
In times of economic constraint, it is vital for businesses to find ways of reducing their costs and effectively managing their resources, whilst simultaneously ensuring that customers are satisfied with the service they are receiving. This can often be difficult, with many overlapping factors to be considered. For mobile operators, achieving such a fine balance can be crucial to their success in confronting increasingly aggressive competition.

Thanks to the explosion in smartphones and tablets, the mobile workforce is fast becoming a reality; according to IDC, over half of Europe’s workforce will be working remotely by 2013. The opportunities for better communication and more collaboration are vast and yet, even with the latest technology, without a clear unified communications strategy, organisations can find that more points of contact do not automatically lead to increased levels of productivity.

Mobile phone numbers are key assets that have been taken for granted and undervalued by the mobile industry for years. They are consumed in their thousands every day. They are acquired, upgraded, re-assigned and switched from one operator to the next. They are used to lure new subscribers in with tempting deals and thrown away without a second thought.

Paul Bultema, executive director, UK and Ireland strategy lead for the communications, media and technology operating group of Accenture, talks about consolidation, differentiation and the rise of over the top services.The opportunities for differentiation in this industry are cyclical. At one time carriers competed on network coverage or price. Today, at the dawn of the [...]

David Ffoulkes-Jones, CEO of CEM solutions provider WDS, shares his views on how operators can develop customer experience management into a true competitive differentiator.

As more websites move to encrypt their content and user data, more questions are raised over the future of Deep Packet Inspection. But advances in heuristic classification mean that DPI systems will still be able to function in an encrypted world.

It is impossible to open the business pages without some reminder of the huge importance of patents to the telecoms industry. The government’s proposal to introduce a ten per cent rate of corporation tax for patent-related profits is designed to encourage investment in innovation in the UK, and further highlights the opportunities for those who get patent value right. This could mean that some businesses should now take a greater interest in filing patents, and others will want to review their established arrangements to make the most of the proposals.

Way back in 1996, at the dawn of the digital revolution, Microsoft founder Bill Gates declared in an article that “Content is King.” Gates drew a parallel to television, saying that “The television revolution that began half a century ago spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but the long-term winners were those who used the medium to deliver information and entertainment.” This statement has proved prophetic.

According to UK regulator Ofcom, we have become a ‘smartphone nation’, ultra-connected night and day via the magic of mobile technology. But the evidence suggests that the UK is falling behind the rest of the world in providing the kind of networks needed to support the explosion in mobile device usage and data consumption.

The richness and diversity of today’s intensely competitive mobile market has provided a level of choice like never before. With Apple, RIM, Google and Microsoft battling it out, we have seen an explosion in the development of devices and applications for consumer and enterprise use.