|
NewsGlobe: Today's News
Study finds operator revenue leakage continuing to grow
IP content and applications impacting types of losses operators suffer
by Jim Barthold
A survey commissioned by OSS vendor Subex Azure and
conducted by Analysys Research reveals that average revenue
leakage among global telecom operators has actually
increased to 13.6 percent from 12.1 percent a year ago.
The survey questioned almost 100 operators around the world
and found average fraud losses have grown from 2.9 percent
of revenue last year to 4.5 percent this year with mobile
operators losing even more. Fraud, which includes external
and internal fraud and fraud by other operators, is easier to
track that other forms of revenue loss because “operators in
general are quite willing to share information about fraud
losses and fraud prevention,” said Danny Dicks, principal
analyst at Analysys Research.
Revenue losses are also growing as operators move
increasingly to IP-based applications and services, some of
which are rushed to market to beat the competition.
“We’ve run this survey five times over six years and the
losses have gone up a little, but they’ve always been above
10 percent,” Dicks said. “The extent to which it’s going up and
the reason why it’s not going away quite possibly are related
to the change in service because every time new services
come along they bring with them a whole new set of revenue
assurance challenges.”
Operators are aware of the problem, especially as it involves
fraud, and have been working either to shore up backoffice
OSS/BSS operations or hire a company that can handle that
process, Dicks said.
“It’s a complex problem that telecom service providers are
faced with, a mixture of organization and procedural issues
and technical data formatting issues. We’ve seen a growing
awareness in service providers around the world of the
concept of revenue assurance … that they have to take a
holistic view of revenue assurance, not just firefighting
individual cases of loss.”
Part of that new attitude is based on the types of services that
are being delivered over networks and especially the fact that
very few providers offer only voice service.
“There’s a huge spike in a couple areas that are specifically
related to content-based services; the introduction of new
products or pricing structures is a big spike in terms of the
level of concern and another one that shows a big spike is
assuring accurate payments between content and application
partners,” said Adam Boone, vice president of strategic
marketing for Subex Azure.
“It’s no longer about simple connectivity from point A to
point B, it’s now about that connectivity plus the content that’s
moving over it.”
Subex Azure recommends using a Revenue Operation Center
(ROC) to integrate systems to monitor network interaction
and how resources are being used.
“It’s not just about detecting and correcting revenue leakage
… it’s also about assuring that assets are being used
efficiently and a given provisioning system is hitting your
revenue goals,” Boone said.
The problem of revenue leakage and the need for revenue
assurance will only grow as new services are pushed into the
market,” Dicks predicted.
“We’re past the early adoption stage. If they haven’t got the
revenue assurance issues ironed out now it’s certainly going
to represent a larger portion of their telecom revenues that
are eaten away,” he said.
|
