Using Big Data in Telecom - how it can change the game play

Increasing ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), reducing customer churn (subscriber base) and reducing OPEX (Operational Expenses) are three very important priorities for any CSPs (Communication Service Providers) or Telecom Service Providers in general. With the rise in the usage of telecommunication devices in our day-to-day lives, the amount of digital content is increasing tremendously in the data networks. 

Having good insights from the big data, utilizing the insights to ramp up the revenue streams, catering to the customer complaints more effectively, taking feedback for the new service offerings and improving upon them, etc can really create differentiation among the competitors in the telecom industry. Big telecom companies, around the world have realized this opportunity and are taking good amount of initiatives to harness their big data analysis to their help.

As per a study done by IBM, successfully harnessing big data can help the telecom companies to mainly achieve the following three critical objectives:

1. Deliver smarter services that generate new sources of revenue and content across the network
2. Transform internal and external operations to achieve business and service excellence across the different SBUs
3. Build smarter CDN and data networks to drive consistent, high-quality customer experience

There are many service sector companies which are now offering the following service packages to the the telecom operators (The list is not exhaustive):

• Proactive call centers
• Smarter and effective marketing campaigns
• Network Analytics
• Location based services

Some examples of big data analytics in work for the telecom companies and their success stories are:

• A Tier-1 Mobile Service Provider, based out of the US, transforms call centers operation with real time access to Product and services data (customer/users)
• Globe Telecom, based in the Philippines, used big data analytics to improve the effectiveness of their promotions by 600%
• Ufone, based out of Pakistan is deploying big data analytics to improve marketing "offer acceptance rate" by 25%
• XO Communications, based out of US, used big data analytics to improve customer experience and an annual OPEX reduction of USD 15 million per year
• T-Mobile AG, Deutsche Telekom (Germany) uses big data to optimize network performance & reduce OPEX costs
• Sprint, based out of the US, leverages big data analytics to put real-time intelligence into the network driving a 90% increase in network capacity

So it is quite evident that companies across the world are increasing depending on the big data analytics for their improvement and this trend is opening up different avenues for data scientists and big data analysts.

Image source: Internet