Roam if You Want To, Roam Around the World
Based on the millions of daily transactions Syniverse processes, as well as third-party data from Informa Telecoms & Media, Syniverse calculates there is a monthly average of 75 million unique outbound international roamers--subscribers traveling abroad with the potential to use mobile devices. Syniverse also found that more than 50 percent of those roamers do not use voice services and up to 70 percent do not use data services during their travels.
One of the solutions within the Syniverse RTI suite, RoamMonitor, provides real-time rating and notification capabilities both to operators and their subscribers. This helps overcome the obstacle of delivering real-time notifications to individual subscribers when an operator offers a variety of pricing plans and allows operators and subscribers to define their own usage thresholds as well as the preferred notification mechanism.
CSP's Lift Their Game
"While this regulatory action primarily focuses on preventing bill shock, the tools that are required to fulfill the mandates also enable CSPs to lift their game by launching new business models, interacting with their customers in real-time, and providing a greater level of transparency and control to their customers," Lucas Skoczkowski, chief executive officer of Redknee, a bill shock solutions provider says. "Redknee is powering some of the world's most innovative mobile operators, such as KPN's Telfort, to provide their subscribers with an advanced customer experience and be compliant to similar regulatory mandates such as the EU data roaming notification and capping rules. At Redknee, we continue to invest in real-time monetization solutions to support the growth of mobile data and content for wireless subscribers around the world."
The Sandvine Usage Management bill shock solution is integrated into the service provider's home and roaming partner subscriber portal, subscriber communication, billing and OSS systems, and can differentiate between home subscribers roaming on a visited network and roaming partner subscribers roaming onto the service provider's network. It also provides the appropriate communication, usage acceptance of further charges and usage details for billing. The Sandvine solution has been implemented by several carriers in the EU to meet existing bill shock real-time SMS text update standards; Telfonica is one of the largest.
"Telefonica's focus on consumer quality of experience is key to their success," said Dave Caputo, President and CEO, Sandvine. "Sandvine works closely with our customers to help them manage network demands and trends and identify opportunities to create and optimize new services. Our unmatched breadth of policy solutions, as illustrated by our numerous and varied Telefonica deployments, is a key competitive differentiator and one important driver of our future success."
Essentially, bill shock prevention focuses on the fundamentals of quality customer service: flexible, real-time communications and empowered users. Investment in bill shock solutions is a de facto investment in consumer and public relations and happy customers.
"The best course of action an operator can take is to provide customers with control and transparency by delivering relevant, timely and proactive information about their usage to prevent the issue from arising at all," Clark adds. "Further, they can empower subscribers to set their own thresholds and limits, helping them feel confident and fully in control of their usage."
