How CSPs Are Overlooking Revenue Opportunities That Are Embedded into the Data That They Already Have

Introduction 

Communication Service Providers (CSPs) are sitting on a wealth of network data that are ripe and untapped. They could be using it to revolutionize their operations, offer new analytics services to other businesses, open up new revenue streams. So why aren’t they doing it despite the obvious benefits? 

The challenge is that most CSPs have point-to-point integration layers and fragmented datasets. This results in only partial visibility into their data, leaving them with an incomplete picture of their operations and customer behavior. As a consequence, they lack on necessary insights to make fully-informed business decisions.  

The Data Challenges

Data Sprawling

The rapid growth of data makes it impractical to store everything in a single location. The technical complexities and soaring costs associated with centralized storage create a daunting barrier for CSPs to overcome. As a result, they often resort to distributed data storage in various silos, leading to data duplication and inconsistent access privileges.

Data Governance

With traditional tools, it is very difficult to ensure that data is only seen by people with the right privileges and entitlements, leading many CSPs to instead duplicate data in various silos, each with their own sets of privileges. The absence of robust data governance mechanisms exposes them to potential data breaches. This lack of data control can be detrimental to both CSPs and their customers, eroding trust and hindering the development of innovative services.

Integration Limitations

Managing the sheer volume and complexity of data necessitate heavy performance requirements, leading to a significant strain on their IT infrastructure. This integration limitation hinders the seamless flow of data.

CSPs can solve these challenges with holistic data management. Holistic data management involves taking a comprehensive approach to managing data, including data governance, data quality, data architecture, data integration, data security, and data privacy. The goal is to ensure that data is accurate, reliable, and readily available to support business decision-making and to drive business value. By taking a holistic approach, CSPs can unlock the full potential of their data assets and avoid data silos.  

Let’s look at how this would work in practice.

A Horizontal, Intelligent Data Processing Layer with Secure Cloud Storage 

Holistic data management for CSPs involves two key data solutions. The first is a horizontal, intelligent data processing layer, and the second is a secure cloud storage with virtual datasets for specific use cases.

Here’s how CSP data would be managed within these two layers: 

1. All network and service usage data are collected and processed.

Carrier-grade data processing platform collects, normalizes, aggregates and correlates the data, and applies business logic.

2. Data is cleansed and enriched to optimize central storage.

Storing all data in a central location can result in an extremely large dataset, and the larger the set, the larger the cost of storing and processing the data. This can be solved by intelligently processing only data that is relevant to the CSP’s needs or the needs of their enterprise customers.

3. The processed data is forwarded to secure cloud storage.

The cloud storage meets the security, privacy and data isolation requirements of all stakeholders.

4. The data is easily accessible in virtual datasets within a data marketplace.

The datasets include records that are optimized for relevant business use cases.

5. CSPs use the data to improve their operations.

CSPs can give their AI and machine learning applications a much broader dataset to improve network operations, customer experiences, and service assurance.

6. CSPs can use the data to offer analytics as a service to businesses.

Businesses can use AI and machine learning insights for decision support, forecasting and workload management.

Internal CSP Opportunities with Holistic Data Management 

Having one, central location for comprehensive, quality data – with proper governance for access – opens up several internal opportunities for CSPs: 

Stakeholders can now make fully informed decisions, based on complete end-to-end quality data. 

CSPs can lower costs by reducing the numbers of incomplete mini data lakes that each department has set up. 

CSPs can increase security and data governance through consistent and transparent rules across the entire organization. 

CSPs can optimize their own services, such as by using network data analytics to provide coverage for a network slice, without overprovisioning. 

New CSP Revenue Opportunities with Enterprises 

Sharing relevant data with enterprises presents huge revenue opportunities for CSPs. Based on their central database, CSPs can create virtual datasets for businesses, where all required data is fully processed and ready to use. Here are a few of the ways CSPs can expose this data to other businesses to grow revenue: 

CSPs can sell analytics as a service to businesses, such as by enabling a business to use mobility and geospatial data to determine the best location for a new store. 

CSPs can share relevant data with vehicle manufacturers, such a data related to self-driving cars or in-vehicle services. 

CSPs can expose data to application developers and enterprises that use network slicing as a core part of their business model.

Conclusion 

Once CSPs are able to overcome their three main data challenges of data sprawling, data governance, and integration limitations, their potential to capitalize on their network data and explore new revenue opportunities is vast, thanks to holistic data management. By adopting a comprehensive approach that encompasses an intelligent data processing layer and a secure cloud storage, CSPs can optimize their data assets. This internal transformation leads to cost reduction, improved security, and optimized services. 

Externally, CSPs can tap into new revenue streams by offering analytics as a service to businesses, sharing relevant data to industries that could benefit from them, and empowering application developers through network slicing capabilities. 

Embracing holistic data management will position CSPs at the forefront of the industry, empowering them to deliver enhanced services and drive growth in the dynamic business landscape. 

Conclusion 

Once CSPs are able to overcome their three main data challenges of data sprawling, data governance, and integration limitations, their potential to capitalize on their network data and explore new revenue opportunities is vast, thanks to holistic data management. By adopting a comprehensive approach that encompasses an intelligent data processing layer and a secure cloud storage, CSPs can optimize their data assets. This internal transformation leads to cost reduction, improved security, and optimized services. 

Externally, CSPs can tap into new revenue streams by offering analytics as a service to businesses, sharing relevant data to industries that could benefit from them, and empowering application developers through network slicing capabilities. 

Embracing holistic data management will position CSPs at the forefront of the industry, empowering them to deliver enhanced services and drive growth in the dynamic business landscape. 

Stephen Hateley

Head of Product Marketing @ DigitalRoute

Stephen is a marketing leader with extensive knowledge across the ICT industry. As Head of Product Marketing at DigitalRoute, he focuses on helping CSPs adopt new 5G business models and supporting enterprises in their move to usage-based subscriptions.

He has previously headed up product marketing for companies such as InfoVista and Comptel. At Nokia he led marketing for the Nokia Software Digital Operations group, and later led product, solution and digital marketing at NetNumber.