Last week I reported that Alcatel-Lucent had made a major launch in the CEM space. This week it was the turn of its networks team to get the press department’s attention, as it announced that it would be adding WiFi into the mix of its lightRadio access products.

Clearly Al-Lu has learnt that by announcing before Congress, rather than at the event itself, then you stand more chance of getting heard – even if what you are announcing is just a concept, as was the case last year when it announced the launch of its Cloud RAN vision, and the remote, active antennas it is calling lightRadio.

This year the vendor has become what you might term an early follower by announcing it will provide equipment that integrates, or at least co-houses, cellular and WiFi equipment.

There are a couple of vendors who got there before them, notably BelAir Networks which has produced a small cell dual-mode product and is now reported to be in the process of being acquired by Ericsson. As with its lightRadio announcement last year, Al-Lu’s announcement is running some way ahead of commercial product, but the “roadmap” is all when operators are looking at the rollout of thousands and thousands of small cells.

Alcatel-Lucent’s announcement that it is launching lightRadio WiFi is a further indication that carrier grade WiFi is going to be a major theme at Mobile World Congress. The launch builds on the WiFi 2.0 concept, which sees next generation WiFi access points as being capable of authenticating users based on their SIM credentials. This means that a mobile user could “roam” automatically onto a WiFi hotspot without having to logon or enter any details. That WiFi hotspot could be a hotspot provided by his “home” operator or by a partner, that has a roaming agreement with the operator.

The advantage of such a scenario, and of integrated products, is that it enables operators to mix WiFi and cellular networks so that users can be off or onloaded onto the network in a way that, in theory, best fits their needs and network conditions. Additionally, when a customer does use WiFi, the operator can support that without necessarily “losing” control of the customer.

There will be other companies talking about carrier WiFi at Congress, not least companies look Cisco, of course, and the likes of Ruckus Wireless, that make the next generation APs, but also companies with supporting technology such as Stoke with its WiFi access gateway.

And if you needed further evidence of a new pragmatism around using a mix of licensed/unlicensed spectrum, then note that the Femto Forum, previously the haunt of the licensed spectrum small cell brigade, has this week opened up its doors officially to WiFi and renamed itself the Small Cells Forum.

And so back to last week’s theme – CEM – and the prediction that more vendors would be making major plays in this area was reinforced by two bits of news from NSN this week. The first was that the vendor is now offering operators a new interface to its CEM systems with CEM on Demand, a portal that acts as a single entry point to dashboard views of mobile operators’ key performance indicators (KPIs) and recommends actions they can take to improve their customers’ experience.

The idea is to provide a centralised function for the multiple data inputs and outputs needed to analyse and manage the customer experience. The idea, for example, is that operators with the ‘high value customer insight content pack’ could obtain real-time insights based on KPIs such as tariff plan, service use, hotspots and locations, type of device and device performance, roaming and service quality. Operators could use this mix of information to resolve quality issues or provide detailed background information about network issues to customer care center agents in real-time.

So why does this matter? Well, the current scramble to do something that actually translates into decent customer service is about fixing a roof that operators failed to mend when the sun was shining. Now it’s raining hard, with MTRs, cut price competition and OTTs pouring in overhead, and the scramble is on to mend the broken tiles before the damage worsens.

But it’s more than that: the operator has the potential to put in place the sort of quality controls and quality-based tariffs that people would genuinely pay for, and stay for.

NSN said that its annual acquisition and retention study showed that those using mobile broadband services frequently are the most likely to switch their operator. Out of more than 16,000 mobile users interviewed, over 40% were identified as these heavy users of advanced services and customers who are classified as ‘heavy users of advanced services’ now rank mobile broadband quality alongside voice quality and network coverage in determining to leave or stay with their mobile operator.

Amiram Mel, head of Customer Experience Management at Nokia Siemens Networks, said, “It is vital for operators to provide a personalised experience by using the information they have about how customers use their mobile services, to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customer insights enable operators to prioritize individually selected services and allocate their precious network resources to match the service expectations of different customer segments.”

Blind items:
As we gear up to Mobile World Congress, there are an increasing number of things I cannot tell you about, which is kind of frustrating. But here are a few blind items to keep your whistles wet, your points sharp etc, for the two weeks ahead:

• A major T1 operator that has a developed a mid-range yet all bells and whistles smartphone with a very interesting chip supplier.
• A phone manufacturer and a card company that have co-developed a major, actually desirable NFC phone for mobile payments.
• Some genuine RCS-e news
• A major network equipment vendor displaying a notable change of direction
• Another mobile payments launch
• Lots and lots and lots of embargoed surveys, customer research and analyst reports that endorse the specific business cases and priorities of the companies that sponsored and/or commissioned them.

Keith Dyer
Editor
Mobile Europe