I thnk LTE is for real and may be closer than we realize. Usually I am skeptical about emerging trends that tend to be overly hyped. In LTE’s case though, I see some key factors that tell me that operators and the market are ready for LTE in many important ways. Perhaps the most important factor, from a business perspective, is that billing is ready and waiting for LTE to catch up.
“(It) isn’t just about prepaid and postpaid wireless and wireline, but also about riding through the transition of the networks,” says Jennifer Fellows, vice president of product management for Billing & Charging for Intec. Moving to LTE is part of a natural progression we’ve seen accelerate in the past decade. 3G wireless is definitely a precursor to the common vision of the coming LTE environment. There is a lot of work to be done to deploy LTE network architecture and to make it all work, but from a business systems perspective – billing and charging in particular – the 3G environment shows us that current billing technology can handle LTE.
The billing industry has been on the “bill for anything in real-time” path for years now. We see it in the on-demand services that are delivered through mobile devices, set-topboxes, and broadband access. We also see it in markets where real-time prepaid, value
Perhaps the most important factor is that billing is ready and waiting for LTE to catch up
there’s already growing demand for what LTE is supposed to do. The iPhone is overused as an example, but it shows us that people want a full-blown mobile Internet experience. Personally, I’m excited to see what my new Blackberry Storm 2 can do online as compared to the somewhat disappointing experience I’ve had with an aging Curve.
From an applications perspective, LTE will only make a growing trend more explosive. Apps development is huge now. Even with a relatively small portion of the mobile market even able to use apps, developers are asking and earning $50K or more to develop a single, simple iPhone app. When I see every form of messaging, plus full-blown Internet, plus specialized apps, plus capabilities like Skype
transfer services, and direct-to-bill charging have become or are becoming commonplace.
“We’ve ridden this wave before,” says Fellows of Intec’s readiness for the move to LTE. “We’ve been offering real time services for seven or eight years now and we have a lot of experience doing this.” Intec and other billing vendors have already delivered content-aware charging and can bill for anything on a service-agnostic basis. They can measure it. They can define it. And hence, they can bill for it. In that sense, billing systems- and in many cases implemented billing infrastructure- is waiting for LTE to catch up.
The Demand Curve
A critical business question is whether the demand for LTE services is there. I believe it is. When AT&T Wireless has to ask its iPhone users to back off of their data usage because the 3G network can’t handle it that tells me
available on mobile devices, it tells me that our mobile society is ready and maybe even chomping at the bit for what LTE promises.
What’s the Hold Up?
Coming back to reality, we still need to look for barriers to LTE. “It’s a matter of managing through the legacy environments to get to that LTE nirvana,” says Fellows, “but it’s not especially difficult because of LTE.” The issue for major telecoms carriers is always how to mesh
Pipeline
Publishing, Volume 6, Issue 8
