever it may be, and translate it into a format that is capable of being carried by a mobile network and received in the correct format by a mobile device. It sounds simple but it certainly isn’t.

Imagine sending the same multimedia message to the Ericsson T68i and Nokia 7650. They have different size and resolution screens; different versions of polyphonic sound and support MMS in different ways. The MMS standard and interoperability testing takes care of some of the transcoding for different handsets but alone it is not enough.
Firstly, the content has to be in the right format and, while Zmood suggests that, “Investment is needed on both sides to get this going,” Core Media’s UK Manager Val Karruck suggests, “Content people are not generally into technology and therefore we have to keep it simple.”

Keeping it simple for content holders means being able to take content in a variety of formats, perhaps even in the original format and translating it into the right formats for the mobile network and then for the individual handset. Obviously, it would be prudent to deploy a platform which is capable of doing this for all MMS content rather than for each specific content provider or form of content. According to Karruck, “In many ways it’s a ‘no brainer’. It has to be done,” but there are a number of options.

The Core Media solution is based on OMA standards which cope with the delivery of content to multiple handsets and, according to the company is the first such solution to hit the market. However, it does more than this as Core Media believes this platform should be about much more than formatting and transcoding and that it should be the central part of the whole content delivery system.  The content server can take content in any format and convert it into an MMS-usable form. The platform does more than this as it adds all the information necessary to ensure that content can be built into effective MMS services, billed for and the content holder paid. The system manages the thorny issues of Digital Rights Management (DRM).

The right to manage

The system establishes who owns the rights and when content is free for the marketing department to develop services using a series of drag and drop tools. In accordance with the OMA standards, a rights object is attached to the content which gives the consumer the right to download the content and decrypt it. It also restricts forwarding unless that is allowed by the digital rights licence. Furthermore, the system builds a library of rights objects which speeds up the development of services as they can be included in any new service, rather than having to create them from scratch each time.

Far from the digital rights free-for-all that has characterised much of the distribution of digital content on the web, the mobile business and content holders are determined not to make the same mistakes. As Zmood says, “Digital rights management is a fundamental issue and one which Orange takes very seriously. The simple way to be sure is to check the copyright but many have made assumptions. In dealings with partners we check any claims and promote only what we are legally able to do so.” However, he did admit that confusion about rights “Had slowed offerings down.”

Selling concepts

Perhaps even more fundamental to the mobile operators business is to sell the value of mobile as a medium to content providers. This is something that Brainstorm has been heavily involved in. It has created a whole range of scenarios describing different possibilities for making sound businesses from mobilising content.
Brainstorm offers two products —  M-Enable and M-Designer which combine to offer a web-based MMS service delivery system. M-Enable is all about facilitating the easy flow of content to the mobile world. It sits between the content provider and the MMSC and supports 12 different APIs, something ceo Craig Massey explains, “Allows any content provider to come to Brainstorm as a content aggregator.”

The system uses genuine MMS coding to enable cross network services and creates style sheet templates for both content and the multitude of handsets on the market. As a result, new services can be created from menus quickly and effectively. Massey believes this is a vastly superior solution to those based on WAP Push which he describes as, “Atrocious. It degenerates MMS, it doesn’t support JPEG or GIF formats, or audio and therefore cuts down MMS functionality. It’s a seriously poor man’s MMS.”

Service abstraction

Another player in the content delivery marketplace is Mobile Cohesion. It, like Core Media and Brainstorn, believes that there is a necessity to make the route to market easy for content owners. All it requires is “very simple xHTML to get content up and running,” according to the company’s cto Louis Corrigan.

 The system reduces the input required from content providers by introducing another layer into the network which abstracts the network elements needed for MMS — MMSCs and SMSCs — from the content with a middle platform which handles the interfaces to these and other systems such as the billing system, and therefore takes the API programming element out of the content provider’s hands. This creates a “simple fetch mechanism for high value content,” according to Corrigan

. The company’s ceo Dennis Murphy, further explains that this abstraction means that content can be delivered across a range of applications and bearers which builds an applications safety net. While Corrigan admits that “Some operators have bits and pieces of this in bespoke systems, there is a need for a more co-ordinated approach.”

Whatever the route taken, Zmood speak for all operators when he suggests that, “Platforms make sense for operators and for content providers as then they know what they need to deliver.” However, he also explains that’ “It’s about building a market and having a visions about where we will be. With the new handsets, tariffs and service promotion, there has been a dramatic step change from 24 months ago and the same will happen in the next 12 months.”