Tellabs Blog

Most people would rather give up their morning cup of coffee than their smartphone. One reason is that consumers and business users alike are quickly integrating their favorite apps with their everyday lives.

These favorites provide unique value that clearly goes above and beyond basic access to the network. Mobile service providers have a tremendous opportunity to leverage that value. To do this, they should invest in technologies that make their networks intelligent, that is, subscriber- and content-aware.

A more personalized Web brings happier customers
A smart network that keeps tabs on how individual subscribers use their mobile services enables service providers to offer a variety of vertical services. Plus, service providers can tailor each service to individual subscribers' usage patterns, as identified by the network. For the service provider, that translates into enhanced subscriber satisfaction and loyalty, powerful new revenue streams, larger market share and greater chances for long-term profitability.

Content aggregators, for example, Hulu and Netflix, are using app stores to go over the top of mobile service providers and provide content directly to subscribers' smart mobile devices. This trend threatens to relegate mobile service providers to simply providers of dumb pipes. Not surprisingly, most service providers are looking for ways to avoid this fate. They can do this by weaving themselves into their subscribers' lifestyles and making the relationship stickier.

Give customers what they want
Service providers can deploy an application-oriented networking architecture made possible by content-inspection capabilities. With these capabilities, service providers can infuse their networks with the ability to gather real-time intelligence about subscriber usage patterns. Then, they can team up with content providers in a new, collaborative business model. With these tools, service providers can ensure they deliver the personalized mobile-broadband services their subscribers value so highly.

For example, a service provider could target parents who frequently use their smartphones to monitor their children's Internet activities. Another plan might address video-loving subscribers who use their smartphones primarily to watch movies. A texting-oriented plan would appeal to a large segment of younger users. On the business side, operators could deliver productivity tools, such as a sales-automation application, to "road warriors" and other mobile employees.

By positioning their networks to identify and deliver customized mobile services, service providers can carve out for themselves two big advantages: a critical role in the creation and capture of value associated with popular apps and services and a major share of the resulting revenue streams.