A Context-aware Approach to Mobile Data Profits

by Vikki Herrera, Director, Corporate Marketing

This week in London, Openwave is sponsoring and speaking at Open Mobile Summit, which brings together the leaders of the converging mobile, internet and media industries to explore how we can build, improve and monetize an open internet across all mobile devices.

As data consumption grows exponentially, some form of tiered service and pricing plans will be required to manage and monetize usage. A mobile network operator’s success depends upon its ability to deliver innovative service plans that appeal to various consumer segments. Data plans should be tailored to match online behavior. The logic is sound, but the challenge is in the execution. Policy management must be expanded beyond the enforcement of basic quality-of-service thresholds and data volume limits to include a dynamic system of quantitative (time- or volume-based limits) and qualitative (gold, silver, bronze service levels) options. This is smart policy.

Today’s policy management must also include notification capabilities. With state and national governments mandating more transparency when it comes to "bill shock" as a result of surprisingly high roaming charges, it is in the operators’ best interests to give their subscribers the tools to monitor their own usage. More transparency not only helps late adopters of data services feel more comfortable, it lets heavier data users take greater responsibility for when they consume data (i.e. off-peak hours).

Bottom line: a better relationship with the consumer will naturally help data operators effectively manage rising network costs and create new revenues through context-aware service plan offerings.

Open Mobile Summit is a great fit for Openwave and we are very happy that our CEO Ken Denman will share his vision on how to profit from the white-hot mobile data space. In a speech entitled, "Smart Tactics for Profitable Mobile Data: A context-aware framework for pricing, policy and promotion," Ken will look at some of the big trends driving mobile data traffic (the variety of connected devices and machine-to-machine communication) and then focus on the areas of policy management and dynamic campaigning as a means to turn the capacity crunch into significant opportunity. His speech takes place on Wednesday, May 26 at 2 p.m. (GMT).