Dynamics in the telecom industry has introduced a new challenge to the telecom operators - to migrate the existing circuit switched network infrastructure to IP based networks, in order to enable new services which are framed on the IP technology. The convergence of the voice, data and video networks results in packaging the network capacity and services into various offerings that an operator can bundle with attractive discounts and campaigns. As a result of this convergence a bright cloud of competition formed in the market and the operators faced declining profitability, especially in the voice market. Apart from the competition from rival companies, the telecom operators are facing threats from companies like Apple and Google because of their increasing smart phone customer base stealing revenue from the operators.
Profitability in terms of lower OPEx and higher ARPU can only be achieved by introducing and adapting new services based on the trends and situations existing in the market. The customer base, which is the great asset of a telecom operator, can be increased or retained if the new services are added at regular intervals. The pace of changes in the telecom industry demands the operators to reduce the time to market and for fast integration of the new services. This entails choosing a service delivery platform which is a great asset to the telecom operators.
A service delivery platform is a place where the telecom network operator, service and content providers, developers and consumers participate and establish an ecosystem for the rapid deployment, provisioning, management and billing of the services. It separate the service layer from the core network infrastructure, enabling operators to roll out new services quickly without making changes at the network level. SDP follows the principles of SOA for internal and external system integration as well as service and its business process management.
The service and content providers can participate in this ecosystem to promote, sell, monitor and safely receive payments through the operator channels. The SDP enables these participants to sign up as partners and explore the network and service capabilities of the operators to design value added services. SDP enables them to login to the partner’s area to define and publish the services, to manage the SLAs for the services, to measure the performance and uptake of the services and to enable settlement procedures.
The customers are benefited by a well thought out SDP implementation because it can easily guide customers to the service or offering that they search for. The customers can subscribe to and consume services offered on different networks or devices. Since the BSS, OSS and CRM systems are bounded to the SDP, it provides easy order management and helps the customer to understand the offerings, promotions, discounts and their bills.
The developer community participates mainly to integrate services, create and maintain the business processes, implement the logic for the management and the sales of the services. Since SDP has a set of technology enablers, developers has a minimal work to configure and integrate the applications to the enablers. The developers can also contribute by creating applications that can be used for creating value added services.
In a nutshell, SDP is a common platform implemented by an operator to integrate existing systems and network assets for easy management and selling network capabilities in the form of services to the customers.
Related Links
http://www.ericsson.com/ericsson/corpinfo/publications/review/2007_01/files/4_sdp_web.pdf
http://www.ericsson.com/res/thecompany/docs/publications/ericsson_review/2008/4_Drutt.pdf
