By Ning Kun, Network Rollout and Integration Service Domain General Manager, Huawei

The number of HBB users worldwide increased by 10% in 2017, higher than the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7% from 2012 to 2016. Carriers realize that broadband-related consumption requirements are increasing exponentially, with an increasing number of devices connecting to networks, and already-connected devices increasing their usage. Despite HBB’s fast growth in emerging markets, it still has a low penetration rate. The bandwidth of most emerging market families is generally lower than 10 Mbit/s, suppressing service requirements and restricting demographic dividends. With fierce competition from mobile services, carriers are turning to innovative services such as video and smart home as new growth engines. HBB-based convergent sales of multiple services such as video and smart home benefit carriers by improving stickiness and sales, becoming an important platform for carrier service transformation.

However, the HBB process is complex, with steps including investment feasibility analysis, planning and design, network construction, product go-to-market (GTM) and marketing, service provisioning, and operation and maintenance (O&M). The complications of each service step affect carriers’ profitability, introducing severe challenges in terms of business positioning, operation, and network construction. In terms of business positioning, the average payback period in emerging markets is often longer than eight years. Inappropriate settings of some tariff packages, paper-based marketing processes, lack of package bundling design, and constraints on operation efficiency and networks hinder user development and affect the profit growth from using HBB.

In terms of operation, traditional HBB lacks an effective IT system, standardized processes, and accurate data, failing to meet the requirements of continuous service evolution. HBB also has a long provisioning period. For example, the average provisioning period for most subscribers in Latin America is 7 days, reducing end user experience and business agility.

For network construction, there is no unified planning for multiple services or effective identification of valuable areas, and Home Pass (HP) and Home Connection (HC) are not considered jointly. HC provisioning efficiency and costs are not considered during network construction, resulting in additional network construction requirements and a low actual installation rate. In addition, network construction in target areas is not planned continuously, causing high capacity expansion costs and hindering service evolution. Huawei’s premium HBB solution improves business, operation, and network indicators, identifies weaknesses and bottlenecks, and redefines business processes, operation, and network construction to help carriers monetize their networks.

Redefining Business

To improve profitability, carriers should rapidly expand their user base and establish continuous profit growth rather than focus on increasing their short-term installation rate. During broadband strategy implementation for a country or a carrier, clear user development goals and corresponding network construction goals must be defined. Huawei’s premium HBB solution improves business processes to continuously increase profits and provides E2E consulting and system integration. It provides professional package consulting and design, rethinks traditional pricing, maximizes the value of speed (a higher rate means a higher price), videos, and convergent packages, and matches products and packages with purchasing power. HBB service development not only relies on increasing revenue, but also on binding with mobile services to improve loyalty and competitiveness of the entire market.

For user development, HBB comprehensively improves marketing efficiency and enriches electronic channels to increase online marketing efficacy based on user experience. For offline marketing, HBB provides comprehensive IT support tools for integrating and streamlining operation and business data. This allows for visual E2E closed-loop management of marketing channels and provides efficient marketing task assignment, marketing execution, channel addition, exit, and reward. In this way, HBB improves marketing efficiency and provides reference data for use during operation and network construction.

Redefining Operation

Operation should be automated and intelligent, and carriers should continuously improve operation efficiency and organization. E2E and automated network planning, deployment, optimization, installation, service provisioning, O&M, and retention can minimize operation costs. Huawei’s premium HBB solution provides industry-leading operations capabilities, and creates a next-generation automated network operation platform based on a microservice-centered Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) and numerous comprehensive case studies. It allows for network planning to increase profitability through automated and intelligent operation.

Operation efficiency is vital to business success. In the early stages of improving operation efficiency, comprehensive operation consulting is required to identify existing breakpoints, reconstruct the service provisioning process, and optimize the system. This implements automatic service provisioning, improves one-time installation success rate and user experience, and reinvests the service delivery time and cost savings in marketing.

Redefining Networks

HBB service networks must support future service evolution, and should be agile, intelligent, efficient, and open. Network construction is now experience- and value-driven rather than investment-driven. Building an experience-driven network requires occasional adjustment and optimization of user experience indicators such as User, Unified, Ubiquitous–video Mean Opinion Score (U-vMoS). To achieve value-driven network construction, companies should maximize ROI by balancing HP and HC to achieve strong coverage and short-distance access. Strong coverage is achieved through efficient network construction and avoiding continuous capacity expansion, high costs, and long expansion periods that ultimately affect the market landscape. Short-distance access means bringing services closer to users, slightly increasing HP costs but greatly reducing HC costs. In addition, big data analysis, the simulation of future services, and comprehensive collaboration during network planning and design are essential. Services such as 5G, city security protection, and enterprise private line services during HBB network planning must be considered to build a collaborative infrastructure network. Network construction should be performed based on Huawei’s industry-leading experience and fiber-saving design capabilities, achieving one-off construction without requiring repeated operation.

As carriers are faced with continuously changing business objectives and increased reliance on E2E systems, Huawei’s HBB service provides a solution to build a positive business cycle by redefining business processes, operation, and network construction. This helps carriers reduce on overall investment costs, increase HBB service market share, and recognize new sources of revenue growth through convergent services. Huawei will continue to integrate and solidify best practices to help global telecom providers improve their services and develop the HBB market.