ZTE WIRELESS BROADBAND FORUM, KUALA LUMPUR: Chinese player ZTE believes operators are moving in the right direction when it comes to improving operational efficiency, but remain a long way behind Google and Microsoft and are dependent on vendors for creating new monetisation streams.

Imran Amin (pictured), ZTE’s principle architect for networks, said at the event that operators’ IT departments traditionally haven’t been very strong in the past, but recently he’s observed that all the major operators are now focused on software-based solutions for improving network operational efficiency.

“They are now asking for software that can analyse traffic to see which services are in demand. They are heading in the right direction, but not yet as strong as the Googles and Microsofts of the world, which don’t need to depend on somebody. Telcos are still very dependent on vendors.”

He pointed out that their thinking is changing. “Before they weren’t interested in network optimisation on a whole network level. Before they were just thinking reduce capex, reduce capex. But now they are giving a lot of attention to operational efficiency.”

They are then channeling the savings they gain from improved efficiency back into capex for network upgrades.

Asked why vendors tend to be late in solving operators’ problems, he acknowledged that vendors are still adapting to the disruption that the launch of the iPhone eight years ago has had on the industry.

Amin said that while operators are moving from a vertical to a horizontal architecture, they still can’t see cost per bit revenue, which makes it difficult for them to monetise data.

He argued that with customer experience management and predictive analytics tools operators can improve their network performance, which will prepare them to move beyond the consumer segment and into things like cloud storage and M2M services.

He noted that most operators are using big data to monitor network performance. “The next step after the network is optimised is to duplicate that model for the enterprise and help them reduce their overall costs.”

It’s the communication
Another major issue, he said, is that operators typically have a lack of communication between their planning and marketing departments.

The planning department, for example, may have a five-year plan for installing backhaul sites, but they typically don’t communicate with the marketing department about the specific packages they will be able to launch.

“This means that when they want to launch a new service, they have to ask the planning team for bandwidth to be available, which could take a month or more to launch that service. The inter-department communications is lacking.”