On growth drivers and future prospects

With the Indian telecom industry continuing to grow at break-neck speed, operators need to continuously upgrade their BSS/OSS infrastructure to scale new subscriber levels and increased traffic volume. Also, as the industry steps up prepaid-postpaid convergence, fixed mobile convergence, and bundled service offerings, it becomes imperative for operators to adopt convergent systems that can easily scale and accommodate all new generation services. Further more, operators are increasingly looking at a single point of accountability for their IT infrastructure implementations to reduce costs and increase efficiency. This in turn is driving the demand for more vendors of BSS/OSS who can support the entire OSS/BSS operation.

Taking cue from mature markets, the issue of fraud protection is also expected to drive OSS/BSS deployments. The market for OSS/BSS looks positive and responsive. The CAGR of the global OSS/BSS industry in the past 4-5 years has been in the range of 6-7 percent and the market, according to Gartner, was worth USD 21.5 billion in 2006. Some analyst groups forecast the market would grow at the same rate for the next 4-5 years.

On new and emerging technological platforms

We see India being a leading market with immense opportunity in the prepaid and online charging and transaction based models. The postpaid model where subscribers get an invoice or bill at the end of the month will predominately be used for corporate and business entities, but these will be very small compared to the retail subscribers. In view of this, the operator and subscriber relationship will also change into a model where retail transactions such as value added services or content will be more prevalent.

On challenges and opportunities

Many telecom service providers operate on multiple platforms to manage their customers, price and bill their services, and have a single product catalogue management tool to cater to their varied service offerings. This often poses challenges for the OSS/BSS vendors to find ways to replace the provider's legacy billing systems with solutions that reduce IT costs and facilitate introduction and deployment of new convergent services systems and solutions for multiple services across multiple platforms.
The emerging markets including that of India are experiencing the evolution of services from voice to interactive media content in a rapidly accelerated fashion.

As complexities in services grow, operators are now demanding and require solutions that support convergent offerings, combining voice, video, data, and advanced content for both the prepaid and postpaid types. What they need is a holistic and comprehensive view of customers, their history, and consumption. The solution their vendors deliver need to be scalable to tens of millions of subscribers and be reliable.

On impact of OSS/BSS on QoS

Telecom companies have begun positioning OSS/BSS solutions as differentiators in the extremely competitive environment. A QoS example would be that subscribers are assured that they can set a threshold limit on their telecoms usage, providing a safety mechanism by which the operator can reduce bad debts as well as notify subscribers when they breech their usage limit. Solutions and system must be able to cater to this in an online/realtime fashion.

On important role of billing

According to industry estimates, operators lose 1-4 percent of their revenues due to inefficient billing system with churn rate as high as 7-8 percent. Also, as operators expand offerings beyond mobile and wireline to broadband and IPTV, they need more strong and comprehensive billing systems. In the wake of increasing competition, it is essential that incumbent operators adopt solutions that help identify and retain the highest value subscribers by offering superior customer services, differentiating the customer experience based on value, and offering broader range of services.

One such solution is Convergys Dynamic Decisioning Solution (CDDS), a scalable solution that leverages the existing CRM, BSS and OSS investments to optimize the value and touch-points of every customer.

On your plans and strategies

We plan to continue pursuing opportunities in the OSS/BSS space. We expect growth in India for all types of services. As the operators mature, retention, up selling/cross-selling and better and efficient customer relationship and management will be our key focus areas.

On your offerings for the Indian market

Our R & D center in Hyderabad provides systems implementation and integration, maintenance and support for Convergys Infinys Solution Suite, a modular component-based business support system (BSS), which provides billing and customer management services to over 100 million wireless, Internet, cable, and direct broadcast satellite subscribers worldwide.

In a recently signed multi-year licensing, support, and maintenance contract with BSNL, Convergys' Infinys will support the telecom major's 18 million wireline subscribers across India. The Convergy's solution will help BSNL lower IT costs by consolidating and eliminating redundant systems. Infinys has been strongly received in the Asia Pacific region with many tier 1 operators in the region benefiting from its flexibility, reliability and scalability. The solution caters to and supports all types of telecommunication product and services across both prepaid and postpaid types in a single instance.