- 1. Shared Data: More Devices, More Data, More Revenue
2. 20142013 More Devices, More Data, More Revenue Page 2
Delivering a Win for Customers and Operators Shared data is a
success story for mobile operators. In todays multi- device
ownership market having a pool of data that different customers,
with many mobile devices, can share is proving a win-win for
operators and customers. Operators are seeing more devices using
more data on their networks, and delivering increased value for
customers. Multi-device shared data plans are responsible for
increasing revenue and usage, and operators are rolling out new
plans on a regular basis that help customers realize the economic
and social benefits of sharing data. A look at the Q1 2014 results
of some of the main innovators of shared data underlines the
benefits that operators are realizing. AT&T has seen the number
of customers on its Mobile Share plans almost triple in the past
year and Verizon has increased revenue per account by 6.26%. There
is a wide range of applications of shared data. These include multi
device plans, family plans, group plans and business plans.
Increasingly were seeing two basic building blocks of success for
shared plans. First is giving the customer control in setting the
plan and second is real-time balance management. With many
different users and devices using the same data pool, its vital
that balances are managed in real-time, and that customers are
fully in control of their usage and have real-time visibility of
their charges. SHARED DATA PERFORMANCE AT THE BIGGEST TWO OPERATORS
IN USA ARPA Growth* Mobile Share Account Growth Data Plan Growth
Source: AT&T Q1 2014 & Q1 2013 Financial Results - Verizon
Q1 2014 Results $159.67$150.27 50% 30 Million Share Accounts 10
Million Share Accounts Q1Q1 25% 46%on 10GB+ Plans on 10GB+ Plans
2014Q12013Q1 30% % of Retail Post Paid Accounts on More Everything
Plans Figure 1: AT&T and Verizon Shared Data Plan Performance
Mobile Share Account Growth * Retail Post Paid ARPA 3. Tablets
Driving Data Additions Page 3 Using Shared Data Plans to Drive
Cellular Tablet Sales In 2013 there were 195.4 million tablets sold
worldwide, representing a 68% increase on 2012. Gartner* attributes
this trend to a boom in first time buyers tempted into the space by
low cost Android tablets. For 91% of the business market the iPad
is the tablet of choice. Both consumer and business tablet sales
represent an opportunity for mobile operators. In the US there were
about 60 million tablets sold in 2013. The good news for mobile
operators is that around 10.4 million of these tablets are using an
embedded cellular connection. This represents a 46% increase from
7.1 million in 2012. When it comes to cellular data used by
tablets, the average is around 1 GB per month, which is about half
of the average monthly smartphone data use of around 2GB per month
**. This highlights a couple of points. Firstly, existing cellular
tablet users are using tablets as a secondary mobile device and as
such customer usage behaviour may differ from smartphone usage.
There is an opportunity to analyze tablet usage and develop offers
to drive up tablet data usage. Secondly, the vast majority of
tablet users are using wi-fi only tablets, and its a fair
assumption to make that many of these users have smartphones and
existing mobile contracts. This represents a significant
opportunity for mobile operators to help customers to upgrade to
tablets with cellular connectivity and get customers using them as
part of a shared data plan. In April 2014, T-Mobile in the US
announced a drive to sell more cellular tablets. Operation Tablet
Freedom offers tablets with LTE cellular connectivity at the same
prices as Wi-Fi only tablets, trade-ins on Wi-Fi tablets and free
LTE data. *Gartner report Market Share: Ultramobiles by Region, OS
and Form Factor, 4Q13 and 2013. ** NPDs Connected Intelligence
Mobile Connectivity Report, Feb 2014 Add a tablet to your voice
plan and get FREE data through the end of the year Thats right, get
up to 1GB + 200MB 4G LTE data per month-FREE AVAILABLE NOW Figure
2: T-Mobile US Tablet Promotion 4. AT&T AT&Ts plans cover
up to 10 devices per Mobile Share Plan and range from 300MB to 50GB
of data to share. Plans included unlimited voice and SMS, and
AT&T also offers 50GB of free cloud storage with AT&T
Locker, which is marketed as a secure and safe place for customers
to store their photos. When it comes to devices to add as well as
smartphones, gaming devices, tablets and so on, its been reported
in the telecoms press* that in the summer AT&T will enable
customers to add their cars as a device in a share plan. This is
part of the AT&Ts connected car program with Audi. *Fierce
Wireless March 11 2014 Verizon Starting at 250MB for $20 Verizon
recently re-named their plans from Share Everything to More
Everything, which suggests that they want to offer more to share
rather than a bucket of data. As part of this Verizon is providing
their Family Base service, which is free for the first three
months. This is parental control software that allows parents to
set time and usage restrictions, as well as view their kids contact
lists and remotely lock down their kids devices. EE UK operator EE
promotes flexibility in their 4GEE share plans, by enabling
customers to add people to their plans at any time they want. The
message is that if a friend (potential share plan member) is in the
middle of a contract (presumably with a competitor) then the
customer can add them when that contract finishes. This is a good
example of using share plans to attract new customers. Page 4
Operator Examples of Shared Data Plans Figure 4: Verizon More
Everything Advertising Figure 3: AT&T Mobile Share Advertising
Figure 5: EE Share Plan Advertising 5. Page 5 Sprint Sprints
Framily (friends and family) group share scheme uses a social
approach to creating a group to join a data share scheme. The
marketing of Framily encourages existing customers to add more
members (up to 10 phone numbers per group) by promoting cost
reductionsfor each new Sprint customer joining a Framily group, the
cost per person will drop $5 a month. Sprint see Framily as an
innovation platform. By marketing other services to Framily members
there is the opportunity to make the plans very sticky, as more
services being used by more Framily members delivers increased
benefits for the group. Orange Slovakia Offering multi-SIM data
share bundles gives Orange Slovakia an extra marketing edge. They
offer multi device plans, small business share plans and group /
family share plans. The marketing of these plans highlights
providing value and flexibility. Telstra In Australia, Telstras
Mobile Accelerate Data Share Plans are marketed to help you get
more from your data allowance. Telstra promote single billing for
all data devices and real-time usage tracking and management and
alters to ensure customers keep control of data usage across all
devices. Bell Canada One of the pioneers of shared data plans, Bell
offers Family Shareable and Personal Shareable options. Customers
can connect up to 10 devices or family members to the share plan,
and also offer Mobile TV as a plan add on. Operator Examples of
Shared Data Plans Figure 6: Sprint Framily Advertising Figure 7:
Orange Slovakia Share Plan Figure 8: Bell Canada Plans Include
Mobile TV 6. Page 6 AT&T Q1 2014 AT&T has seen the number
of customers on its Mobile Share plans almost triple in the past
year to 11.3 million accounts with nearly 33 million connections
(about 45 percent of postpaid subscribers) with an average of about
three devices per account. This is up from 21 million connections
(about 29% of AT&Ts postpaid base) at the end of Q4 2013. In
addition the take up rates of its 10GB+ plans grew from 27% of its
Mobile Share base at the end of the Q4 2013 to 46% in Q1 2014.
Verizon Q1 2014 Shared data plans continue to perform well for
Verizon. By changing their main reporting metric from ARPU (average
revenue per user) to ARPA (average revenue per account) Verizon put
shared data plans center stage. In the past year (to Q1 2014)
Verizon have seen total retail connections jump by 4.45%, ARPA
increase by 6.26%, and the average number of devices per account
increase by 3.75%. Verizon now has half of its postpaid accounts on
More Everything plans. Shared Data Driving Operators Financial
Results Figure 9: Headlines from Forbes Figure 10: Headline from
PCC Mobile Broadband 7. Traditional Data Shared Data Driving
Increased Usage and Data Spend Global marketing services firm, J.D.
Power and Associates half yearly report on customer services in the
US operator market has found that customers on mobile share plans
have higher customer satisfaction scores than those on traditional
plans. Results from their 2013 U.S. Wireless Customer Care
Full-Service Performance Study* J.D. Power found that the
satisfaction score for share data plan customers is 778 out of
1,000, compared with a score of 750 for customers who subscribe to
traditional data plans. According to senior director of wireless
services at J.D. Power, The higher levels of satisfaction with
shared data plans are partially due to the profile of its
customers, particularly the early adopters who changed service
offerings once the mobile data share plans were offered.For
example, not only are customers with shared data plans more loyal
than those without a shared data plan, but they also have a more
positive perception of their carrier, in addition to spending
approximately $30 more per household overall. As more C level
mobile executives are seeing NPS (net promoter score) and customer
satisfaction index scores become part of their regular KPIs the
ability of shared data plans to influence customer satisfaction and
NPS is worth consideration. *Source: J.D. Power and Associates 2013
U.S. Wireless Customer Care Full-Service Performance Study Improved
Customer Satisfaction Page 7 CUSTOMER SATISFACTION Source: J.D.
Power & Associates 2013 U.S. Wireless Customer Care
Full-Service Performance Study 1000 point satisfaction scale Figure
11: Data Plan Customer Satisfaction Scores Scores are higher for
customers on shared data plans than those on traditional data plans
8. Page 8 While operator results to date have showed that shared
data can increase revenues and customer satisfaction, in order to
work correctly and deliver the desired results there are some basic
building blocks that shared data plans need to incorporate. These
include: Real-Time Usage Tracking and Balance Management: Being
able to manage a data share pool and implement value adds such as
parental controls needs real-time usage data. The trend towards
offering lower entry data allowances (e.g. 250MB) and upselling
additional data blocks needs to be managed in real-time. Likewise,
it isnt effective to apply a spend limit on a kids mobile if the
data is being processed by a batch billing system. Shared data
quotas and balances need to be managed in real-time. Operators also
need to be able to enable quotas to be provisioned and expire on
any date / time in the future. This allows total flexibility
regarding the duration of the allowance that can be offered by the
operator. As can be seen in Figure 12, which shows a customer
purchasing a data share offer, real-time data is needed to ensure
that the balance is up to date when a customer is sharing or
gifting data. Shared Allowance Profile Management: As there is a
single allowance which can be shared between several users,
operators will need to ensure that their subscriber profiles
reflect this, and shared data groups and any member hierarchies are
represented. The key thing to note is that there should not need to
be any pre-existing relationships in the system between these
subscribers so the operator enables completely ad-hoc sharing and
gifting. This can have significant impact in increasing stickiness
of prepaid subscribers. Key Building Blocks of Shared Data Plans
Smartphone app to make sharing very easy, just click the share
button! Phonebook integration to easily share data with all
contacts on your network. Figure 12: Sharing Data App Figure 13:
Phonebook Integration 9. On Device Plan Management: Customers
should be able to manage their own share plans direct from the
device. This starts with spend/usage notification to avoid bill
shock, and then extends to managing the balance across all devices
and group members. As customers become more familiar with data
share schemes they should be able to add new members when they
want, change allowances between devices and group members, gift
data allowances as well as having group heads (e.g. mum in a family
group) monitor, manage and control individual usage of group
members. A new advance in sharing data is the ability to gift data
to friends. As can be seen in Figure 15, a customer has made a gift
of 100MB of data, and this is reflected on their balance. Adding
Controls: As many shared data offers will be sold as part of family
or corporate plans the ability to add specific controls is
required. For example, a family plan may have 6 devices (three
smartphones, a PC and two tablets) belonging to different members
of the family. The head of the family can impose parental controls
(url controls for inappropriate content, usage and spend controls
to ensure no one uses up all the monthly allowance by spending too
much time watching videos). Likewise for corporate customers, the
ability to enforce which content can be used in work hours, and
data usage, for different users is important. Offer Management: The
rules that set the controls and costs around sharing are centrally
managed by an offer catalog. For example, a customer can share 1GB
with a friend, it can only be used in a domestic environment and it
will recur every month for 3 months. Notifications will be
triggered at 80% utilization and offer catalog will also define the
packages that should be presented to the subscriber should they
consume all of their shared allowance before the next billing
cycle. Note that this is a futher benefit of shared data in that it
will increase overall data usage and by proxy, increase the number
of upsell opportunities. Page 9 Key Building Blocks of Shared Data
Plans Full visibility on sharing and controls to easily set limits
or cancel sharing. Users can also give a giftof data Figure 14:
Sharing Controls Figure 15: Gifting Data 10. Openet and Shared Data
The video below shows a customer using advanced data share options.
These include a customer managing data share controls direct on
their device. The example shown shows a customer selecting
subscribers and devices to share their data allowance with, as well
as gifting a block of data to another customer and adding controls.
Openets Shared Data offer is a use case of policy and charging
control (PCC) that can be deployed in either policy or charging
environments. The Openet offer consists of four components,
Interaction Gateway, Offer Catalog, Balance Manager and Profile
Manager. The sharing tariffs (including eligibility, sharing rules
and the priority for balance consumption) are configured in the
Offer Catalog, and Balance Manager maintains all the balances in
real-time. In order to enable direct customer control, the
Interaction Gateway provides a secure gateway for user controls via
a smartphone self-care app where subscribers can control sharing,
view balances and alter allowances between devices/subscribers.
Shared Data Giving the Customer Control Page 10 Figure 17: Openets
Shared Data Offer Figure 16: Video of Advanced Shared Data Shared
Data DemoShared Data DemoShared Data Demo To learn more visit:
www.openet.com/shared-data 11. Page 11 Since the introduction of
mobile data services in 1998, Openet has helped service providers
capitalize on opportunities and overcome challenges. With
competitive pressure accelerating, todays service providers rely on
Openet software to evolve business models around networking
smartphones, M2M devices, and third party services. Openets
portfolio combines policy and charging control with device and
third party interaction to enable innovative charging models, to
control operating cost, and to personalize services. More than 80
of the worlds largest service providers in 30 countries use Openets
high performance software. For more information, please visit
www.openet.com About Openet Figure 18: Openet Fusionworks: A
Flexible Platform for Business Agility
