It’s Tough to Be a Telecom Company, But Big Data Can Help

Telecom operators are facing burgeoning technology, fierce competition, and a changing environment. How can Big Data give them an edge?

Net neutrality. Increasing Over-The-Top traffic. Declining voice revenues. Expanded mobile services and ballooning customer expectations. No wonder that the traditional core infrastructures that have supported the telecom industry have become embattled. The world is changing how it communicates, and service providers need to keep up.

The trend, without a doubt, is data. Monetizing data traffic and data infrastructure is key to moving forward. Using Big Data technologies, communications companies can capture and analyze the huge amounts of information their customers generate. This allows them to develop offerings that speak to customers’ needs and wants. They can also monetize the data itself, opening opportunities to expand into Business Intelligence and other data services.

In this post, we’ll explore two ways that Big Data can help the telecom industry.

First, let’s focus on how telecoms can use Big Data to improve their own businesses.

When was the last time a call to your mobile or Internet service provider left you feeling frustrated? For many people, customer service woes are a powerful incentive to find a new provider. How can companies use Big Data to encourage loyalty?

Now, let’s turn our focus outward to see how telecoms are using their data and infrastructure to make money from other companies:

This stretches well beyond the retail sector. Aggregated mobile data has also been used by town councils to measure the impact of new features and buildings; by sports venues to manage traffic and crowds during events; and by emergency response teams to devise better plans by studying the movements of people at different times and places.

As we have seen, telecom companies are sitting on a potential mine of information. But like most other mining activities, it’s going to take some work to get to the good stuff.

Implementing and maximizing Big Data will require effort, and we know that it pays off. After helping many companies in the communications space, we suggest the following ways to get the most from your Big Data investment:

It’s not an easy time to be a telecom company, but it’s an exciting one if you are willing to try out Big Data. Operators who are willing to embrace the insights and opportunities that technology gives them can find themselves well ahead of their less nimble competitors.

Authored by Suhale Kapoor, EVP and Co-founder at Absolutdata Analytics