Analytics Key to Smart Investments for Network Operators

Today’s network operators face a lot of challenges, in a rapidly changing and increasingly competitive marketplace. Making smart, informed decisions about what technologies and infrastructure to invest in requires accurate information, gleaned from data and interpreted using sophisticated analytics.

That’s where network analytics provider VPIsystems comes in.

“We take information from the network—how it’s running, what subscribers are doing, how it’s configured—and present that to operators in such a way that they can make business decisions about how best to serve their customers now and predict what’s going to happen,” explained Russ Green (News - Alert), VPIsystems’ senior vice president of Marketing and Product Management, during a conversation at ITEXPO (News - Alert) East 2012. 

Green said network operators are dealing with three primary challenges: data surge, cost containment, and business models.

On the data surge front, there is massive demand for bandwidth, driving operators to build new and more sophisticated networks. Analytics are needed to help those operators anticipate future demand growth and figure out what to do about it.

“For years, we’ve been talking about this data surge,” Green pointed out. “It’s really happening now.”

Responding to the data surge also involves careful consideration of congestion and policy. VPIsystems offers solutions that let operators predict bandwidth issues and head off problems at the pass.

On the cost containment front, in order to build new infrastructure, it’s vital to have adequate revenue and profitability to fund those investments. There’s an across-the-board focus on costs that requires analytics to make informed decisions.

“With new networks being built, operators need to be more efficient,” Green noted. 

On the business models front, in recent years there has been a major shift in how subscribers pay for services. The traditional x-minutes or x-megabytes per month model no longer cuts it. Again, analytics inform decisions about the most appropriate business model.

The key to all this, Green said, is helping operators be more subscriber-focused. If they know where money is really coming in from the network, they can make smart decisions.