“Get ready” for data explosion says Syniverse
Roaming and messaging interoperability provider Syniverse saw 9% organic growth in roaming-based income during the fourth quarter of 2009, according to CEO Tony Holcombe.
Holcombe said that roaming revenues currently account for 50% of the company’s earnings, and added that that level of growth is the highest the company has experienced since “before the recession”. He added that he thought that increase would be matched by roaming revenue uplifts within operators themselves.
Syniverse, which provides voice, messaging and IP interoperability and connectivity services to operators, is one of those companies that can be thought of as a bellwether. When activity is up and more people are travelling and using mobile services, then that will be reflected by Syniverse, which operates on a per-transaction business model.
Holcombe said that he expects to see Central and Latin American markets grow, as well as Asia Pacific. Europe remains the laggard at the moment, and is “still the weakest” area, according to Holcombe.
Of course, Syniverse is keen not to be seen as merely a passive connectivity provider, and has two products in Beta that build on its core signaling and interoperability capability. RoamWise, a business intelligence product that delivers analysis to operators of their roaming traffic, is being taken up by a number of European operators, Holcombe said. Operators are using the tool to simulate scenarios, such as moving traffic from one provider to another, and viewing how that would impact revenues, and areas such as quality of service.
Another added service enables operators to reach out to customers in real time, communicating with them to prevent bill shock, for example, or to fix a service issue.
As for the biggest challenge facing Holcombe’s operator customers? He says it is the forthcoming explosion of data usage.
“If 10% of users are really generating 90% of the data traffic, and AT&T is getting a hammering in the press for its QoS already,” he said, “what will happen when 50% of users have similar devices? Operators better get ready,” he cautioned.
“Scale and interoperability will be key. Our IPX (IP Packet exchange) network, which is built on our own MPLS backbone network, is designed to handle that scale of traffic, cutting the cost pressure for operators dramatically.”
One example Holcombe gave is that Syniverse is able to take and deliver VoIP traffic on behalf of a mobile operator, effectively off-loading that traffic from the operators’ own network.
Synivese launched the first phase of its IPX service a year ago, and Holcombe said it is now gaining “a lot of traction” as operators face up to growing IP roaming demands.