As the nights draw in - up here in the Northern hemisphere, at least - so too does our leisure focus. Holidays, travel and outdoor pursuits tend to be replaced by more sedentary and domestic routines; the expansive outdoors are replaced by the cosy indoors, the sun lounger by the fireside armchair and - for most of us for at least some of the time - the television.

As we point out in this month's feature, 'Social TV: coming to a multi-screen near you' despite the almost 'traditional' place TV has carved out for itself in modern culture, the way it's being consumed is changing fast. That means the way we as an industry are planning to intercept its opportunities should be changing too.

Just a couple of years ago most of us were focused on the multi-screen concept. Television, we told each other, was all about the same programming appearing (being repurposed if necessary) on different screens - TV, PC, mobile phone - so that viewers could watch where and how they liked.

That still makes sense up to a point, but it turns out, according to recent research, that the more important trend is multi-tasking rather than multi-screen viewing. So-called 'digital natives' (those young enough - under 35, say - to have been brought up with computers, mobiles and Internet) are often inclined to television-watch (for instance) as a social activity, using PC or mobile-based instant messaging or texting to comment on programmes as they unfold.

This slightly unexpected behaviour - and others like it - naturally changes the long view for our industry. Strategies for monetisation through providing content or communications services have to adapt to take into account the growth of this 'social TV' trend and the multi-tasking that goes with it.

Also in this issue, we focus the spotlight on the exciting market of Africa, as we prepare to exhibit at AfricaCom 2010 (November 10-11, Cape Town). If you're planning to be there too, then we would love to see you at our stand (E10).

In addition, we gain insight from one of the regions top consultants, Michèle Scanlon, Director & Principal Consultant at Indian Atlantic. Low ARPU in Africa is driving operator innovation, she says, with the emergence of new services such as prepaid "SOS credit", where the operator lends money and gets the principal and interest back with the next top-up.

And finally, Cerillion has enjoyed another big customer win, this time in Asia-Pacific with a new contract to consolidate all billing activities for a large provider of mobile, fixed and data telecoms services.

As ever, we hope you enjoy Evolve and, above all, find it useful. If you have any comments about how we could make it even better, then we would love to hear from you at marketing@cerillion.com.

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Social TV: Coming to a multi-screen near you…

Recent statistics from the UK's regulator, Ofcom, point to some very interesting changes in user behaviour and the growing simultaneous use of multiple different channels of media, for example TV and broadband internet. This will come as no surprise to the younger generation who are growing up with the latest technology at their fingertips, however Ofcom's survey shows that 20% of all media usage in the UK is now 'multi-tasked'.

Us Brits consume nearly nine hours of media in a window of just over seven hours per day, with as much as 29% of that being multi-tasked media in the age 16-24 category. Much of this activity is attributed to the growth of smartphones, in particular the iPhone, and more recently the emergence of a wide array of Android devices.

Ofcom's survey notably took place in April/May 2010, before this summer's World Cup. However, separate research by Allot Communications reveals that global mobile data usage went up 24% during the World Cup and surged by an impressive 35% during individual matches, as many people used their smartphones to access real-time match information.

Of course much of this smartphone usage is also on social networks as people comment on matches, discuss players, argue about bad refereeing decisions and complain about the lack of goal-line technology using applications such as Facebook and Twitter. In years gone by, this sort of conversation would take place around the office coffee machine or the school playground the following day, but in 2010 it seems absolutely normal that this banter takes place in 'real-time' during the match itself.

Sporting content

Sporting content has long been a powerful weapon in the service provider armoury, with exclusive events such as football matches and boxing title fights being used to attract new customers and increase ARPU. However, the internet age has created a hunger for statistics, and a vast array of data is now collected and collated for all major sporting events. In addition, the accessibility of video highlights and replays is driving further data usage as consumers watch and share their favourite sporting moments.

As identified in the Ofcom report, the new generation of smartphones is a big factor in the increased data services usage and the growing phenomenon of multi-tasked media consumption. The burgeoning applications ecosystem means that sport-related content can be accessed and organised in a user friendly and customisable way. And this point is crucial. Smartphones are personal devices where users can tailor their applications and information feeds to their own preferences.

Though you may go to the pub to watch an important football match with friends, or sit down and watch something on TV with family at home, individuals can also actively consume their own desired content on a smartphone without disrupting the viewing pleasure of others. So the days of TV channel-hopping to check on sports scores are over, and we have a whole generation growing up wondering why anyone would want to use 'Teletext'.

Underpinning this data services growth has also been the widespread availability of 3G & 2.5G mobile networks and the associated 'all you can eat' data bundles that have lowered the barriers to entry. As we have discussed in previous Evolve features, flat-rate packages bring their own issues, but there's no doubt they have helped drive forward the use of mobile internet services.

Social TV

The concept of audience participation itself is not new, with phone-in competitions and SMS voting well established sources of revenue for both the TV production companies and the host service providers. More recently, the integration of social networks for engaging and involving the viewing public has led to the development of Social TV, which the MIT Technology Review has identified as one of the 10 Emerging Technologies for 2010.

Virgin Media in the UK is one of the first communications providers to take a leap into Social TV with the launch in August of its Sofa Stadium application that is designed specifically to be used on your computer whilst watching a Premiership football match on the TV. The application facilitates mid-match banter in a football-oriented application and allows you to take part in polls, vote for the best (and worst) player, and includes integration with Twitter and Facebook for sharing comments and viewing others' comments on the game.

Sofa Stadium is currently a free application, launched to coincide with Virgin Media's push into broadcasting football in High Definition (HD). So it appears to be an effort to create a community and improve the customer experience, building brand loyalty rather than being used directly as a revenue generator. However, clearly there is potential for this type of application to be used as a platform for further targeted advertising in the future. It is also only available on a standard web browser at the moment, rather than having dedicated iPhone or Android apps, though surely these will follow before long.

Integrated applications

It's still early days for Social TV, and the business model is going to take some finalising. Will the communications providers be able to stake their claim in this space or will it be yet another wave of application and over the top providers who gain the upper hand? And where will the revenue come from? To be successful for a multi-play service provider, Social TV will need to have some exclusive value-added content that is not available through other social networking applications. Otherwise the community interaction will almost certainly take place directly on the global social networking platforms.

Ofcom's statistics show that there is a growing appetite for multi-tasked media consumption and Social TV applications are one way communications providers can engage their customers in multi-screen services and further drive up data usage. When launching new service propositions, they must look beyond the single screen and build offerings that not only work on multiple devices, but work as integrated applications across multiple devices simultaneously. And with the recent arrival of the iPad and a number of lookalike tablet devices, communications providers might just have the perfect platform to work with.

Dominic Smith
Dominic.Smith@cerillion.com

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Interview with Michèle Scanlon

In this issue of Evolve, Dominic Smith talks to Michèle Scanlon, Director & Principal Consultant at Indian Atlantic, about the challenges for mobile operators in Africa.

Michele Scanlon Director & Principal Consultant, Indian Atlantic   Michèle Scanlon has been consulting in emerging markets for 13 years focusing on commercial strategies & prepaid services in particular. Michèle has worked extensively in Africa, and is currently focusing on commercial rollout of a prepaid WiMAX network in Nigeria. Established in 2010, Indian Atlantic is the merger of Green Giraffe and Capstone, two South African-based consulting practices. Michèle can be contacted at michele.scanlon@indianatlantic.com

DS: Hi Michèle, and welcome to Evolve. Tell me about Indian Atlantic and your main areas of activity?

MS: We are a specialist consulting firm providing strategic advisory services, management services and project implementation for the telecoms and financial sectors in Africa, which is our core geographic focus. Our name reflects this in that we specialise in the area located between the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. There are very few companies that specialise in working on the ground in Africa with direct operational experience. And that's our key differentiator – Indian Atlantic is not a desk-based consultancy, it's a hands-on in the field consulting practice.

DS: Many people look upon Africa as one big market and assume that all operators are facing the same challenges and issues. How do you see this region breaking down and what are the different drivers and market forces across the continent?

MS: Typically Africa gets divided into North, East, West, Central and Southern Africa, but I really believe the issues tend to be common across the whole continent. I think Africa can be compared with other emerging markets such as South East Asia and Latin America, where many of the same challenges exist. Beyond managing OPEX, it's about how to increase your share of the customer wallet, and this is common across the whole of Africa.

The main challenges can be summarised as:

• Predominantly prepaid markets, with very low ARPU;
• Relatively low levels of brand loyalty to the mobile operator;
• High degree of price sensitivity

These factors combine to create a multi-SIM environment, and that's the main challenge. It's not unique to Africa, but I think it's more prevalent in Africa than some of the other emerging markets.

Across Africa as a whole, it is quite normal for subscribers to have 2 to 3 SIMs each, from different operators, and in countries with more operators, such as Nigeria or Tanzania, this is more likely 3-4 SIMs per subscriber. Customers either use these in different handsets, or swapping SIMs in the same handset in order to take advantage of on-net tariffs and the different promotions. This is because we don't have lots of number portability in Africa, so customers use the number prefix to identify the operator and decide which SIM to use.

DS: And what about the different operators and the telecoms technologies that are being used?

MS: We have a mix of local independent operators plus the bigger players such as MTN and Bharti Airtel who are expanding their presence and steadily filling in the gaps in their footprint. The big challenge for the local independent providers is funding, and being able to compete with the marketing power of the big multi-nationals. However in many markets, the independent could be the operator of choice in terms of providing a localised service and having more credibility with the customers rather than the big-branded super-operators.

In technology terms, the market is clearly dominated by GSM. However, the average African consumer is not worried about technology, they just want the best customer service and network quality. So the CDMA and WiMax operators will gain ground because they can deliver on the customer promise. The downside for the smaller alternative non-GSM technologies is the funding and availability of devices at a reasonable cost.

Another big issue in Africa is power. If you can't charge the battery in your phone, how can you use it? I was working in Malawi recently, and in the rural areas they were charging 20 Kwacha (approx US$0.17) to charge your phone and that's just a few cents less than the minimum recharge voucher. So I think we'll see a lot more solar charging initiatives in the future. But the problem at the moment with these is still going to be cost.

DS: There's often the misperception that low ARPU means there's a lack of innovation. What new services are emerging in Africa and what do you think operators in other regions may be able to learn from these?

MS: Low ARPU actually drives innovation, because you have to. There's no other way, otherwise how do you stimulate usage and increase spend in these low income markets? For me, some of the most successful services haven't been huge content services like music downloads; they've been more about a real value added service to the user, such as the prepaid "SOS credit" service. That's where you can borrow credit from the operator, when you have zero balance. Of course this is subject to specific operator business rules, and the transaction charge is similar to a financing charge (averaging 9-15% of the amount borrowed), but it's servicing a real need. This is relatively new to Africa with implementations in Egypt and Kenya, but I also have seen this in South East Asia and some developed markets like New Zealand. In Kenya, Safaricom permits its prepaid customers access to KES 50 (KES 45 airtime credit and KES 5 service fee), equivalent to six minutes talktime, when the customer has run out of credit. Upon the next recharge, the prepaid customer's account is debited by KES 50.

In developed markets, the mobile phone is often marketed as a lifestyle device, however in Africa, the mobile is really critical for people's livelihoods. Mobile phones have provided people with a fixed identity in a world where they may not have a fixed address and there's probably no postal service. So now they can market their own services – for example as a painter, electrician, plumber, and so on. And from this we get value added services innovation relating directly to your area of business. For example, in Ethiopia, it's coffee prices.

There's other African specific innovation, which is driven by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), like the Grameen Foundation. They are doing some really great work with smartphones in rural areas, including things like census-related data, but also for telemedicine. For example, reminders and checks that patients have taken TB or HIV medication today. And these services often get forgotten about because the customer doesn't pay for these services directly; they are sponsored by the NGO or by operators as part of a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative.

Two or three years ago, I saw a medicine bottle with a SIM card attached at to the top. And when you opened it, it triggered an SMS to the central server to say you've taken your TB medicine today. With TB, it's a six week course of medicine, and most people feel better after the second or third week, so often they would stop taking the medicine and then be susceptible to getting sick again. So a simple service like this can be a real lifesaver.

As in all industries, innovation and successful new services focus on servicing an existing need in a new format. A great example is mobile money transfer services which have proven successful in Africa. More importantly African operators understood about how to market this to their customers. Mobile Money is about providing secure access to money and transfer services, instead of sending cash by car from one city to another with a friend of a friend. This has serviced a real need – secure money transfer – which just wasn't widely available in Africa. Security and convenience have been the keys to this service, with a really simple marketing message, "send money home".

DS: And what can operators in Africa learn from their peers in other regions?

MS: South Africa tends to look at Brazil as a reference point for economic activity and from a mobile telecoms perspective, whilst a lot of African operators are also looking to India to understand how they have been so successful at low levels of ARPU. I think this interest has been heightened due to the arrival on the continent of Bharti Airtel, as established African operators try to understand their competitive strategies and how they can respond to them. However, I don't believe you can just lift the Indian practices and put them in Africa. India was about scale and the volume of people, you just can't compare the size of the operations. But some lessons can be learnt in terms of managing cost and OPEX.

In reality I'm not sure many African operators do look elsewhere, because they are so busy fighting fires locally. In general it's only the large multinationals that have a strategic or visionary department who can look at other regions. They learn the competitive strategies, and very often it's about marketing initiatives, which then obviously need to be localised for their own specific market.

In fact, African operators would really benefit from 'twinning' with a non-competing operator in a similar demographic market in a different region in order to benchmark their businesses, and learn and share best practices.

DS: How does all this affect the African operators' customer management and billing systems? Do they have different needs compared with operators in other regions, or do the systems generally travel well into Africa?

MS: I think more and more operators are looking at improving customer service or the customer experience, and this is one thing I'm focussing on with the operator I'm working with at the moment. In terms of customer management that means a one-stop-shop, dealing with a customer care agent who can handle all your queries, and all your billing issues. I think new entrants can be successful in making this a competitive differentiator.

From a billing perspective, I don't think the needs in Africa are any different really. It's about billing the right thing at the right time and at the right rate. However, some operators in Africa have grown so quickly, but have not focussed enough on stress testing the billing and recharge platforms and there are now lots of quality issues. For example, I recharged recently on a network in Nigeria, and the message came back saying 'thank you for recharging 500 Naira', when I'd actually recharged 1000 Naira. And then when I checked my balance I found out it had recharged correctly!

I don't think it's the origin of the vendor or system, it's about whether it was designed for implementation in an emerging market. So it becomes more about reference and credibility from other implementations. Feature-wise, operators in Africa need a single billing platform which caters for every single customer, regardless of how they pay. But more importantly it's about having the flexibility of dealing with the African user, for example the multi-SIM or multi-account customer.

The regulators are also starting to focus a lot more on the billing side of things. If you look at the QoS regulations that were released by the NCC in Nigeria in 2009, there are some very specific guidelines on what the operators have to do in terms of billing and customer services. For example, setting maximum times for being attended to by customer service in a shop or via a call centre, and the resolution time for following up on billing queries. I think a lot of regulators in Africa look to Nigeria for guidance on these quality issues.

Availability of skills is another huge weakness in Africa, not just from a billing perspective, but also technical and commercial expertise. And I think that's why you find good people move between operators, and from country to country. There really needs to be an industry initiative on keeping skills or establishing a telecoms centre of excellence in Africa, where people can get accreditation. Today, everyone seems to have to learn this on the job, or from working for a vendor. It's a huge problem, and that's why a lot of supplier contracts will come with managed services for 1-3 years. That's where the pricing is for the vendors, and the operators are kind of tied to that. They can't necessarily afford it but they absolutely need it.

DS: And finally, you will be chairing the keynotes at AfricaCom again in November. What are the major themes and key highlights to look out for in the programme this year?

MS: This year will be the first time that we are hearing from Bharti Airtel at a major event in Africa, as opposed to it being Zain. So there will be a lot of interest in what they have to say. There's also a half day dedicated to WiMax, and there's going to be much more focus on LTE, because now it's become more mainstream in developed markets, it's starting to hit here too. We are seeing more spectrum activity around WiMAX and LTE, and among existing WiMAX operators planning to migrate to LTE. Lastly, I also expect to hear a lot about broadband connectivity and the submarine cables. There's been plenty of activity over the last 2 years, and we're going to hear much more about this. It should be a really good two days at AfricaCom.

DS: Michèle, thank you very much for taking the time out from your busy schedule to talk to Evolve.

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Cerillion Wins Multi-Million Dollar Contract in Asia-Pacific

London, 13th September 2010 – Cerillion Technologies, a leading provider of next generation customer management systems, today announced a new multi-million dollar contract to consolidate all billing activities for a large provider of mobile, fixed and data telecoms services in Asia-Pacific. Cerillion will implement the Revenue Manager, CRM Plus, Service Manager, Output Streamer and Web Self-Care modules from its pre-integrated product suite, and perform migration from multiple legacy systems.

The Cerillion solution will help to unify multiple brands and achieve a significantly lower cost of operation by enabling all business units to be run from one convergent platform. In addition, the new system will integrate with multiple host network operators and greatly increase the ability to introduce new products and offers quickly, whilst improving revenue assurance and overall financial control.

"The highly competitive nature of deregulated markets has led to a significant growth in the number of aggregators and service providers looking to target specific groups of consumers and business customers," commented Louis Hall, CEO, Cerillion Technologies. "We are delighted to be working on this exciting transformation project, helping to create a competitive advantage by consolidating multiple back office systems onto a single convergent solution."

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Meet Cerillion at AfricaCom 2010

Cerillion will be exhibiting at AfricaCom 2010, taking place from 10th-11th November at the CTICC in Cape Town, South Africa.

Indelibly established in the calendar of anyone who is anyone in African telecoms, AfricaCom is the premier communications event in the continent. With an unrivalled attendance of 4,000+, it's big on content, interactivity and networking opportunities and most of all it's big on decision-making attendees. Having evolved to reflect the current market dynamics, the event embraces the entire telecommunications landscape in both its multi-streamed Congress and accompanying Exhibition. Year-on-year it continues to offer African telcos the chance to meet new and existing suppliers of the highest calibre, discuss the future direction of their business and plan for their expansion.

Book an Appointment

Cerillion will be exhibiting at Stand #E10 and promoting its suite of pre-integrated BSS solutions, including CRM Plus, Interconnect Manager and Cerillion Express.

Find out how we can help your business to flourish, with solutions to address key industry challenges, including:

• Enhancing the customer experience
• Improving time-to-market for new services
• Maximising interconnect margins
• Improving revenue assurance
• Increasing operational efficiency

If you'd like to pre-arrange a meeting with a Cerillion representative, please complete our appointment form.

See you in Cape Town.

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