Jeff Gordon: In a matter of minutes I can traverse from one 4G
environment to another or from 4G to 3G to wifi and back to
3G without knowing it 
                                
                         
With the emergence of the mobile lifestyle, subscribers are demanding real-time access to services, especially as the possibilities for mobile engagement grow exponentially in the 4G environment. Users have become technically savvy and use mobile data to underpin all facets of their lives.
New communication modes such as video are coming to the market not just in terms of users consuming video but in terms of video messaging and user generated content. Operators have to respond to this by enhancing their business processes and network capacity, or users will switch to an alternate provider that supports their demands. LTE provides the means for operators to meet heightened user expectations and support rich, real-time experiences.
“4G networks enable subscribers to engage with not only each other but also with banks, retailers, airlines and more in a truly real-time mobile centric experience,” says Jeff Gordon, newly appointed president and CEO of Syniverse. “As end-user expectations rise, operators need to be able to utilise real-time business intelligence to assemble a 360-degree view of that customer to ensure the experience is optimal at all times.”
Constant high-quality bandwidth is required to enable real-time engagements, and LTE delivers it. To achieve ubiquity — which Gordon refers to as “the promise of mobile” — interoperability hurdles must be overcome. LTE poses a series of technical and operational challenges. To name a few: it will not be deployed unilaterally; different territories will run LTE in different spectrum bands, of which there will be several; and, because it’s an evolution, legacy networks will not necessarily be retired, requiring forward and backward compatibility.
“In a matter of minutes I can traverse from one 4G environment to another or from 4G to 3G to wifi and back to 3G without knowing it,” explains Gordon. “But while that transition is seamless to me as a subscriber, operators have to be able to see across disparate environments in totality. Again, they need the 360-degree customer view enabled by real-time intelligence to stay ahead of subscriber needs and provide a flawless experience regardless of location.”
Interoperability between network types is a fundamental issue that needs to be overcome in addition to the need to interconnect LTE networks that use different spectrum bands. The transition has to be smooth and undetectable to the end user.
“Certainly interoperability in the LTE environment is more complex than what we saw in either 2G or 3G,” explains Gordon. “The way the spectrum has been divided around the world makes it more difficult, and there also are more entities for it to interoperate with. You simply have more variables to be taken into account.”
Gordon points out that maintaining and improving customers’ experiences in real-time is as important in the home network context as it is in global roaming because operators need to know faster than ever before what’s happening in their networks and address issues before the customer even knows there is a problem. Being able to access network and roaming information and to perform predictive analysis enables real-time service management that directly improves customer care.
“It’s critical to use data to balance your books and spot trends. However, if that’s where it stops and it does not have an impact on the customers’ mobile experience, then you have stopped short of what could have been done,” adds Gordon. “Instead, it’s vital to turn that data into an action that improves the life of a customer, improves their satisfaction and improves the value they perceive.”
Gordon cites video communications as a prime example of the demand for real-time engagement in the LTE world.
“We strongly believe 4G is a visual medium that will bring consumer engagement to new heights thanks to interactive video, and video is as real time as it gets,” says Gordon. “Any service hiccups will be immediately clear to the subscriber, highlighting the importance of leveraging data to stay ahead of potential pitfalls. The successful mobile operators that provide a seamless, ubiquitous video communications experience will see their voice revenues become video revenue potential.”
Simply put, it’s time for operators to address the complexity of customers’ current demands. The key lies in using real-time intelligence to gain holistic insight into what the customer is doing over which technology, so that experience can be optimised accordingly all unbeknownst to the subscriber. GTB