By Gordon Rawling, Director of EMEA Marketing, Oracle Communications
Three UK recently announced a strategic shift from a “pricing-led” model to one focused on “customer enjoyment.” As part of this change, the operator plans to offer data analysis services to corporate customers, helping businesses answer practical questions such as how much time employees spend on mobile devices and which applications they use most frequently for work.
Although these services are still being developed, communications service providers (CSPs) are already considering which value-added offerings they can create to monetise the vast amounts of data they collect. The goal is to turn raw information into useful insights businesses will pay for.
One of the most valuable assets operators hold is the daily flow of customer and network data. In the era of big data, information itself is an asset, and CSPs are exploring new, innovative ways to monetise that asset and generate additional revenue streams in an emerging market.
CSPs as “data brokers”
One strategic option is for CSPs to analyse their own network and operational data to answer business customers’ questions directly. In this role as “data brokers,” operators would commit resources to extract actionable insights from network, OSS, and BSS datasets—insights that can drive performance improvements and cost savings for enterprises.
Three UK has trialled a similar approach internally: staff proposed questions about the operator’s business, and colleagues analysed network data to provide answers. The tests reportedly produced encouraging results. It is easy to imagine CSPs launching subscription-based analytics services that provide businesses with insights they would not be able to generate on their own.
Opening the door to insight
Beyond answering predefined questions, much of the promise of big data lies in revealing the “known unknowns”—patterns and relationships hidden across datasets that businesses have not yet recognised. The value of analytics often comes from uncovering these less obvious links between mobile network data and an organization’s internal records.
Some enterprises will prefer to discover these opportunities independently, and will seek access to the underlying data. CSPs can support that need by exposing network and OSS/BSS datasets through controlled APIs. A well-managed API ecosystem encourages innovation in a manner similar to the app economy, enabling partners and customers to build novel solutions on top of operator data.
Given the sensitivity of network and customer information, operators must balance openness with robust security and privacy controls. Any strategy to monetise access to data should include strong governance, anonymisation where appropriate, and strict access management to preserve confidentiality and comply with regulations.
Three’s CIO, Stefan Grew, indicated the company is moving toward some form of self-service analytics for customers. With relatively low upfront costs and the potential to build long-term customer relationships, it is likely more CSPs will adopt comparable approaches—either by providing curated insights directly, exposing data through secure APIs, or offering hybrid models that combine both capabilities.
As CSPs develop these offerings, success will depend on packaging data and analytics in ways that deliver clear business value, maintaining customers’ trust through responsible data stewardship, and building platforms that enable partners and enterprises to innovate. The result could be a new class of telecommunications services where operators monetise their unique data assets while helping businesses make better, evidence-driven decisions.