New Business Models Will Require Intelligent Policy Control
May 16th, 2013by Susana Schwartz under Customer Experience, LTE, Mobile Data Pricing, Policy Control
During the Management World keynote on May 15th, we got a taste of how an established service provider giant goes beyond its core business to capitalize on new business models. CEO Stephen Shurrock of New Business Ventures, Telefónica Digital, discussed its partnership with Generali, a major global insurance company with whom Telefónica has developed a pay-as-you-drive insurance product. He also discussed partnering with Mozilla to launch a Firefox phone later in the year.
This is just another recent example of how operators are exploring new opportunities. Other examples include AT&T saying that new business models will include subsidized data from content providers, potentially supported by advertisements, or news from ESPN that it will consider subsidized models as well. We are seeing more industry examples of content providers and advertisers who are prepared to pay the bills to ensure their customers can view content with a high quality of experience.
Of course, Net Neutrality and other regulatory issues will have to be considered, since some of the new business models are prompting criticism from Net Neutrality advocates. Additionally, customer opt-in, privacy and security will also be important factors.
Once these issues are addressed, it seems mobile subscribers may be happy that someone else will pick up the tab for their viewing of sports, TV shows, movies or other content.
If that becomes the case, there will be considerably more reliance on policy servers, charging systems and Diameter Signaling Routers. Operators would have to track:
• Which content providers
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