VENDOR VIEW SPONSORED AND WRITTEN BY
Mohamed Abdelbassit
Managing Director Middle East & North Africa BICS
BICS in support of Middle Eastern telcos’ international customer experience For almost a decade, BICS provides telcos in the Middle East with high quality wholesale
solutions, helping them to optimize and grow their business. D
espite the turbulent start of the year 2011 on the political scene in the Middle East and North Africa,
Middle Eastern mobile operators remain optimistic about the growth potential for the future. Unlike the Northern African region, the Middle East has a mobile penetration rate of over 100%, which outstrips most areas of the world, and a relatively high ARPU. Therefore the remaining growth potential of the region needs to be found in the wide diversity of its mobile subscriber base, forcing operators to focus on providing the latest technologies, introducing new services with different pricing plans, and improving their users’ experience through better customer support. Ad- ditionally they try to benefit from players in adjacent industries like Google and Apple who have managed to set the benchmark for customer understanding and experience. In such a highly saturated and
competitive market, the challenge, on the one hand, lies in the investments needed to capture these high demands, impelling mobile operators to efficiently manage their CAPEX while keeping their competitive edge, while on the other hand, launching tailor-made marketing campaigns for different client segments during different occasions, loyalty programs and churn control initiatives require a drastic change in the business model that manages the revenues versus the costs. In this light BICS has, ever since we opened our regional office in Dubai 8
years ago, been working on providing high quality international telecommu- nication services and solutions for the mobile players and incumbents in the Middle East. This has always been done by keeping in mind that we wanted to ensure long standing win-win relations and partnerships with our customers, such as Etisalat Group, Zain Group, OT Group, Qtel, Omantel, and Vodafone Group. The sheer complexity involved in providing wholesale services means that outsourcing non-core activities to specialists in a particular field can greatly improve efficiency, and it has always been BICS’ strategy to help mobile operators focus on their core business activities by outsourcing the relevant services through tailor made one-stop-shopping propositions. Of course, the main aim remains on how BICS can contribute to increase and generate new revenues, improve efficiencies and reduce the costs, particularly with the huge pressure on margins. On a more global level, the increas-
ing importance of the Middle East as an international business centre brings further challenges for mobile opera- tors. Providing their subscribers with a complete roaming coverage and the accompanied home experience abroad becomes a necessity. As the world leader in signalling and GPRS roaming services to mobile operators, BICS has also devel- oped a complete suite of advanced value added services. These include advanced roaming QoS (Quality of Service) moni-
toring tools, steering solutions and an “Instant Roaming” service that enables any mobile operator to piggyback on the roaming agreements of Belgacom Mo- bile, the mobile operator of the Belgacom Group. BICS is also very active in devel- oping its Open Connectivity Roaming Hub which is a natural evolution of its “Instant Roaming” service. Mobile applications, mobile pay-
ment services and the offer of regional content, remain promising revenue streams. In the Middle East, market surveys determined that over 40% of the subscribers have smart phones. But those new streams are not being looked at seriously in the region apart from mobile payments which have been adopted very well and are on the rise. Arabic content on the other hand is still not here nor there, and English content still prevails in the Arab world. BICS sees a confirmation of this trend with the traction around international money transfer through its “Homesend” solution. HomeSend is a global mobile remittance hub, enabling person-to- person money transfers, and is the only mobile-centric international remittance hub endorsed by the GSMA. Still regula- tors and financial control bodies have there an essential role to play to grow the level playing field. Looking at the future, the Middle East
remains a region with a great potential and a high demand on wholesale as well as on retail level, where BICS will continue to work with the same passion, energy and dedication. n
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