A third of operators underprepared for LTE

More than 60 per cent of operator respondents to the Telecoms.com Intelligence Industry Survey 2013 said that their firm was prepared or very well prepared to manage the challenges and risks inherent in the transition to LTE. However, more than 31 per cent said that they were less prepared than they should be.

The question was part of a section of the survey that looked at risk, revenue assurance and fraud management (RAFM).

M-commerce/mobile payment services and OTT content were considered a risk by the largest number of respondents, 54 per cent and 50.9 per cent, respectively. Cloud offers were in third place, deemed a risk by 42.3 per cent of respondents. The results reveal that the industry has concerns about services that the operator does not control end to end.

Integration between different systems is a key issue in revenue assurance and fraud management. Almost 60 per cent of operator respondents said that a lack of data consistency across different systems was one reason that their organisations do not make the most of their revenue assurance and fraud management functions.

Just less than 50 per cent said that the absence of automated tools to support processes was a problem, 45.3 per cent cited inconsistent procedures and policies across organisations and 41 per cent the lack of accurate and timely information from other areas of the business.

“It is incredible that, in 2013, the lack of data consistency across different systems across systems is still the biggest obstacle to effective RAFM,” said Sergio Silvestre, chief marketing officer at Business Assurance specialist WeDo Technologies. “Clearly there is a significant opportunity for specialist companies to help operators to improve their performance in this area. This challenge will only increase in the all-IP, real time and Over-the-Top Services world the Telecom industry is evolving into.”