Subex Blog

The past decade has seen the telecom industry embark upon a momentous growth path. The number of unique mobile subscriptions worldwide has almost doubled from 2.6 billion in 2009^[1] to 5.1 billion^[2] in 2019, thanks to the quick evolution from 2G to 3G, 4G, and now 5G, along with innovations in IoT, M2M, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing. While this growth phase has led to the industry accumulating humongous amounts of data, a majority of them have not reaped the benefits of monetizing the data at their disposal—similar to how Facebook, Google or the many others are successfully doing.

Data monetization is vital for Telcos to stay ahead

Telcos are advantaged by a unique position in the ICT value chain. For example, a simple event such as planning a holiday today involves using your smartphone for a variety of tasks—from booking flights and hotels to researching the best places to explore. All of these result in the generation of varied datasets, to which telcos have access to. However, a complicated ecosystem of challenges is preventing telcos from successful internal and external data monetization.

As Telcos continue to face increasing pressure in their top-line business, internal data monetization can bring them a strategic advantage in solving business problems. From the understanding of revenue trends such as the accurate pinpointing of developments in the voice or data business to gaining deep insight into customer likes and dislikes, data analytics can address several business issues. Similarly, external monetization opens opportunities for telcos in a range of industry verticals.

However, to stay relevant in the market, telcos will have to stay ahead on the trends, which can lead them to opportunities. Messaging (SMS), which was an exclusive offering of telcos has now been taken up by players like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Employing data analytics to analyze and predict trends is the only way to stay ahead.

Why analytics alone won’t help?

Several leading telcos have already realized the power that lies in data analytics as a key strategic pillar and continue to invest in advanced data technologies. However, the ROI for data analytics investments by telcos continues to stand unproven, especially on an incremental basis. The reason: Most telcos view data analytics as a technology asset, leaving open a wide gap between technology and business goals. This severe lack of coordination has resulted in analytics and data science being viewed as a technology solution rather than a business problem, causing business goals to suffer.

The answer lies in domain-driven analytics

For telcos seeking to stay competitive, domain-driven analytics is the answer. Spearheaded by deep domain knowledge and wide industry exposure a domain-driven analytics solution understands the requirements of telcos operating in specific regions or market conditions. Through the analysis of existing data sets, domain-driven analytics can transform current stats into future possibilities.

Take the successful use case of how a telco in a developing market used domain-driven analytics to increase revenue. The telco was using its existing business model of acquiring more customers to increase revenue. Using domain-driven analysis, however, it was found that the current ‘active base’ which was 8.5 days needed to be improved in order to increase revenue. The telco used the recommendations and conducted an integrated campaign which led to the increase of the ‘active base’ from 8.5 to 9.5 days and a boost in revenue by 25%.

With 25+ years of experience in driving data-driven business transformation for global telcos, Subex has garnered a lot of experience in applying domain-driven analytics for telecom.

[1] https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Global-Telecoms-The-Big-Picture-2019-Key-Industry-Statistics

[2] https://www.gsmaintelligence.com/