Evolving telecommunications BSS to enable CSPs for future revenue growth

Hello and welcome to another light reading executive Spotlight. QA, my name is Phil Harvey. I’m an editor here at Light reading. And joining me today on the, on this special sponsored podcast is Jens Voigt. He is the head of product management for Blue Marble. That’s the digital BSS at? Come Viva against. How are you today? I’m fine. Thanks Phil for having me. Great to have you on the program and, you know,

It’s really interesting that we’re talking about BSS because it’s one of the, I think maybe hype, most highly underrated things, that that are in Telecom networks. Now, because of all the functions that it enables and sort of unlocks for carriers and the theme of this and maybe even the title of it, it is you know of this discussion is, is how we’re going to evolve the ACombi SS to capture or to enable Communication service providers to grow their revenue in the future. So I guess the given that that’s the theme. The most likely question that comes to mind is, why does the BSS need to evolve in the first place? Yeah, I think there are a number of things and as you said, like, BSS is becoming something of a Renaissance in terms of discussions which we are currently seeing. And, and that’s driven by a number of things like do expectations on custom experience driven by the experienced users or customers have from from other things and then telecommunication service provider trying to broaden their portfolios and all the things meeting something. We’re a lot. A large number of operators are still struggling to sort of see how their BSS infrastructure can sort of cope with that. We’ve just done a survey around 75, it Executives globally and and more than 60% that said that there be SS is not ready for the future. Requirements demands that they that they see and that’s all around complexity of today’s the See customizations. It’s about the time to Market to launch. New offers and new business models and all that sort of dries drives, sort of the renewed interest in sort of, how do we move our BSS forward into the future to make it be ready for all the things we need to. We need tocover in the in the future. Yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, the the there’s a couple of really key things to what you said there, the first thing. Well, and first I want to clarify to for any of our mobile listeners. This is not a base station related. I know there’s a BSS base station, acronym out there.

I know. This is business, support systems. If you haven’t figured that out already and this is the part of the Telco that controls, you know, customer databases Sales Management and really The business of delivering, you know, orders or services, that being said, one of the key things. Yes. Just pointed out was time to Market and that seems to be something that comes up over and over again. When it relates to tell Kosovo or csps evolving their infrastructure in general, is not just, can they deliver new services, but how quickly because the kinds of competition that they’re up against now is probably more varied than ever. And so that’s that’s becoming an interesting, you know, I guess, Market Force that’s bearing down on them Yen’s. What do you see as some of the trends and how the BSS category is evolving? Yeah. But what we see is sort of that we’re moving away from like it used to be an Azure rightfully said, like BSS is a lot about customer relationship and you you had specific systems and you had specific systems for a certain Line of business, whether it was your mobile business, and then you had a totally different infrastructure covering your fixed line and that sort of reflects up to the experience that the customer had. And and we are seeing that we’re getting more to a modular layered architecture, where all the all the customer touch points where they are, they are agent-based or digital and obviously digital is becoming a more important has received an additional push. Now, in during the Soviet pandemic that everybody’s trying to get digital but then the experience should be the same independently of the channel and that means that you need to have some kind of infrastructure that sort of serves, all the all the channels and then underlying that sort of other systems that sort of Drive the information. Whether it’s sort of the, as you said custom information, the billing, the Commerce experience to buying and upselling and serving existing customers With new propositions but also what we see is sort of extending that beyond the typical Telco services but rather creating an ecosystem with additional services and that’s where fast time to Market becomes even more critical because then it’s like adding streaming services or audio services to the to the, to the mix. And then it’s really a competitive situation. Like what’s the benefit of using of providing that as part of Telco offering rather than as a standalone. And so that that’s some of it and really sort of breaking down the existing silos and and Legacy it components into a more modular approach. That is sort ofsomething that we see currently very much as a driving point in that.

Yeah, it’s interesting case, it will renewal of BSS. Yeah, exactly. We, because anybody who’s been around or heard about these systems, you know, over time can certainly understand why. Telcos have left them alone for so long. If it’s if it’s working and it’s bringing in Revenue, it these systems are very complex and they’re very hard to change. But of course, you know, the demands of customers and the kind of the reality of business suggest that they that they.

But they have to, I think about to like, you know, especially with businesses merging or providing new and different Services, my personal experience. I won’t name the Co but, you know, my Broadband provider in the past, I had that same provider for mobile network and for a fixed line Network. And I had two completely different IDs that I had to log in to two different billing systems, I had to enter my credit card, number two, separate time.

And this was all the same company and it had been the same company for a long, long time. And so, only recently only in the past couple of years have those systems even merge together and even Even then when I get so far into requesting assistance of some sort, in that thing, it’ll just kind of stopped me down and say, you need to go to the store or you need to call us, you know, over the phone or something like that. So those old systems are incredibly complex. They’re running a they’re, you know, they’re responsible for managing lots and lots of business or lots. Lots of Revenue and and and they kind ofhit their limit at some point. So you can so I can certainly appreciate where you’re coming from in terms of how how and why the BSS needs to evolve, okay? So when the BSS evolves, how does that help Communication service providers? Grow their business? Whether the first thing as you said, like and then we have similar examples, where customers had like the first question when you would go to their website is, is like, do you want to buy something as a fixed subscription or a mobile? Option. And once you are sort of down that down that rabbit hole of either fixed or mobile, there is no way of sort of upselling, or cross selling things and doing something like bundling saying, okay, if you buy the fix with me, like the example you had, if you buy the fixed with me, I can also give you like a super good deal on a mobile.