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Billing Wars Heating Up
While Verizon is expanding its services, the company is likely to see increasing competition in other services. Published reports said that AT&T was close to announcing a partnership with two billing providers as it moves more formerly into mobile billing.
Richard Crone, a financial services consultant specializing in payments, said that the carriers are already the most experienced recurring payments providers in the world due to their monthly billing procedures. They are now looking a “bill through me” services as well as “bill to me” services, each of which will drive growth in the other. While the carriers have had billing for things like ring tones and ancillary services for a long time, the relationships with billing providers would enable the carriers to provide “billing gateway services,” much like MasterCard and Visa.
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Wireless subscriber connections rose to 292.8 million. |
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Smart phones and wireless-enabled PDAs also grew substantially over the past year, increasing from 40.7 million in July 2009 to 61.2 million in June 2010. This brings the total number of data-capable devices on carriers’ networks to 264.5 million. Wireless carriers reported handling 161.5 billion megabytes of data in the six months ending in June 2010, up 49.8 percent from the last half of 2009.
SMS-capable devices increased to 243.7 million as of June 2010, which is up from 235.3 million in June 2009. There were more than 243.5 million Internet-capable devices during this survey period, which was an increase of more than 6.4 million since June 2009.
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Energy Expansion
BSS/OSS providers will also move more deeply into the energy business as part of the evolution of the smart grid. The NGN Forum in October established a Smart Energy Forum to focus on IP services used to power the smart grid, home grids, and alternative energy sources including wind and solar.
“Utility companies have traditionally developed their own networks and communications systems. However, they are now looking toward the telecommunications industry for apps, technology development, and OSS/BSS/security to help them manage consumer demand,” said Michael Khalilian, NGN Forum chairman and president.
Survey Says A survey from CTIA-The
Wireless Association found that
wireless subscriber connections rose to
292.8 million, an increase of roughly 16
million since June 2009 and represents
a penetration rate of 93 percent. These
subscribers used 2.26 trillion minutes
(up by 19 billion minutes), 1.8 trillion
SMS messages (up by 33 percent) and
56.3 billion MMS messages (an increase
of 187 percent). Despite these
increases in usage, the average local
monthly bill fell by 4.2 percent to
$47.47 over the same period.
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With deeper penetration of iPhones, iPads and Android-capable devices, those numbers are bound to grow, as are opportunities for OSS/BSS providers with services to support these devices, the developing smart grid and other evolving products and services.
Last but not Least…
TM Forum’s Management World Americas 2010 wrapped up on November 11. With a reported 1200 registered attendees, show staffers noted that the event was back to 2008 levels after a dip last year. That comparative improvement aside, the event was still decidedly subdued on the show floor and in the keynotes, though more interesting debate was to be found in the conference rooms and in private meetings. Pipeline was on hand to catch the events, and you can read more in news reports posted in our News Center. There, among other news, you can find out about vendor activity at the show (here and here), plus check out specific show-related news for vendors like Nakina Systems, Microsoft, and NetCracker (who released results of its 2010 Global Service Provider Survey, conducted in conjunction with Pipeline). In addition, you’ll find our overall take on the show here.
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