Having seen the financial meltdown earlier, it is a good thing to search out for means to reduce the mobile communication costs of the company. Let’s see how the telecommunication costs could be reduced. Read more…

What is TEM?

TEM stands for Telecommunications Expense Management.

It is an encompassing term that refers to the overall management and maintenance of mobile, voice and data services for your company. This is a process you can do yourself via a web-based platform or you can partner with a TEM service provider to do these services for you. Read more…

While John Mauchly and John Presper Eckert launched ENIAC in 1946 under American Military project, their objective had been to device a machine for calculating artillery-firing tables, the settings used for different weapons under varied conditions for target accuracy. However, the business giants like IBM and others worked on making the technology affordable. Read more…

The explosive growth of mobile data usage is often termed as a ‘data tsunami’ by industry experts. While it is called a tsunami from the perspective of exponential growth in data traffic at the network, it also brings the horrific experience, similar to that of a tsunami, to the telecom customer when they receive an unexpectedly large bill.  A survey reveals that 1 out of 6 contract customers are hit by the data tsunami and experience a bill shock. This often leads to frustration and churn. Read more…

Alexander Graham Bell’s invention – Telephone, has taken many ‘Avatars’ with time. I still remember the days when we had to depend on the operator to connect us. Then came ‘Automatic’ Exchanges using which we could dial on our own. This form of telephony (PSTN as it is called today) works on a technology called Circuit Switching. In circuit switching, a path from caller to the called party is dedicated throughout the duration of a call. With advancement in technology, sharing started happening at aggregation level. This is called ‘Multiplexing’. This brought in better efficiencies of scale and allowed Telecom companies to expand their base in terms of connections (of course, they had to add a whole lot of equipment other than the multiplexers to expand). Meanwhile data communication was born which is packet based and there is no dedicated path in it. Read more…

The advancement of mobile technology is changing the way businesses are conducted and the buzz word today from a service provider perspective is convergence. While the mobility need is essentially driven primarily from the customer experience standpoint, the strong push from service providers is coming from the convergence angle. As enterprises are embracing mobility solutions, the mobile need for B2B and B2C is equally growing. However, mobility and convergence grow in divergence as we see multiplicity in the form of geography, market maturity and devices. Read more…

Communication Service Providers (CSPs) are adopting a two-pronged strategy to remain competitive in the market. On one hand, CSPs are striving to improve their operational efficiency, vendor consolidation and reduction of TCO to control cost.  On the other hand, CSPs are strategizing on revenue growth by providing combo plans and launching new value added services. This is more pronounced with wireless operators thanks to their network upgrade to 3G / 4G mobile technology (NGN) and convergence offerings. Read more…

India had a teledensity of less than 1 phone per 100 people not long ago. However, our country added mobile phones at the rate of about 10 million new subscribers per month as per published economic reports in 2009. Between September 2008 and August 2009, India added nearly 145 million mobile subscriber lines and emerged as the fastest growing sector in that period. It is estimated that in 2012 half the population of India will have a mobile phone. Teledensity will leapfrog to 1 phone for every other person in India. India’s telecom network today is the eighth largest in the world and the second largest amongst emerging economies.  Read more…

Today, Telecom carriers are facing challenges in many folds, either in the area of reducing the IT operations cost, rolling out the new value added services/applications for customers, migrating to next generation networks /platforms, or keeping the customer churn controlled.  They actively seek solutions which address the above issues. “Cloud computing” is one such interesting and upcoming trend. Cloud computing offers a means of sharing resources like hardware, software, and data on demand to users. Telecom carriers will soon embrace cloud computing to solve some of the above issues and provide business models like “Infrastructure as a service” or “Pay as you go”. Read more…