Brainy broadband management

There has been much published of late about the incredible growth Africa will experience in mobile broadband, with CAGR projections of 81% from 2012 through to 2015. This relates to around 184 million mobile broadband subscribers over primarily WCDMA and HSPA technologies (Informa, WCIS and Ericsson analysis, 2012). It will take a number of years before LTE gains momentum and scale.

A question many operators are dealing with at present is whether smarter charging and management of the mobile Internet will improve a customer's experience, and in turn drive increased usage?

The importance of social media cannot be underestimated.

Michael Stanley is head of consulting and business development at Ericsson, sub-Saharan Africa.

A recent report by Ericsson Consumer Labs (Smarter Mobile Broadband, June 2012), undertaken in a number of emerging and developed countries, uncovered the key drivers of increased mobile data usage. Many of these drivers were a confirmation of what was expected and related to increased speed and lower prices of data. What was interesting, however, was the desire by data users to be able to manage their own costs and make decisions on further purchases based on a personalised data management facility.

The world has experienced a number of existing and tested management and charging concepts. These are managed primarily through a pop-up application window that will allow for one of a number of options to be selected and payment to be enabled.

One of the more common offerings relates to a facility that significantly improves speed (or quality) for a limited period of time, eg, one hour. This is useful when one urgently needs to download or e-mail a large file, watch a video, or listen to streaming music without the frustrations of buffering. A second option is to enable a data plan top-up when a user is about to exceed his/her data limit. Again, this can be managed through an application interface that appears on the screen. A third offering being deployed by some operators is allowing users to select one or two applications that will be provided at a small, incremental fee.

Such offerings are driven by an incorporation and appreciation of the large demands for social media by their customers and a willingness to provide some customer “stickiness”. The importance of social media cannot be underestimated, as data from the Opera Mini browser shows, with 69% of all South African mobile page views dedicated to Facebook. In Kenya, 67% of all page views are dedicated to Facebook, and in Nigeria it totals 48% (Opera Mini State of the Web, April 2011).

A derivative of the above offering is allowing customers unlimited access to only one or two applications, eg, YouTube and Facebook, at a set monthly fee. Enabling and disabling this access can be done monthly through the application interface, and access to other data offerings is blocked. A fifth data management offering that is gaining popularity in more developed markets is the enablement of a household plan, where several household users are managed by a primary user. The primary accountholder would be able to manage all plans through a simple interface. This would include data transfer between users, top-up, limit and monitor usage.

Utilising and obtaining the best possible benefit from smarter mobile broadband management will be best seen in countries where unlimited data plans are either still embryonic, or not yet launched. When one has been exposed to an unlimited plan, it is difficult to shift to a plan that requires management of some sort. However, in those countries where users have not been exposed to unlimited mobile packages, the concepts and initiatives surrounding active data management become increasingly interesting.

This move from basic (be it unlimited plans or a data bucket) to more personalised data account management must be underpinned by an achieved increase in value for the data user. That implied value will be different for each user based on their specific needs and wants. The drawback, of course, with personalisation of data management is that there needs to be a far greater involvement from the user. This may be perceived as being complex to some non-techno-savvy users, and the constant alerts may be distracting and frustrating.

As much as many operators have been as transparent as possible in their communication of the costs associated with data usage, there still resides an underlying lack of understanding by consumers on how their data packages work and whether they are or will be receiving the value for which they purchased the data service. With that comes an uncomfortable feeling of financial risk.

Operators can help reduce (or manage) this perception of perceived risk exposure by being as trustworthy and uncomplicated as possible. The opportunity for operators with a personalised data management application is that they can encourage greater user exploration and increase usage through incremental offers. The opportunity for mobile data users is that they have the flexibility to manage their needs and pay for what services and quality of experience they value.