How to prepare your Business Systems to Monetize 5G

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Steffen Paulus, Director of Portfolio Marketing at Nokia

In a recent discussion with Nokia, John Abraham, principal analyst at Analysys Mason, argued that many service providers are not well equipped to monetize 5G-enabled use cases and business models.

According to John, some of the key obstacles are related to the legacy monetization and BSS solutions currently used by communication service providers (CSPs), particularly in the case of business and enterprise services. These outdated solutions are limited in their ability to support the services that new 5G-driven business models require, such as flexible ordering, provisioning and real-time monetization capabilities.

In the 5G era, CSPs hope to bring a range of new services into the marketplace, either directly or through partners. One common thread among these plans is that 5G will redefine service to expand well beyond traditional connectivity.

By offering an assortment of 5G services with partners, many CSPs are looking to gain a more significant position in the value chain by evolving their approach from standalone, self-contained offerings to more flexible and secure platform that facilitates partner interactions.

5G use cases such as cloud gaming, connected health, smart cities, and industrial automation are already widely discussed, and many additional use cases will emerge over time. 5G will enable a broad range of use cases that vary greatly in terms of complexity, delivery, and life span. Many of these use cases will require partnership between CSPs and enterprises.

In order to keep up in the 5G era, it is vital that service providers build a digital, AI-driven, and open ecosystem through which enterprises can develop digital services for their customers. New, highly flexible monetization capabilities are a must-have for this approach.

Some markets are closer than others to introducing 5G services, but you must act today to ensure that your business systems are ready. Many CSPs were worried about the network technology first and network operations second when 3G and 4G were first introduced. As a result, they overlooked the importance of updating their BSS environment in order to monetize new technology.

By taking the first steps to roll out a 5G-ready monetization solution today, CSPs will be able to immediately reap benefits such as higher average revenue per account (ARPA) for more traditional B2C and B2B offerings, and for emerging IoT use cases. 5G is here, and it’s already beginning to redefine everything. The time is now to start exploring what that means for service providers, and how they can begin to monetize in the 5G era.

Steffen Paulus is currently Head of Monetization Product Marketing at Nokia. Over the last 25+ years, Steffen has held various technical, PLM and Marketing roles related to telecoms software at Nortel, Syndesis, Subex and Alcatel-Lucent. Steffen has a degree in Computer Science and Telecommunications from the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt, Germany and is based in Toronto, Canada.

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