By: Jesse Cryderman
Last year at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Real-Time Communications conference, an analyst told me that if a piece of hardware were to store everything the average person
said during his or her lifetime, it would amount to about two terabytes (TB) of data: “Everything you say during your lifetime can be stored on an $80 device at Staples.”That’s probably
true, but it doesn’t tell the whole story, because people do a lot more than talk. In fact, if the new shared-data and unlimited-voice plans from AT&T, Verizon
and France’s SFR are any indication, voice is the least of our worries…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
“The price of light is less than the cost of darkness.” --Arthur C. Nielsen, Sr., Founder, ACNielsen Arthur C. Nielsen, the market research pioneer, is probably best known for illuminating
trends related to radio and television broadcasts. In pursuit of this particular “light,” in 1948 his son, Arthur C Nielsen, Jr., convinced ACNielsen to invest $150,000 in the UNIVAC, the first
commercially available business computer. Under the leadership of Arthur Jr., the company subsequently grew from $4 million in annual revenues to nearly $700 million…
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By: Matti Aksela, Malla Poikela, Nancee Ruzicka
Mediation is a source of an immense amount of useful data that is no longer exclusive to billing. Numerous critical operational processes and systems rely on crucial event data captured
from the network, but external data representations (XDRs) alone cannot paint a complete picture of customer experience, nor can they protect revenue and reduce risk. As complex as converged
services and usage transactions are, without an infusion of customer data and interactions, operators see only part of the picture…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
When Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), alleged in early June that AT&T, Sprint, Google, Skype, Facebook, and many other companies
had violated the public trust by participating in a secretive effort aimed at capturing and recording all communications data, he ignited the hottest story (so far) of 2013. Since
then the saga has unfolded like a Hollywood blockbuster, complete with an offer of asylum for Snowden from Russia, further information leaks, geopolitical posturing, intense media
scrutiny, and a growing fear of government espionage…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
Man can’t live on bread alone, or so goes the old adage. But what about CSPs—could they exist on Big Data alone? And can it become the bread-and-butter staple of the telecommunications
business? While it might sound crazy, preparing for such a future could be a wise idea. As traditional service revenues are increasingly cannibalized by over-the-top (OTT) services like
WhatsApp and Viber, the network is becoming a commodity as it’s simultaneously turned into a “dumb pipe.” Recent news from WhatsApp, which initiated OTT voice services in August,
revealed that more than 300 million people actively use the mobile-messaging app each month…
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By: Becky Bracken
Reading the tea leaves of Big Data analytics reduces churn and provides insight into customers who can be leveraged to improve the overall customer experience, from network
performance to customer service. And that’s important, but for communications service providers (CSPs) on the hunt for new sources of revenue, Big Data has a much larger role to play. A total of
1.7 billion people, or approximately one out of every four human beings, will use a social networking site this year, according to eMarketer, with the total predicted to
reach 2…
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By: Chris Piedmonte
Advancements in chip technology have brought about the dawn of the age of the microserver. This next generation of server technology is poised to more effectively tackle the issues of
cost performance, reliability, space, and power consumption. Current information-technology systems based on Hadoop, MongoDB, Cassandra, and other products that are designed to manage Big
Data require significant parallel processing power to get through extremely large volumes of data required to gain tactical and strategic business insight…
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By: Rob van den Dam
Big Data is making a big impact on communications service providers (CSPs). Carriers that are diving headlong into the data analytics sea expect to enjoy differentiating advantages that can set
them apart in an exceedingly competitive marketplace. Those that are lagging behind in Big Data—well, they’ll lag behind in business performance too. So said more than 50
telecommunications-industry professionals who participated in IBM’s most recent Big Data @ Work Study, conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value in partnership with Saïd Business
School at the University of Oxford…
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By: Nancee Ruzicka
Big or small, there’s always been data. Where we once used rulers, clocks and scales to take measurements, we now use sensors and probes powered by integrated circuits and
complex software; analysis that was done with pencil and paper is now accomplishedwith spreadsheets. Because the volume of data currently available to
service providers, not to mention the variety of sources, exceeds humans’ capacity to correlate and analyze all of it in a timely manner, the concepts of Big Data are
becoming very real…
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By: Becky Bracken
Not too long ago, customers were willing to pay Ma Bell a premium service charge to keep their phone number unlisted. You didn’t necessarily have to be in the witness protection
program to keep your name, number and address private.To say times have changed would be a vast understatement. These days customers really let it all hang out. They Instagram every meal,
Facebook every personal detail about themselves and “check in” everywhere from the local taco shop to their vacation theme-park destination…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
Verizon tops in wireless network quality Which communications service provider (CSP) has the best network quality in the United States? According to the latest report from J.D. Power,
Verizon Wireless leads the pack in all regions. The marketing firm also found that overall network performance varies widely by service segment and service use case, meaning solution providers
still have plenty of nuts left to crack, and its report goes on to quantify investment in network upgrades: customers who switch service providers based on network quality pay, on
average, $17 more per month…
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By: Tim Young
“Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without; for much knowledge is a curse.” —Zhuangzi (Chuang-Tze), On Tolerance When “Master Zhuang” wrote those words
some 23 centuries ago, he was emphasizing the virtue of the human race’s natural, innate potential and undergirding a holistic philosophy of life. Seeking too much knowledge at the expense of
exploring our inner strengths, he taught, robs us of a simple, natural, fulfilling life. “That’s great, Tim,” you say…
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