CASE STUDY
HANDBOOK 2013
Sponsored by:GrEATEr
bUSinESS AnD iT
AGiliTY foSTErS
innovATion
MAkinG ExTrA
MillionS froM
DiGiTAl SErviCES
16 stories of world-beating
innovation and success
Publications Managing Editor: Annie Turner [email protected] Editor: Claire Manuel [email protected] Contributors: George Malim [email protected] John Williamson [email protected] Creative Director: David Andrews [email protected]
Business Development Director, Research & Publications:
Mark Bradbury
Business Development Director, Research & Publications:
Nick Carter [email protected] Senior Publisher: Katy Gambino [email protected] Production Assistant: Aideen Greenlee [email protected] Head of Marketing:
Lacey Caldwell Senko [email protected]
Report Design:
The Page Design Consultancy Ltd
Vice President, Research & Publications:
Rebecca Henderson [email protected]
Advisors:
Keith Willetts, Non-executive Chairman, TM Forum
Martin Creaner, President and Chief Executive Officer, TM Forum Nik Willetts, Chief Strategy Officer, TM Forum
Published by:
TM Forum
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CASE STUDY
HANDBOOK
WELCOME Page 4
Crossing the chasm to digital services
By Nik Willetts, Chief Strategy Officer, TM Forum FRAMEWORX
Page 6
What is TM Forum Frameworx and how can it help you?
TM Forum’s Frameworx suite of standards-based tools and best practices provides the blueprint for effective, efficient business operations
DIGITAL SERVICES Page 8
How to succeed – and fast – in M2M through conformance with standards
How Hughes Telematics, Inc. was able to accelerate its innovative business model and generate millions of dollars of extra revenue
Page 10
Managing the service lifecycle brings in more than €30 million a year
SAPO’s Service Delivery Broker has furthered its success in introducing digital services
Page 13
Catalyst proves Bandwidth Exchange commercially viable
BT Group championed the Bandwidth Exchange Catalyst project and in a live demonstration showed how new revenues can be generated for service providers
Page 15
Multi-faceted transformation leans on standards to help one of the fastest ever-new network builds
Certified Frameworx-conformant solutions helped Telekom Malaysia keep integration to below 20 percent
Page 19
The unstoppable growth of Media Networks in Latin America
Media Networks (a division of Telefónica Digital) is making money from new digital services by exploiting assets and local market conditions, and moving to the cloud
Page 22
Picture perfect: Monetizing mobile video streams
India's Reliance 3G has diversified into mobile data services, in particular, mobile video
Page 24
Defining products within hours, cutting launch costs by 75 percent
TTNET's wholesale re-engineering of its OSS/BSS systems and capabilities resulted in being able to launch new products in just two hours
Page 28
Achieving business effectiveness with a solid BSS foundation
Malaysia’s Celcom Axiata migrated its prepaid services to a Frameworx-conformant Next Generation Intelligent Network – which has paid real dividends, including a 20 percent increase in prepaid revenue
Page 31
Leveraging Frameworx to develop new business models and revenue-generating services
Saudi Mobily (Etihad Etisalat) used the Frameworx-aligned Next Generation Service Delivery Platform (NGSDP) to embark on a far-reaching business transformation strategy.
Page 35
China Telecom shows the importance of product lifecycle management in the digital world
How efficient product lifecycle management, including standardized interfaces, helped reduce integration costs by 48 percent and halved the time to market in some areas, while providing more consistent data across systems
BUSINESS & IT AGILITY Page 38
Saving up to 2 percent of total revenues through revenue assurance
Telefónica Latin America turned to TM Forum’s Revenue Assurance Maturity Model and Business Process Framework (eTOM) to boost its bottom line
Page 41
Business assurance automation takes business decision-making to new level
The Business Assurance Automation Catalyst was championed by Optimus Portugal, Swisscom and Telefónica’s O2 Slovakia. Page 43
Adding $146 million recovered revenue to the bottom line
Qtel Group made a commitment to a three-year program based on TM Forum’s Revenue Assurance Maturity Model and business benchmarking studies and is still reaping new benefits
Page 46
Assurance starts with sound advice and practical help
The Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company used Frameworx as it embarked on an ambitious business transformation initiative
Page 50
Cloud Catalyst demonstrates that fore-warned is truly forearmed
The Resilient Cloud: Maintaining Service in the Face of Developing Threats Catalyst, championed by Telstra, explored responding proactively to threats in order to maintain critical services. Page 52
End-to end resource management improves service and customer satisfaction
China Mobile boasts the world’s largest mobile network and its largest mobile customer base. We tell how plans to offer a range of 4G and mobile Internet services have spurred it to develop a more efficient, flexible, scalable and easy-to-integrate OSS. Page 56
Process-oriented governance delivers better control and efficient, end-to-end operations
UPC Netherlands used Frameworx to help it upgrade its networks to greatly increase bandwidth to customers
Page 58
Frameworx enables rapid launch of new cable services, maintains operational excellence
Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable and UPC/Liberty Global championed the Frameworx for New Cable Services: Rapidly Design and Fulfill New Services Catalyst project
Page 60
Reaping the benefits of deploying Frameworx across many operating companies
Why France Telecom-Orange reinforces the use of TM Forum Frameworx across all its operating companies
Page 62
Upgrading Integration Service Layer protects investment, cuts costs and increases applications’ stability and availability
Telstra undertook a complex upgrade of its Integration Service Layer WebSphere Process Server, the flagship integration layer that brings together the operator’s BSS and OSS domains Page 65
Boosting customer experience management through index-linked processes
The Advancing Customer Experience Management with Analytics Catalyst project showed just what a key role analytics can play in keeping customers happy
Page 67
Crossing the chasm to digital services
Few industries in history have faced so many threats andopportunities at the same time. As the global communications market approaches saturation point and messaging and telephony become commodity services, a new breed of competition has emerged – enabled by that high level of penetration and the proliferation of connectivity.
Competitive ‘over-the-top’ (OTT) services are exerting terrific pressure on communications service providers. In August 2012, WhatsApp passed the milestone of delivering 10 billion messages in one day. That’s a 10-fold increase in 12 months, and just one of countless examples of the rapid migration away from traditional voice and messaging services. It’s the speed of this change, and the loss of margins it represents, that’s raising temperatures in the boardrooms of operators around the world: the time for reinvention is now.
Connectivity is the oxygen of the information age, and data connections and usage are set to continue to rise exponentially. Yet only providing connectivity will not be enough. It’s the services and platforms running on top of that connectivity that hold the keys to growth as traditional service revenues decline.
The great news is that communications service providers are in a strong position to capitalize on the opportunity beyond connectivity and raw infrastructure. They have established, trusted relationships with the world’s largest enterprises and governments, and have a long history of reliability and technical innovation. They’re well placed to deliver new, vertically focused, digital services ranging from healthcare to anti-fraud products, vehicle tracking to the smart home. In short, the focus must be on making the transition from communications service provider to digital service provider.
The word ‘transformation’ has a long and checkered history in the communications industry. We’ve applied it to everything from deregulation to network, operations and IT system overhauls. Today’s industry faces massive, rapid changes that need a more radical, true business transformation. The role of the service provider has changed from value-chain owner to value-chain enabler, delivering digital services through partnerships and a diverse set of customer and business requirements. In short, it requires a level of innovation and technical agility never seen before.
As the engine room of any service provider, effective IT and operations are critical to success in today’s rapidly changing market. There are two business imperatives in play, equally important regardless of business strategy. First is the need for continuous optimization to maximize margins and deliver services while providing excellent customer experience, all at the lowest possible cost. Secondly, the flexibility and agility needed to stay competitive – whether that’s within an established or emerging service.
Optimization, automation and agility have been and continue to be the ethos behind TM Forum’s approach, activities and assets. As a non-profit, global industry association with more than 950 members worldwide, we have been delivering best practices and standards that solve complex service management issues for more than two decades. Originally created for the communications industry by the industry through our members’ efforts in the Collaboration Community, TM Forum’s Frameworx suite of standards-based tools and best practices is now finding ever wider application, for instance in telematics, satellite, cable, energy, defense and healthcare, among other sectors.
The fight of our lives
Now we’re approaching our industry’s most significant transformation yet, we’re energized by the challenge and committed to helping our members take on the fight.
Digital services hold new challenges for any kind of service provider. Success requires competency in a broad range of areas. We’ve identified these competencies as critical for any service provider in the digital services value chain:
nInnovation – driving constant innovation at the service, product and package level.
nPartnership – finding, establishing and maintaining effective and flexible partnerships.
nCyber security – ensuring customer, partner and business data is secure in an open world.
nRevenue and fraud management – ensuring leakage and losses are minimized across complex value-chains.
nCustomer experience management – always meeting, or exceeding, customers’ expectations no matter how a service is delivered.
nBig data and analytics – understanding what’s going on with your customer, and capturing new opportunities ahead of the pack.
nBusiness process optimization – constantly optimizing and automating processes to maximize margins and minimize failure.
nProduct lifecycle management – running effective systems to cope with much shorter product lifecycles and dynamic product catalogs.
Of course, these competencies are dependent on well-managed, cost-effective virtualized and physical infrastructure, which scales to meet the needs of your business.
Inspiration and dedication
The 11 case studies contained within this Handbook showcase the success of TM Forum service provider members around the world as they embrace TM Forum's digital service competencies. With examples ranging from premium content delivery – such as Reliance 3G’s mobile video platform in India,
to Telefónica Digital’s Media Networks in Latin America – to location-based, M2M services and platforms from Hughes Telematics Inc. (HTI – a Verizon Company) – TM Forum’s Frameworx plays a pivotal role in reducing time-to-market, cost and risk, and provides scalability, too.
Of equal importance are six case studies showcasing success across competencies ranging from business process optimization and governance – in the case of UPC Netherlands – through to the on-going, huge success of TM Forum’s Revenue Assurance Maturity Model in delivering real savings and providing business assurance to operators including Qtel Group and Telefónica Latin America. Each of these stories highlights the change underway and the quantifiable benefits of adopting TM Forum’s Frameworx.
No matter what your role in the digital economy, no matter which competency you focus on, the Forum is committed to bringing companies of all sizes together to help you gain a competitive edge. We want to help our members meet their goals of enabling efficiency and agility in their IT and operations while protecting and promoting competitive differentiation.
We hope you will find the case studies contained in this Handbook inspiring and motivating. Most of all, we hope they help you make changes to ensure on-going success in the digital world.
Nik Willetts
Chief Strategy Officer, TM Forum [email protected]
FRAMEWORX
What is TM Forum Frameworx
and how can it help you?
Adopted by 90 percent of the world’s largest service providers, TM Forum’s Frameworx suite of standards-based tools and best practices provides the blueprint for effective, efficient business operations. Frameworx enables you to assess and optimize performance using a proven, service-oriented approach to operations and integration.
Frameworx helps you:
n Innovate and reduce time-to-market with streamlined end-to-end service management.
n Create, deliver and manage enterprise-grade services across multi-partner value-chains.
n Improve customer experience and retention using proven processes, metrics and maturity models.
n Optimize business processes to deliver highly efficient operations.
n Reduce IT systems integration costs and risk through standardized interfaces and a common information model n Reduce transformation risk by defining a proven blueprint for agile, efficient business operations.
n Gain independence and confidence in your procurement choices through conformance certification and procurement guides.
n Gain clarity by providing a common, industry-standard language for processes, information and applications.
Frameworx is developed in the Forum’s unique Collaboration Community and continues to evolve through the efforts of the Community to meet changing market needs. It is driven by service providers and available exclusively to members, whose companies represent more than 90 percent of the world’s communications subscribers.
Frameworx is made up of four core frameworks:
Business Process Framework (eTOM)
The Business Process Framework defines a comprehensive set of efficient, clear and effective business processes that are critical to running a service provider's business, at the least possible cost. The framework provides a multi-layered view that starts with primary organizational functions and drills down to thousands of process details, and is strongly aligned with ITIL. It is supported by off-the-shelf tools to provide an implementable catalog of the business processes and includes users’ guides and sample process flows to ensure your processes are streamlined across the enterprise and across partners in a value-chain.
Information Framework (SID)
The management of services, customer experience, networks and enterprise management functions demands consistency of data across an enterprise. The Information Framework provides a comprehensive, industry-agreed structured set of definitions for the information that flows through an enterprise and between service providers and their business partners. It is a widely adopted model that is supported by off-the-shelf tools for implementation into software solutions, reducing time and effort for creating standardized integration points.
The Application Framework (TAM)
Understanding how your business processes are implemented in your software systems environment is essential. This Framework provides a model for grouping processes and their associated information into recognizable applications that span the service provider's operations, business and enterprise management functions. It provides a common language and identification scheme between buyer and supplier for all application areas. It helps in the design of enterprise architecture through a better understanding of your systems.
The Integration Framework
This Framework provides direction on how operational processes can be automated by utilizing standardized information definitions from the Information Framework to define standardized Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)-based management systems. It also provides an automated means to create standardized interfaces and use these interfaces to integrate applications within the enterprise and with partners.
TM Forum Frameworx also includes adoption best practices for implementing key Frameworx-based functions across competencies such as revenue assurance, service level agreements and security; and management best practices for procurement, business metrics and benchmarking.
TM Forum Business Metrics and Benchmarking
Business Metrics
Understanding the performance of your business is a critical aspect of managing transformation. Knowing how you
compare to the industry in key operational areas will guide your transformation investment. TM Forum’s Business Metrics, mapped to the Business Process Framework, provide a way for you to measure success based on a balanced scorecard that covers:
n Revenue and margin: a view of fiscal performance. n Customer experience: measures that impact the end- customer’s reaction to the service offering.
n Operational efficiency: a view of cost and expense drivers.
Benchmarking
More than 170 service providers from over 65 countries use performance data from TM Forum’s Business Benchmarking Program to improve efficiency and effectiveness. TM Forum conducts regular group benchmarking studies. Participation is free to service provider members and participants receive secure, individualized reports showing their performance against each metric plus access to the benchmarking database.
Aggregated results and access to the database are available for a fee to non-participating service providers and suppliers. For more information on TM Forum’s Business Benchmarking and Business Metrics please see www.tmforum.org/
BusinessBenchmarking. For details of upcoming studies or to participate, please contact Chryssa Dislis, Senior Manager, Business Benchmarking, [email protected].
Latest release – Frameworx 12.5
More than 200 people from 86 companies worked on 45 projects to create more than 60 new features in this release of Frameworx. They help service providers reduce IT and operation costs, risk and time to deliver services, and manage digital services including those delivered through multiple partners. Highlights include:
New multi-cloud management packs for digital services
Practical guides for business management and developers that tackle the challenges of multi-cloud management from a service level agreement (SLA) perspective – specifically how to gain visibility into and automatically manage service-level adherence when multiple partners are involved.
Enhancements to the core frameworks that help you strengthen your system's foundation
The Business Process Framework's updates include further work demonstrating the linkage to ITIL and supplier/partner processes for value chains. The Information Framework contains a new catalog model plus enhancements to areas of the model addressing supplier/partner, multi-partner services, performance management and security. The Application Framework (TAM) covers additions in customer information, customer loyalty, revenue assurance and sales and marketing.
Maturity model and metrics for Customer Experience Management
A robust guidebook for Customer Experience Management includes a roadmap, enhanced maturity model, an outline of centric processes and close to 250 customer-centric metrics. The release also has enhancements to all core Frameworks for customer specific processes, information and applications.
Tools to make Cyber Security measurable and contractable
Three new deliverables have been developed that outline best practices and metrics for Human Factors, Patch and Mobile Device Management. In addition, Frameworx 12.5 incorporates security vulnerability scoring into the Information Framework.
Practical methodologies and models for effective Revenue Management
Frameworx 12.5 includes two new technical reports on charging and billing. The first outlines best practices for M2M-based services and the second provides thought leadership and perspective on policy in the context of charging and billing. There is also a new Fraud Classification model with an holistic view of fraud and cost effective mitigation strategies. Another new guidebook includes methodologies and techniques for building the business case for revenue assurance.
Please visit www.tmforum.org/frameworx for more detail and to download the deliverables in Frameworx 12.5. Please contact [email protected] if you have any questions.
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Application Framework
Integration Framework
How to succeed – and fast – in M2M
through conformance with standards
Hughes Telematics, Inc. (HTI), an Atlanta-based company in the U.S., offers a portfolio of location-based
machine-to-machine (M2M) services for consumers, manufacturers, fleets and dealers. HTI’s innovative
business model includes providing telematics services in a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C)
model for original equipment manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz. The company recognized that this
would allow it to provide subscriber services directly to consumers, including marketing to them through the
manufacturer’s brand, field agents and other channels. That reading of the evolving market proved prescient.
To achieve its goals, HTI implemented a new billing system that was pre-integrated with existing systems
to simplify call center operations and enforce revenue assurance, all without disrupting current operations.
The platform provided high availability to support telematics services, while minimizing total cost of
ownership by using productized solutions. HTI also stood to gain a substantial increase in revenue if it could
have the system live within 100 days. By deploying a solution certified by TM Forum as being conformant
with the Frameworx suite of standards-based tools and best practices, it met that deadline and generated
an additional $30 million in revenue. It also reaped a host of operational and business advantages for itself
and its customers.
Hughes Telematics, Inc. (HTI) provides five categories of services to its OEM customers, and its aim is to repackage them across different product lines. They are:
n safety and security services, including automated crash detection;
n convenience services like using an iPhone to unlock the car door;
n navigation services such as using an iPhone to look up locations and sending the details to the vehicle in advance, so it’s waiting for the driver when they get in;
n diagnostics in both directions – the driver can access information online, and the manufacturer can query the vehicle;
n infotainment, including access to Internet-based apps in the vehicle like Facebook and Yelp.
An example of how these products can be repackaged is that the automatic crash detection technology, which is built
DiGiTAl
SERVICES
into the hardware in embedded telematics solutions, can also be put into a pendant or a watch as automatic fall detection for active seniors.
A big step up – fast
To leverage these five primary services and roll them out via the B2B2C model, HTI designed a Next Generation Telematics Architecture (NGTA), including a sophisticated billing system. This NGTA needed to be scalable to support the massively expanding subscriber base, as well as flexible and configurable to support complex charging models and the rapid introduction of new offers. In addition, HTI had a significant business opportunity if the deployment could be completed within 100 days – which it was able to do, thereby generating an extra $30 million in revenue.
Examples of being able to introduce new offers quickly include Mercedes-Benz USA wanting to offer three years’ worth of free service to car owners who bought their cars in November and December 2010 using Mercedes-Benz
financing. HTI was able to create new products and a new ordering process in a matter of days, going live with the offer in November 2010 and seeing a great increase in the take-up of its service offering.
The system also enables HTI to make far more complex offers to consumers on behalf of its wholesale customers. For instance, State Farm (one of the largest insurance carriers in the U.S.), is regulated on a state-by-state basis, so the pricing of every product has to be approved by state regulators. Hence, when the company engaged with HTI to introduce new connected service products for consumers, in effect this meant variations of the products to cover differing requirements across the 50 states. HTI was able to assemble the products from reusable and reconfigurable components relatively easily.
To have this level of flexibility and speed, HTI needed a billing system that could be integrated with existing systems to simplify call center operations and enforce revenue assurance, all without disrupting current B2B operations. The platform needed to comply with the strict high-availability requirements of telematics services, while minimizing total cost of ownership by using productized solutions.
The importance of conformance
To meet the requirements, HTI selected and deployed the Frameworx Conformance Certified Unified CRM BRM (UCB) solution from Oracle, which includes Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM), Oracle’s Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Oracle Contact Center Anywhere, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle Application Integration Architecture for Communications, and Oracle Fusion
Middleware.
The UCB solution is certified as conformant with TM Forum’s Frameworx suite of standards-based tools and best practices (see page 55 for more about the Forum’s Conformance Certification programs), which was instrumental in facilitating HTI’s accurate understanding of the Oracle solution. The clear alignment between the processes in the Oracle Solution and the Business Process Framework (eTOM) element of Frameworx helped HTI to identify process requirements and reduce the fit and gap analysis phases by several weeks.
David Cook, HTI’s IT Director, explains, “Using commercial off-the-shelf apps with pre-built integrations made great sense for us. For a quick and efficient implementation we had folks experienced with the Business Process Framework
demonstrate what the applications offered leveraging Frameworx and the Business Process Framework. We then configured and customized from there, greatly minimizing the number of customizations and enabling us to launch more quickly than traditional methods.”
The resulting NGTA is a flexible and open architecture that enables HTI to integrate new services and add new content partners quickly, connect to customer-defined call centers, and be cellular-operator agnostic. This architecture also provides full redundancy, supports 22 languages, is scalable and greatly simplifies integration for OEMs.
More specifically, benefits include:
n greater scalability to handle increased subscription volume, which rapidly grew from a handful of enterprise customers to hundreds of thousands of individual consumers;
n decreased time to market of new offers from 14 days to one day and offers can be configured by the marketing team on-demand;
n expansion into new markets, accounting for millions of dollars in additional revenues;
n reduced total cost of ownership and implementation risk by enabling fast, easy integration with out-of-the-box solution functionality; and
n flexible charging capabilities to support variable billing models and complex bundled offerings.
Cook concludes, “We are able to support that B2B2C model, which helped us respond rapidly to customers’ needs with innovative products and to be very flexible. We were able to adopt industry best practices easily and leverage the Business Process Framework to deploy the solution in under 100 days. This enabled us to generate an additional $30 million in revenue we otherwise may not have had.”
”We were able to adopt industry best practices
easily and leverage the Business Process Framework
to deploy the solution in under 100 days. This enabled
us to generate an additional $30 million in revenue
we otherwise may not have had.”
Managing the service lifecycle brings
in more than
€30 million a year
Portugal Telecom (PT) is the country’s largest communications service provider, with international
operations in many countries. SAPO is a division of PT, which contributes income of
€30 million
($38.72 million) annually, based on web advertising. SAPO’s Service Delivery Broker is a new
line-of-business for the division and the company at large, building on the division’s success in introducing digital
services. So far it has helped PT attract 1 million new subscribers to its IPTV offering (under the MEO
brand), representing an income of over
€50 million a month. In addition, downloads of mobile applications
have risen by 322 percent year-on-year, hitting 486,000 a month, while page views have increased
258 percent year-on-year, rising to 46 million a month.
Portugal Telecom (PT) is that country’s largest communications service provider, with international operations in Angola, Brazil (as Oi, the largest communications service provider in South America), China, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, São Tomé, Timor-Leste and Principe. It offers fixed, mobile, multimedia, data and corporate solutions.
SAPO is a division of PT, which contributes income of €30 million ($38.72 million) annually, based on web advertising. SAPO’s Service Delivery Broker is a new line-of-business for the division and the company at large, building on the division’s success in introducing digital services.
The Service Delivery Broker is designed to connect, mediate and manage interactions through standardized application program interfaces (APIs) between any web-enabled device and heterogeneous services. It delivers built-in, real-time management and monitoring capabilities while supporting integration with any application or service that complies with a service-oriented architecture.
The Service Delivery Broker is being used by PT to deliver APIs in support of its own main offers and its product catalog has more than 4,000 web service endpoints to enable the quick creation of new products and lines of business, supporting millions of applications, services and APIs on all kinds of platforms.
The Broker exposes and integrates processes and systems in a secure, non-intrusive way that ensures governance and best practices are followed and validated. This is done by automating the API service management lifecycle phases,
SAPO’s Service Delivery Broker
For more details about what can be found in the production web addresses please see:
n SDB API Marketplace: http://services.sapo.pt n SDB site: http://sdb.sapo.pt
n Portugal Telecom IPTV offering (under the brand name MEO) interactive applications using SDB services (in Portuguese): www.meo.pt/conhecer/tv/experienciatv/ interactivo/pages/default.aspx
n Mobile applications using SDB services: http://apps.sapo.pt n SDB reference quotes: http://sdb.sapo.pt/en/quotes.html
from Service Design through Development, Transition, and Operation, in alignment with TM Forum’s Software Enabled Services program (see panel).
So far the Service Delivery Broker has contributed to PT’s sales of IPTV subscriptions, mobile devices and web advertising, by enabling the faster, cheaper and more efficient delivery of multi-channel, multi-platform applications. In its first year of operation in 2006 it was forecast to bring in 30 percent of SAPO’s income, growing to 40 to 45 percent the next year.
Portugal Telecom TV offer (known as MEO) has more than 1 million subscribers. They can access SAPO IPTV apps, which use web services through the Service Delivery Broker. There are over 2.5 million visits per month to MEO’s marketplace.
DiGiTAl
PT’s mobile apps portfolio (SAPO, MEO and
Telecomunicações Móveis Nacionais TMN) includes 39 apps for three different platforms, which as of August 2012 had, year to date, between them generated 23 million banner views (a year-on-year increase of 85 percent). Over the previous four years, SAPO Notícias had attracted 7 million banner views monthly, while SAPO Desporto had clocked up 4 million banner views monthly.
SAPO’s Service Delivery Broker was also recently positioned as a SmartCloudPT (www.smartcloudpt.pt) service offering in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model, generating leads and sales among local government and small and medium-sized businesses looking for efficient service lifecycle management and multi-platform content capabilities (see panel on page 10 for more details about how the Service Delivery Broker is being used and positioned by PT).
This new Portugal Telecom cloud services offering is designed to help communications service providers attract new business-to-business customers such as banks, insurance companies and local governments, effectively positioning PT as an over-the top, SaaS and Platform-as-a-Service provider for those markets.
TM Forum’s Service Management Interface (SMI), which is at the core of the Forum’s Software-Enabled Service Management Solution (see panel on page 12) was initially created and contributed by SAPO. It has recently been recognized by the Open Mobile Group (OMG) and incorporated in one of its Telco 2.0 draft specifications.
The key benefits that the Service Delivery Broker achieved through the SMI are:
n strong control of the service lifecycle management across all service enablers;
n minimizing the cost and cycle time to translate service ideas into market offerings;
n reducing the cost by repurposing content and applications; n swift adaption to market changes and customer preferences; n ensuring the best practices and industry patterns at design time;
n mitigating the burn of service designers and service developers;
n delivering a standards-based, consistent and fully interoperable offer of services enablers to third parties; n leveraging service composition with full control of dependencies and resources.
Put another way, users can deploy cloud services and service management to innovate and deliver competitive products faster and cheaper, over a public or private cloud. The business benefits to other service providers who use the cloud approach enabled by the Service Delivery Broker are that it:
n supports new revenue streams by enabling the
communications service provider to leverage their assets across the value chain;
n operates a two-sided business model for retail and wholesale services;
n can meet end-customers’ demands faster and therefore encourage a closer relationship with them;
n lowers costs associated with the acquisition and maintenance of technology;
n enables third parties’ businesses;
n feeds key performance indicators into real-time, decision- making applications;
n drastically reduces costs associated with customization; n manages software-enabled services in a standardized way; n reduces service management costs and supports delivery
through a multi-tenanted model via Platform-as-a Service and Saas;
n supports a pay-per-use business model within a cloud services platform;
n service providers have access to the range of business models as a service, as required, to meet their business strategies.
Clearly to achieve all these things, a standardized approach is critical. PT/SAPO used the Business Process Framework (eTOM), part of TM Forum’s Frameworx suite of
standards-based tools and best practices, to inspire and guide the process flows for product and infrastructure lifecycle management of the Service Delivery Brokerage’s Marketplace and support services. The Service Delivery Broker is also aligned with several of the Business Process Framework’s with ITIL v3/2011 (please see pages 6, 7 and 51).
SAPO also incorporated Aggregate Business Entities (ABEs) from the Forum’s Information Framework (SID) in all the Service Delivery Broker’s components. Their use is particularly notable in the SDB Marketplace, which went live in November 2011 (http://services.sapo.pt).
Where to next?
PT/SAPO will continue to develop the Service Delivery Broker, positioning it as a general-purpose service management platform that will be a lead generator in other industries.
In addition, SAPO is working towards certifying its Service Delivery Broker for conformance with a number of the Information Framework’s entities and the Business Process Framework’s processes.
The goal of the TM Forum Software Enabled Services Management Solution program (SES) is to define a generic management framework for next generation services regardless of the software or network technologies used to implement those services. This management framework is aimed at addressing the full lifecycle of the services, from concept to cash.
SAPO’s Service Delivery Broker team was instrumental in creating the first draft specification for the Simple Management API (SMI also known as TMF617 – the latest version is defined here: www.tmforum.org/ SMIinformationagreement, which is at the heart of TM Forum’s Multi-Cloud Management Solution and deployed in SAPO’s Service Delivery Broker services.
Business objectives of SES are: to minimize the cost and
cycle time to translate service ideas into market offerings; reduce cost by repurposing content and applications; and to adapt swiftly to market changes and customer preferences. Its structure addresses the services lifecycle, covering important use cases like concept-to-cash, service marketplace, service composition or aggregation, and service catalogs.
The importance of this work and the commitment demonstrated by PT/SAPO was recognized at TM Forum Action Week in Madrid in January 2012, when António Cruz, Project Manager, Service Delivery Broker, SAPO, was given a TM Forum Outstanding Contributor Award.
For more information, please go to: www.tmforum.org/ softwareenabledservicesmgmt
How TM Forum’s Software Enabled Services can help you
DiGiTAl
Catalyst proves Bandwidth Exchange
commercially viable
At TM Forum Management World 2012 in Dublin, BT Group championed the Bandwidth Exchange
Catalyst project in which First Derivatives, Amartus, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and Intune
Networks also participated. The live demonstration showcased the technologies that would underpin
bandwidth trading and that could, in turn, drive new revenue for service providers, demonstrating the
technical and commercial viability of a bandwidth exchange marketplace. The Catalyst project was
developed on the Irish government’s Exemplar test-bed.
BT serves customers in more than 170 countries. A number of factors informed the decision to embark on the Bandwidth Exchange Catalyst project (see panel on page 54). First in the face of unprecedented competition, identifying new sources of revenue is a high priority for many service providers. Second, demand for network capacity is growing exponentially and operators are continuously upgrading their networks to deal with it, typically ‘overbuilding’ networks to meet demand based on historical data resulting in stranded capacity.
Third, the rise of cloud as a major commercial opportunity for communications service providers, IT companies, software houses and web companies. Typically resources are distributed to discrete parts of the network and data centers aggregate lots of demand to the same location, so the ‘unshared’ part of the network becomes small, and non-existent where data centers deploy virtualization.
Many such data centers have introduced on-demand services, which have created a compelling use case for ‘on-demand’ bandwidth. Enterprise cloud services need reliable network connectivity to data centers, and communications service providers are arguably best positioned to offer this through simple, on-demand provisioning of application program interfaces (APIs).
Finally, bandwidth and computational resources have become commoditized.
Regulated buying and selling
As with established commodity exchanges, bandwidth exchanges can facilitate the regulated buying and selling of goods and services – in this case bandwidth, cloud products and services – based on criteria such as price, quality, availability and geographic location using standardized contracts.
The emergence of dynamic, on-demand computational resource trading will also enable a re-evaluation of complementary bandwidth-on-demand service offerings allowing for the cost-effective movement of data between end-customer and data center for short time periods.
Typically bandwidth is bought in incremental sizes, either as packet-based, point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, multipoint-to-multipoint services or circuit-switched services, under forward contracts, which are traded in over-the-counter (OTC) transactions. In the Catalyst project, First Derivatives, Amartus, Nokia Siemens Networks and Intune Networks pooled their expertise to research the possibilities of creating a commercially viable Bandwidth Exchange marketplace.
This would involve trading options and futures on bandwidth just like other commodities on a typical commodity exchange, and a spot market where the transaction involves a physical settlement – in this case the securing of bandwidth on demand in real-time to transfer data.
The securitization of bandwidth as an exchange tradable commodity would allow the creation of a stream of financial instruments to facilitate the needs of both communications providers and enterprises. It would enable price discovery, ensure excess capacity is utilized through the laws of supply and demand, and allow for the mitigation of risks concerning variable or increasing bandwidth costs. It would also reduce costs by allowing enterprises to utilize bandwidth at less expensive times or via less expensive routes.
Questions and answers
The Catalyst project posed a number of questions. For example, could resources of network, compute and storage be linked? What would be needed to extend network operators’ OSSs to accommodate this model, as they lack the automation needed for third party, on-demand provisioning? In the Bandwidth Exchange Catalyst project, the workflow demonstrated was as follows.
The operator published capacity on the CloudStreet platform. CloudStreet is an open, virtual trading platform which allows operators from around the globe to sell and buy transport capacity on demand. In the Catalyst project, the First Derivatives’ Trading Engine used part of the operator’s inventory to create predefined trading products.
CloudStreet then updated the Service Inventory on the Amartus Service Commander, a vendor-independent service delivery framework. The Trading Engine picked up connections and capacity from Service Inventory and split them into easily tradable securities.
Finally the Service Commander provisioned the network. This process was underpinned by Intune’s Optical Burst switching technology, which can be used to switch packets in real-time across hundreds of kilometers, reducing network complexity and increasing connectivity by making bandwidth instantly available to any point in the network.
Proof of concept
The Catalyst project proved that bandwidth can be traded as a commodity. It compared OTC trading to futures and spot trading. The demonstration used TM Forum’s Multi-Technology Operations System Interface (MTOSI) Service Catalog and Activation and RESTful Web Services Interfaces.
MTOSI is part of the Integration Framework, which is an element of the Forum’s Frameworx suite of standards-based tools and best practices. The Integration Framework provides a standard set of interfaces that enable rapid, repeatable, and flexible integration between systems. MTOSI is an XML-based set interfaces designed to enable simple integration of disparate operations systems used for the network and IT resource management.
MTOSI covers both service and resource level interfaces. At the resource level, MTOSI includes interfaces for inventory, provisioning, fault management and performance management. At the service level, MTOSI has interfaces for service activation and for service inventory. For more information, please see: www.tmforum.org/BestPracticesStandards/MTOSI/2319/Home.html
The demonstration leveraged MTOSI-based service models and interfaces for service and resource catalog, inventory and activation, extended by RESTful XML interfaces (see below) to expose capacity inventory APIs on Amartus’ Service Commander. This enabled bandwidth publishing and trading functions on the Cloudstreet and First Derivatives’ Trading platforms. The Catalyst showed how standardized MTOSI-based service models and interfaces provide the required service abstraction to enable fast integration of business services and applications with a technology- and vendor-agnostic programmable network.
Representational State Transfer or REST defines a set of architectural principles for designing Web Services, which focus on a system's resources. They include how resource states are addressed and transferred over HTTP by a wide range of clients, written in different languages. It is the predominant Web Service design model.
A major conclusion was that units of trade should also be standardized and interest in developing this continues.
Use cases follow the money
The Catalyst project illustrated two use cases which showed how the Irish government’s Exemplar Network test-bed could be accessed, controlled and monetized.
Capacity expansion funded through futures/spot contracts Background: Company ABC operates a large global network and bandwidth system for its own use. It has plans to extend capacity in the APAC region. Analysis shows the company’s capacity needs would double in this geography by 2013 and increase ten-fold by 2015.
Problem: Company ABC does not have a cashflow projection that can afford an upfront investment to facilitate the required ten-fold increase all at once.
Solution: Company ABC could sell capacity as an OTC
transaction to a financial institute, which translates capacity as easily tradable securities. This way company ABC could raise capital which would help pay for work on the ten-fold increase in capacity.
Financial institute: Sells futures bandwidth contracts on the Bandwidth Exchange to raise funds, sells spot bandwidth contracts on the Bandwidth Exchange for the period 2013 to 2015. End-user: Purchases futures contracts to reserve bandwidth for use at a cost efficient price to ensure cost base for coming years and have flexibility on capacity side.
Result: Project for full expansion proceeds, future excess capacity is monetized into a combination of immediate cashflow and a stream of future cash flows.
Spot bandwidth requirement
Background: Company DEF is a small media company which hosts a current affairs website. The Government has made an unexpected announcement that it will hold an important press conference regarding the upcoming budget.
Problem: Company DEF expects an unprecedented increase of traffic to its website and fears that a shortage of bandwidth capacity may cause its site to go down, which will adversely affect the reputation of the company.
Solution: Company DEF could purchase spot contracts on the Bandwidth Exchange to increase bandwidth capacity for the duration of the event. This would ensure the site could temporarily handle an increase in web traffic.
Supplier: Supplier would allow excess capacity to be sold via spot contracts on the Bandwidth Exchange.
End-user: Purchases spot contracts for delivery of bandwidth as required.
Result: Supplier capitalizes redundant bandwidth capacity. End-user has mitigated the risks that the website that temporary increased web traffic would inflict on its company.
DiGiTAl
Multi-faceted transformation leans on
standards to help one of the fastest ever
new network builds
Telekom Malaysia faced a tough challenge – to transform from being a fixed-line incumbent to being
a lean operator in a market that is rapidly becoming fiercely competitive. It was faced with sticking to
a very tight schedule to roll out a national high-speed broadband network and deploy the associated
back and front office systems while rethinking its legacy business. To become and stay competitive it
also needed to become more customer-centric and to make its workforce more productive, in part by
winning their support for the massive transformation. The company applied LEAN principles throughout
and chose certified Frameworx-conformant solutions to keep integration to below 20 percent. This
contributed greatly to it being ahead of schedule with its deployments, which in turn in part was due to
being able to run lots of developments in parallel. By the end of 2011, Telekom Malaysia was able to
report substantial business benefits, from reducing fault resolution time by 80 percent and cutting the
time needed to install a new line by 70 percent, to being able to configure innovative bundles and tariffs
in a week, down from three.
Telekom Malaysia (TM) was tasked with, by some measures, one of the fastest ever rollouts of a brand new, national network when in September 2008 it signed a public-private-partnership with the government of Malaysia to roll a high-speed broadband (HSBB) network across Malaysia and pass 1.3 million households by the end of 2012. Recognizing the high level of investment required and the benefit it would bring to the country’s economy, the government agreed to fund up to 20 percent of the project, so long as one third of the country’s households were ‘passed’ by the fiber infrastructure.
To achieve this, TM rolled out fiber access in the most densely populated parts of the country, deployed an all-new, all-IP backbone and IP Multi-media System (IMS) and, through Project Nova, created new operating and business support systems (OSS/BSS).
While building the OSS/BSS stacks for the new business, TM was working on streamlining the old system that supported the original product portfolio. The company built a new IT system to address problems with the legacy system, which supports some 5 million customers and has been involved in fulfilling about 1 million orders in the year since it went live.
TM also sought to use the copper infrastructure in new ways, by greatly raising the transmission speeds for data on
them, which is very important in a market where data traffic is increasing by 50 percent annually.
The company realized that simply adding more and more resources to meet the rising demand for TM’s services (as seen throughout 2010 and 2011) was not viable, so at the same time as rolling out Project Nova and the HSBB network, it launched a three-year initiative, TOP (for Towards Operational Perfection), based on LEAN principles (see panel overleaf), to increase employees’ productivity, improve customer experience and operational performance in a holistic, end-to-end manner, covering sales channels and customer service as well as network operations.
The plan was to make processes more efficient, focusing on end-to-end performance targets in service delivery and quality. This in turn would give greater customer satisfaction by ensuring consistency in service delivery and aligning process metrics to customer experience. It also wanted to shift the company’s attention from performance at departmental level to an end-to-end, customer-centric view of performance.
Implementation
The company had noted that, according to research by Vanson Bourne (sponsored by Oracle) a survey of IT executives at
"By spring 2012, TM was a good six months ahead
of its initial goal of passing 1.3 million customers’
premises by the end of the year, and has yielded
significant, quantifiable business benefits.”
communications service providers believed that an average of 16 percent of IT budgets would be freed up if industry standards were widely adopted. The decision was made to deploy a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solution, based on industry standards and best practices.
It chose a suite of systems from Oracle on which to build the BSS/OSS, which is certified by TM Forum as being conformant (see panel on page 55 for more detail about the advantages of using conformant products, solutions and implementations) with its Frameworx suite of standards-based tools and best practices (see page 6). A major aim was to ensure that less than 20 percent of the solution would require customization, in which it was successful.
Consequently TM launched the network, systems and triple-play services within 18 months of signing the public-private agreement. It took five months to set up an IPTV platform and nine months to have the full OSS/BSS stack in place. By spring 2012, TM was a good six months ahead of its initial goal of passing 1.3 million customers’ premises by the end of the year, and has yielded significant, quantifiable business benefits.
The systems take care of customer relationship management (CRM), billing and enterprise interfaces, among other
operations. They provide a single view of customers and the services they use, a unified customer care and provisioning platform, and consistent user experiences and capabilities across all channels.
They were designed to be as automated as possible, requiring little human intervention. This means, for instance, when the company receives a request for triple-play service activation, the order preconfigures the systems to accept that customer and an employee is dispatched to install the set-top box and fiber termination. Both the box and the termination unit work without any further configuration.
A standards approach
For the HSBB initiative TM chose to deploy a standards-based architecture using TM Forum’s Business Process Framework (eTOM), part of TM Forum’s Frameworx to model the architecture. The company started from the ground-up in developing processes under the HSBB program to address limitations of current processes and ensure future growth opportunities.
What is LEAN?
Henry Ford, who brought automobiles to the masses, was the first person to truly integrate an entire production process starting in 1913. His approach was much improved upon, to offer customers variety, economically, through highly streamlined processes, by Kiichiro Toyoda, Taiichi Ohno, and others at Toyota working in the 1930s. This was the start of what we call the LEAN principles today (see www.lean.org for more information).
The five-step thought process for guiding the
implementation of LEAN techniques is easy to remember, but not always easy to achieve:
1. Specify value from the standpoint of the end customer by product family.
2. Identify all the steps in the value stream for each product family, eliminating whenever possible those steps that do not create value.
3. Make the value-creating steps occur in tight sequence so the product will flow smoothly toward the customer. 4. As flow is introduced, let customers pull value from the next upstream activity.
5. As value is specified, value streams are identified, wasted steps are removed, and flow and pull are introduced, begin the process again and continue it until a state of perfection is reached in which perfect value is created with no waste.
DiGiTAl
Its aims were to achieve minimal manual intervention between processes, greater use of data, and auditability and traceability in systems and processes. It also wanted tight coupling with the OSS, allowing for flow-through provisioning, integrated systems to minimize the complexity of processing and a single view of customers’ information and services.
Parallel processing
The most difficult part of the undertaking was managing the three components – HSBB, Project Nova and updating legacy systems – of the transformation in parallel, as each had many structural touch points. At one stage in the development phase, the TM had to work on four separate IT releases simultaneously, which normally would have been dealt with sequentially. Hence the design and development work was begun before on the second release before the first was completed. The company constantly had at least three different teams working with the systems-integration group and the software vendor on new releases.
Nevertheless, this parallel way of working, adhering to LEAN principles throughout, meant that within 18 months of the project beginning, the improvements made far exceeded the company’s own expectations. For example, TM was able to reduce fault resolution time by 80 percent and cut the time needed to install a new line by 70 percent, both of which had a highly positive impact on the field force and helped to get them onside.
In addition, TM’s transformation team spent considerable time with the field force, call center agents, dispatchers and other parts of the workforce to understand their issues. Taking what it learned, the company launched a pilot project then brought in staff from the regions to see the progress it was making. This created a lot of enthusiasm and excitement among them, and in particular, a willingness to change, which made the acceptance of new practices surprisingly easy and fast among some 16,000 TM employees and contractors nationwide.
Some 95 percent of results of the transformation’s success came from implementation, with strong task forces who have clear mandates and roles, led by talented, ambitious leaders. TM also recognized the importance of performance management to drive change at scale across its huge
organization. It also recognized that having come up with a winning strategy, it needed to adhere to it for some years to get the greatest benefit from it. It can take a long time for messages to reach and be acted upon by everyone in an organization. As TM’s CTO and Chief Innovation Officer, Giorgio Migilarina, comments, “Be consistent, be persistent, and be straightforward in the way you communicate important things.”
Huge business benefits
From late 2011 onwards, Telekom Malaysia was reporting the business benefits which correlate directly to its use of the Business Process Framework, as well as its decision to deploy a single vendor OSS/BSS, which is certified by TM Forum as conforming to the Business Process Framework, coupled with strong emphasis and adaptation of LEAN principles in the operations.
For example, for the HSBB triple-play offering, the average lead time to install (from customer order to installation) had improved by 57 percent between April 2011 to November 2011 (this includes appointment dates requested by the customer). Average monthly new installation increased by 170 percent, from about 10,000 new installations per month in February 2011 to approximately 27,000 new installations in November 2011.
For Metro Ethernet, order fallout dropped 70 percent, from 194 in September 2010 to 58 in November 2010. In addition, it automated network design/assign and activation for complex enterprise products such as Metro Ethernet.
For greenfield operations, TM’s ‘out of the box approach’ meant, as mentioned, less than 20 percent customization of the solution was necessary, while support systems for triple-play fiber-to-the-home /VDSL+ were launched in under eight months. Further, the company achieved end-to-end flow through to network activation of 98 percent for triple-play orders.
The company is able to carry out flexible product bundling and pricing configuration so that the time needed to configure innovative new packages and promotions has reduced from three weeks to one.
The systems also support broad customer segmentation and product group support with a single, consolidated platform supporting consumer, SME, enterprise, government, wholesale and global segments and associated products. The company
has extended the reach of its channel through online portals for customers, resellers and wholesale.
In addition, as part of its reorganization, the company has aligned the IT organization to the Business Process Framework, grouping front end systems (sales force automation/CRM), back end (billing and subsystems), network support systems and enterprise services (software and hardware infrastructure support).
As a result, it achieved four main benefits:
n better load balancing for the teams through more efficient allocation and work distribution among them;
n faster decision-making and better prioritization within teams, which improves time to deliver to the business;
n technology up-skilling and a greater range of skills between
the teams supporting the legacy systems and the new Oracle stack; and
n an improvement to IT employees’ satisfaction index.
Future plans
TM plans to increase efficiency further, enabling zero-touch configuration of digital home devices. It intends to address various aspects of OSS service assurance, including service performance, network traffic analysis, service quality, dynamic line management and network capacity planning – again, all in the interests of greater efficiency and better customer service.
It also has ongoing projects building additional business capabilities and product support across BSS/OSS and the service delivery platform (SDP), while continuing to expand the SDP/ IMS. Finally, the company is also working on its content and SDP.
Aligning LEAN with TM Forum’s Business Assurance program
TM Forum’s Business Assurance Program recognizes it needs to bring the operational implementation of Frameworx together with the enterprise-level balanced scorecard of Business Metrics (see pages 7 and 29) through the application of best practices in Business Management Systems. Frameworx is the Forum’s suite of standards-based tools and best practices (see page 6). In the era of digital services, these best practices center on these critical areas:
n customer experience management; n big data management and analytics; n revenue management;
n Lean Extended Value Stream Management.
While members have collaborated and produced a lot of work in the first three of these areas, the fourth is the key to enabling the digital services enterprise to bring the necessary agility and sustainable financial results to this challenging marketplace.
The TM Forum Business Management Systems Group has contributed a White Paper, From Frameworx Implementation to Lean Transformation, which includes a summary of Telekom Malaysia’s approach and implementation by Dr. Ahmad Nasri Mohamed. The White Paper is available to members from our website via www.tmforum.org/FrameworxImplementationWP. It sets the terms of reference and suggests the way forward to tailoring the best practices of LEAN from industrial application to the digital services environment.
It is expected that this will provide a foundation for the Business Management Systems Group to produce guidebooks and other specific best practices and standards publications to enable the Business Management element of the Business Assurance Program portfolio to come to full maturity.
For more information about or to get involved in TM Forum’s Business Assurance programs, please see www.tmforum.org/ businessassuranceprogramor contact Steve Cotton, Director, Business Assurance programs via [email protected]
DiGiTAl
The unstoppable growth of
Media Networks in Latin America
Media Networks, a B2B unit of Telefónica Digital, is an exemplar of how a service provider can make
money from new digital services by exploiting existing assets and local markets’ conditions. One of its
aims is to foster competition in the region for pay TV services, which it has succeeded in doing by moving
its assets to the cloud to provide wholesale services to other companies within the Telefónica Group, as
well as to their competitors. It is also moving into providing Internet access via the same platform.
Telefónica has about 170 million mobile customers in LatinAmerica and around 8.5 million fixed broadband customers in the region. Six years ago, the company turned its attention to becoming a TV distributor, based on a consolidated offering across the region, with one of its goals being to bring pay TV to new audiences and to foster competition. It established Media Networks (MN) in 2006, which is now a division of Telefónica Digital.
MN is a wholesale distributor of pay TV and Internet services for 25 companies across the region (including some main operators, some of which are Telefónica’s competitors), as well as a generator of content, audiovisual and broadcast services, and those who sell advertising for leading TV channels.
MN uses a single platform from which it runs its operations in Spain, the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Central America and Peru, where its headquarters are located.
MN is now growing its business with a new concept of wholesale Internet over satellite platform. Using a similar concept that made the wholesale pay TV business a success, MN is starting to promote and provide services to the communications operators to boost the growth of the home broadband market. MN describes its satellite platform as “the engine for developing new Internet markets” and is determined to derive greater value from it by improving the time-to-market for new services and leveraging various governments’ digital inclusion initiatives in the region with plans to provide satellite-based broadband access.
The key to achieving this was through working with technology partner Intraway to manage the Lima-based OSS, which its partner converted into a multi-tenanted, cloud-platform solution. Intraway streamlined and standardized the OSS, exposing its assets through open application program interfaces (APIs) to MN’s operator customers’ many disparate BSSs, scattered across the region.
It quickly became clear that companies other than some Telefónica operations wanted to enter the pay TV market, rapidly and easily – and they saw MN as the best way to do
"It quickly became clear that companies other than
some Telefónica operations wanted to enter the pay
TV market, rapidly and easily – and they saw Media
Networks as the best way to do that."
MN’s business goals and team at a glance
n better time-to-market for new TV and Internet services; n addressing geographical service restrictions;
n reducing the costs associated with proprietary solutions; n increasing competition in the region;
n improving penetration in the region to include the less affluent;
n developing and exploiting technology know-how;
n using state-of-the-art technology and introducing a cycle of constant updates.
MN has a team of more than 1,000 employees, serving more than 20 operators with more than 3.5 million subscribers across the region. Its platform for TV offers more than 500 HD and SD channels and is able to handle more than 100,000 activations per month. It receives signals from 19 satellites.
