Telco Global Connect 1

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December 31st, 2013 Published by: sadiqmalik1 Created using Zinepal . Go online to create your own eBooks in PDF, ePub, Kindle and Mobipocket formats. 1 Telco Global Connect eBook This eBook was created using the Zinepal Online eBook Creator . Use Zinepal to create your own eBooks in PDF, ePub and Kindle/Mobipocket formats. Upgrade to a Zinepal Pro Account to unlock more features and hide this message. Strategic Insights for Telcos and CSP's Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Recent Posts Monetising LTE : A review of savvy pricing strategies !! December 25, 2013 M2M Reloaded : Crafting strategy to capitalise on M2M !! December 13, 2013 Big Data : Why Telcos need a closer look at Hadoop !! November 30, 2013 Mobile Signature : Telcos , Bank , Government win for the people !! November 28, 2013 Evaluating ROI on social media for Telcos !! November 25, 2013 Monetising LTE : A review of savvy pricing strategies !! By sjm786 on December 25th, 2013 Whilst LTE is spreading across the globe,( 222 commercial LTE operators in 83 countries GSA Evolution to LTE report: October 17, 2013 ) the question remains how to best leverage the speed and capacity that LTE brings to create value for customers and generate more revenue.).The introduction of LTE should be used to enhance the value offered to consumers. Operators should introduce new pricing schemes (e.g., leverage quality of service differentiation), enter new markets (e.g., fixed broadband, services such as video streaming and calling), and gain market share (e.g.,in mobile broadband and in sub-segments such as the high- end customer segment). Based on improved technical features and economics, operators can selectively utilize customers’ greater willingness to pay to counter the price reduction trend. New mobile Internet customers need to be educated on the superior service quality on offer and drawn to the brand with introductory offers to counteract low willingness to pay. With LTE, tiered pricing is evolving from volume-based tiers to speed-based tiers with data packages based on varying speed entitlements, but often a combination of both.Bear in mind that implementing speed-base packages requires sophisticated policy control architecture connected to an online charging system. Typically when a subscriber begins a data session it triggers a message to a Policy Manager which reviews the Subscriber Profile Repository for the customer’s entitlements. The Policy Manager enforces the rules through the Enforcement Point (a network packet gateway or deep packet inspection node). Policy management can play a significant role in this initiative by providing operators with a way to offer their customers innovative, personalized bundles of services that are consistent across multiple channels. Via initiatives such as cross-sell/upsell, highly targeted services and creative packaging, operators can provide their customers and prospects with more value and, in doing so, drive loyalty behavior There have been a lot of discussions around unlimited data offers, with many analysts arguing that they were unsustainable and that operators needed to create more differentiated and value-based offers. Swisscom has actually been using speed as the differentiating value whilst offering unlimited data on LTE – with its Infinity tariffs launched in July 2012. Based on the fact that the value of speed is easier for customers to grasp than data volumes, this approach gives customers the worry-free “unlimited data” that they like, whilst still differentiating to optimize revenue. As a result, Swisscom has seen its overall ARPU grow, although it initially declined its market share is increasingly growing. KPN Holland are packaging speed as the main promoted value of LTE. It enables them to create differentiated packages where speed is used to create perceptible value – and encourage customers to upgrade to higher tiers and 3G customers to switch to LTE for a premium. 3 Austria follows the same strategy as Swisscom with its Hello and Hello Europe tariffs that include unlimited data with differentiated speeds and mobile TV channels. However, whilst offering unlimited data, both Swisscom and 3 Austria restrict the speed to 64Kbit/s once a certain amount of data is consumed; 3 Austria clearly highlights this to its customers and shows for each tariff the full speed data volume in addition to the maximum download and upload speeds. However, 3 Austria also offers a premium package with unlimited and

Transcript of Telco Global Connect 1

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Telco Global Connect eBookThis eBook was created using the Zinepal Online eBook

Creator. Use Zinepal to create your own eBooks in PDF,

ePub and Kindle/Mobipocket formats.

Upgrade to a Zinepal Pro Account to unlock more

features and hide this message.

Strategic Insights for Telcosand CSP's

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receivenotifications of new posts by email.

Recent Posts

• Monetising LTE : A review of savvy pricing strategies !!December 25, 2013

• M2M Reloaded : Crafting strategy to capitalise onM2M !! December 13, 2013

• Big Data : Why Telcos need a closer look at Hadoop !!November 30, 2013

• Mobile Signature : Telcos , Bank , Government win forthe people !! November 28, 2013

• Evaluating ROI on social media for Telcos !! November25, 2013

Monetising LTE : A review ofsavvy pricing strategies !!By sjm786 on December 25th, 2013

Whilst LTE is spreading across the globe,( 222 commercialLTE operators in 83 countries GSA Evolution to LTEreport: October 17, 2013 ) the question remains how tobest leverage the speed and capacity that LTE brings tocreate value for customers and generate more revenue.).Theintroduction of LTE should be used to enhance the value

offered to consumers. Operators should introduce new pricingschemes (e.g., leverage quality of service differentiation),enter new markets (e.g., fixed broadband, services such asvideo streaming and calling), and gain market share (e.g.,inmobile broadband and in sub-segments such as the high-end customer segment). Based on improved technical featuresand economics, operators can selectively utilize customers’greater willingness to pay to counter the price reduction trend.New mobile Internet customers need to be educated on thesuperior service quality on offer and drawn to the brand withintroductory offers to counteract low willingness to pay.

With LTE, tiered pricing is evolving from volume-based tiersto speed-based tiers with data packages based on varyingspeed entitlements, but often a combination of both.Bearin mind that implementing speed-base packages requiressophisticated policy control architecture connected to anonline charging system. Typically when a subscriber begins adata session it triggers a message to a Policy Manager whichreviews the Subscriber Profile Repository for the customer’sentitlements. The Policy Manager enforces the rules throughthe Enforcement Point (a network packet gateway or deeppacket inspection node). Policy management can play asignificant role in this initiative by providing operators with away to offer their customers innovative, personalized bundlesof services that are consistent across multiple channels. Viainitiatives such as cross-sell/upsell, highly targeted servicesand creative packaging, operators can provide their customersand prospects with more value and, in doing so, drive loyaltybehavior

There have been a lot of discussions around unlimiteddata offers, with many analysts arguing that they wereunsustainable and that operators needed to create moredifferentiated and value-based offers. Swisscom has actuallybeen using speed as the differentiating value whilst offeringunlimited data on LTE – with its Infinity tariffs launchedin July 2012. Based on the fact that the value of speed iseasier for customers to grasp than data volumes, this approachgives customers the worry-free “unlimited data” that theylike, whilst still differentiating to optimize revenue. As aresult, Swisscom has seen its overall ARPU grow, although itinitially declined its market share is increasingly growing. KPNHolland are packaging speed as the main promoted value ofLTE. It enables them to create differentiated packages wherespeed is used to create perceptible value – and encouragecustomers to upgrade to higher tiers and 3G customers toswitch to LTE for a premium.

3 Austria follows the same strategy as Swisscom with itsHello and Hello Europe tariffs that include unlimited datawith differentiated speeds and mobile TV channels. However,whilst offering unlimited data, both Swisscom and 3 Austriarestrict the speed to 64Kbit/s once a certain amount of datais consumed; 3 Austria clearly highlights this to its customersand shows for each tariff the full speed data volume in additionto the maximum download and upload speeds. However, 3Austria also offers a premium package with unlimited and

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unthrottled data speed.Mobile US for instance offers highspeed data volume tiers with its “Simple Choice” plans andthen throttles to 2G data speed once the high speed dataallowance is exceeded, until the next billing cycle. In effect, thisapproach is equivalent to offering unlimited data to customersat differing speeds. Orange France also throttles the speedwhen the data allowance is exceeded. Optus in Australiaautomatically moves customers to the next tier for the rest ofthe month. AT&T sends data usage alerts to its customers andthen charges when they go over their allowance.

In terms of roaming, T-Mobile US offers unlimited data whileroaming as part of its Simple Choice plans; however thespeed is limited to 128Kbit/s , the aim being to upsell “speedpacks” when higher speed is required. The plans are subjectto fair usage rules and also include unlimited SMS whileroaming. This approach is very attractive to customers whilstenabling the company to continue to drive roaming revenuesby upselling speed. Temporary speed boost offers may alsobring additional revenue from travelers by allowing them toquickly download movies or games to enjoy during their trips.

LTE has brought the opportunity for operators to upsell high-speed add-ons to supplement a base package or temporaryspeed boosts, enabling customers to purchase higher speedsas required. For example, A1 Telekom Austria upsells highspeed options to its customers in addition to basic packagesthat incorporate lower speeds. A1Telekom Austria offers adata add-on (Eur 8.25) to its business customers, with nighttime access (22:00-08:00) to unlimited data, at full speedas per their base package. This is an interesting approachto managing speed and network resources whilst offeringthe always popular “unlimited” to create a new data revenuestream.

EE UK applies a speed cap of 30mbps to all new customersnot on its premium post-pay package “4GEE Extra” whilepremium customers can enjoy speeds of up to 150 mbps. Theirpackages also include unlimited minutes and texts as well asfree roaming calls and texts to selected countries and includesthe Deezer music service. Telia, the world’s first LTE operatoroffers its 4G post-paid “Mobil Komplett” customers a speed upto 100 Mbit/s whilst all its 4G pre-paid customers are cappedto 20 Mbit/s. Telia’s Mobil Komplett plan also comes with datavolume tiers and shared data allowing customers to use up to7 mobile/tablets on the same subscription. The plan includesunlimited calls, SMS and MMS.Orange France launched itslow cost sub-brand Sosh which uses speed caps to differentiatefrom the main brand. Whilst Orange customers can enjoy LTEspeeds up to 150 Mbit/s, Sosh offers a maximum of 42Mbit/s with its best package.

As the telecom market becomes increasingly saturated,operators are looking for ways to stand out without resortingto price wars. Core services such as voice or data are becomingcommodities; in order to avoid being limited to chargingcommoditized prices, operators must be able to create anddeliver services that offer additional value, but are limitedby the rigidity of many legacy service creation and OSS/BSS environments. A flexible policy management solutiondeployed either as a standalone implementation or as part of alarger OS S/BSS and service delivery transformation initiative,can enable value-added, differentiated services that can run on

top of existing core services. While pricing can never be lowenough from a consumer perspective, the ongoing quest foroperators is to find a balance between competiveness and theability to fund future investments.

Sadiq Malik ( Telco Strategist )

M2M Reloaded : Craftingstrategy to capitalise onM2M !!By sjm786 on December 13th, 2013

M2M is rapidly approaching a tipping point, a perfect stormof converging trends that creates the potential for fast andenormous growth. The democratization of device and servicedevelopment is picking up momentum. You don’t have to bean experienced engineer working for a top-notch technologycompany anymore to start building M2M solutions. Themodularity that hardware and software developer toolsintroduce is lowering the barriers for developers and evenend users to innovate. the emergence of open, ubiquitousgeneral purpose technologies will make it possible to develop,launch and maintain new applications with dramatically lowerneeds for capital and lead times. This would potentiallybe an open-source technical stack, analogous to the LAMP(Linux/Apache/MySQL and one of Perl, PHP, or Python) stackubiquitous on the Web.

Analysts believe that Machine-to-machine (M2M) is oftenportrayed as a nascent industry sector. However, operators arealready generating strong revenue in this sector, amounting toUSD10 billion worldwide in 2013, and increasing to USD88billion by 2023. Future growth opportunities will be realised inemerging regions as applications are tailored to local marketsand the cost of solutions declines. All the market signs showthat the industry is ripe for an M2M ecosystem to emergein the coming years. Whoever takes the lead, whether it istelcos or other players, will have a strong advantage in buildingnetwork effects and locking in users and developers. Accordingto VisionMobile’s M2M Recipe these are the key ingredients tothe M2M banquet :

M2M is rapidly approaching a tipping point : Modularhardware and software components are lowering the barriersfor developers and even end users to innovate, paving theway for new entrants in the market. As communicationsspecialists, telcos are in pole position to take advantage of theunprecedented growth that innovation promises, but only ifthey play their cards right.

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Ecosystem economics have proven to be a source of decisivecompetitive advantage in recent digital revolutions such asthe PC, internet and smartphones. Most recently, Apple andGoogle used ecosystem principles to open up a whole newmobile computing market and created tremendous value invibrant, large app ecosystems. Incumbents who missed theopportunity to leverage ecosystem economics have lost theirmarket positions to the ecosystem driven newcomers.

It is only a matter of time before someone applies the sameecosystem principles to disrupt the M2M market. M2M istoday where the app market was in 2008. Many of theroadblocks in pre-2008 app development can be found inM2M today: high market fragmentation, the lack of directaccess to customers, complex, tightly controlled and expensive(for the service developer) distribution channels.

The source of possible explosive growth are new users, forwhom current M2M solutions are too complex, expensive,or both. Making better, more advanced solutions for existingcustomers and system integrators will not attract thosenon-consumers. It is complexity and rigidity, not lack ofperformance that keeps new users from getting on board.

Non-consumption can best be addressed by leveraging alarge and diverse set of developers. We don’t know whichM2M applications will emerge; indeed, it is fundamentallyunpredictable. The app economy clearly showed that when youempower third party developers to experiment, they will findways to create value, often in unexpected places.

The advantages of empowering external developers are clear.The likelihood of uncovering “killer apps” is greatly increased,the risk of failure is off-loaded to a large amount of companiesand individuals and telcos can unlock a level of investmentsfar greater than any single company could afford.

The owners of successful platforms connect users anddevelopers. It is the network effects resulting from theirinteraction that will ultimately create unprecedented growth.Asuccessful platform leverages three key control points: servicecreation, distribution and consumption. Each of these controlpoints needs to be designed to reduce friction and amplifynetwork effects.A platform strategy is only defensible if theplatform owner can capture some the ecosystem’s value. Thetrade-off between stimulating growth and capturing valuecan be managed by subsidizing or commoditizing ecosystemparticipants and by designing the platform to drive the telcocore business.

Telcos have a strong incentive to own the M2M platform,rather than leave it to external companies. Only the platformowner can effectively use the tools of subsidies, competitionstimulating openness and value-capturing closedness. Telcoscan add value by making it easier to use their connectivity andproviding more “M2M-friendly” interfaces – often describedas managed connectivity. Beyond this, they can look to createand participate in the service enablers market for developersand application providers to easily identify, authenticate,provision, and maintain their device fleet;to update androllback software on the devices and enable them to deployprocessing logic into the “Internet of things” in order to renderthe system more robust, distributed, and autonomous.

AT&T’s Digital Life initiative has packaged a set of homeautomation solutions around security, access, energy andwater. This makes it easy for consumers to find and selectsolutions that suit their needs. On the one hand, because AT&Tonly sells products from carefully selected vendors, consumerscan be assured of a certain quality standard. On the otherhand, as AT&T manually selects solutions and presents themas its own, the company doesn’t give the user much choice(tens of products at most) and makes it difficult for productdevelopers to join the program. The M2M Marketplace ofDeutsche Telekom is an early example of what an app storeequivalent for M2M might look like. Vodafone is able toprovide a global SIM to support your M2M capabilities andapplications across the globe. By providing a global SIM that ispre-provisioned and ready to use, they can significantly reducethe complexity of installation, distribution and deployment ofM2M solutions.

Telcos that have assembled the appropriate teams andresources will be poised for greater success as the M2M marketbegins to grow. As operators in developed markets havelearned, it takes 18 months or more to organise the variousaspects of an M2M business.Telcos now have the opportunityto reap the first mover advantages they didn’t seize as thesmartphone disruption unfolded, to take up a position ofcontrol and to avoid the need to respond to a commoditizationscenario. The time to act is now.

YOU SNOOZE YOU LOSE !!

Sadiq Malik ( Telco Strategist )

Big Data : Why Telcos need acloser look at Hadoop !!By sjm786 on November 30th, 2013

Enterprises struggle to store and manage Big Data becauseit exceeds the capacity of current relational systems andthe reason is clear: those legacy systems were designeddecades ago, long before Big Data was front and center in thecollective imagination. For Telcos, the velocity of data growthand increasing subscribers mean traditional data analyticssoftware will take months to process information which isneeded in real-time. Existing tools included operational-typereporting, looking at log files and extracting information fromthem. The more critical mobile data services have becometo the business, the greater the need has become to monitortheir contribution. This means being able to track numbers of‘unique active users’ of its various services, information thathad not been easy to come by previously. Today’s relational

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databases and business intelligence tools are powerful, butwhat if you have 100, or 1000 times the data?

Enter Hadoop !! No not the toy elephant but a cloud-based,open source platform capable of mining Big Data ona vast scaleby harnessing huge arrays of inexpensive computer processingpower. Hadoop is an open-source software framework forstorage and large scale processing of data-sets on clustersof commodity hardware. It is engineered to spread outthat processing across hundreds if not thousands of plainvanilla servers (and eventually, in Google’s vision, millionsof machines) arranged in a cluster, rather than relying onsuper-expensive proprietary machines. Hadoop is an Apachetop-level project being built and used by a global communityof contributors and users. Hadoop makes it possible to runapplications on systems with thousands of nodes involvingthousands of terabytes. Its distributed file system facilitatesrapid data transfer rates among nodes and allows the systemto continue operating uninterrupted in case of a node failure.This approach lowers the risk of catastrophic system failure,even if a significant number of nodes become inoperative.

By turning storage and processing into a commodity, Hadoopallows organizations to be more nimble and agile. SQL-basedHadoop could be used by SQL users, or a new product teamcould instead use scalding or standard Unix Streaming toachieve results, or a data scientist could use Python librariesthat they have come to depend on, all in the same frameworkand more importantly on the same infrastructure.And whatdoes this all mean for the traditional telecom service provider,not to mention those companies’ hosting/cloud computinggroups? Plenty !!! Because not only is Hadoop processing likelyto be an important application for cloud providers, telecomoperators — sitting on reams of network and customer data —are prime candidates to become Hadoop users.

China Mobile are using Hadoop as a telecom data miningplatform, showing how operators can tap this powerfultechnology to better understand their networks, services andcustomers, finding new patterns and revelations that can helpthem compete in the digital future. China is more open toopen source than proprietary software because of capabilitiesthat can be gained from an engineering perspective. Thegovernment of the Chinese province of Zhejiang is tappingHadoop to generate about 2.5 petabytes of data each monthin the form of video streams from CCTV cameras. WithHadoop, the Zhejiang government was able to solve the bigdata problem of storing, monitoring, searching ,and analyzingthe data in real-time.In India, a mobile advertising firm usedHadoop to help its telco customers deliver relevant real-timeinformation to subscribers. For example, a subscriber who hastried buying a product when they do not have enough prepaidmobile credit will be reminded to make the purchase after theyreload credits into their accounts.

Google uses Hadoop (actually its own proprietary version,called MapReduce) to help it swallow the entire Web, notto mention massive map/satellite databases, to produceelegantly useful products such as Google Maps, Google Earthand, of course, the Google search engine itself. Yahoo! usesHadoop to analyze and optimize how its 20 million visitorsconsume its home page content.The New York Times set aHadoop-powered cloud against an 11-million story archive

dating back to 1851 to make it instantly searchable.Facebookuses Hadoop to analyze interactions and social graph linkson its site — growing at a rate of more than 20 terabytesof new data per day — powering the friend connections andpersonalization that drives the social networking site.

One of the largest mobile network operators in Europe wantedto leverage the data it captured on mobile usage to achieve anumber of specific benefits. Managing advanced data servicessuch as packages that provide mobile Internet access on arange of devices, and applications including mobile email,instant messaging, Google search, news and sports updates,and weather and traffic reports was a monumental andexpensive task.Accurate data about real customer activitywould help drive changes to its portal, giving users easy accessto the applications they use most often. Analysis of serviceusage enables the company to spot upcoming trends andintelligently market them to customers, and keep its customertouch points current.

After Hadoop implementation the individual business unitscan report on usage, and provide other KPI informationbecause it allows huge amounts of data to be stored in agranular fashion that is cost effective and performance. Withgreater and more granular visibility, the company is able tokeep its mobile applications and web portals fresh and in linewith current customer interests, increase its revenues throughincreased mobile application sales, and reduce customerchurn. The Hadopp solution can consolidate all informationrequirements in a single environment, and enable reliable, adhoc analysis and end user self-service. This accelerates thedelivery of critical business performance information to thepoint of need, in a timely enough fashion for that intelligenceto be useful and actionable. The Hadoop solution is able tohandle large volumes of data, be easily configurable by users,and provide graphics of the results, including the ability to drilldown into the detail by way of dashboards.It’s all automatic.Before, users would be sending emails and calls to chase thedata.With Hadoop snyone across the whole business can haveaccess to the information they need, and find it on their own.

Big Data in the enterprise should not live in a vacuum.It materializes from dozens of databases, applications, andexternal sources. It has to be ingested, transformed, enriched,analyzed, and ultimately shared back with the people who willuse it to make decisions and serve customers. Hadoop canhandle all types of data from disparate systems: structured,unstructured, log files, pictures, audio files, communicationsrecords, email– just about anything you can think of,regardless of its native format. Even when different types ofdata have been stored in unrelated systems, you can dump itall into your Hadoop cluster with no prior need for a schema.With network data volumes on the rise, it is imperative fortelecom companies to keep a close watch on their networksto keep them functioning at peak performance, which isthe key to retaining customers. Relying on data samplesor aggregations isn’t an option. Hadoop is the one supersystem that can scale to accommodate these data volumes ata reasonable cost.

Sadiq Malik ( Telco Strategist )

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Mobile Signature : Telcos ,Bank , Government win for thepeople !!By sjm786 on November 28th, 2013

The development of electronic signature in mobile devicesis an essential issue for the advance and expansion of themobile electronic commerce since it provides security andtrust in the system. E-signatures provide security for thetransactions with authenticity and integrity characteristicsthat make non-repudiation of the transactions possible. Inmany countries, such as Estonia, Germany, Singapore andHong Kong, it has become a key element of e-governmentthrough its “utilization of wireless and mobile technology,services, applications and devices for improving benefits tocitizens, businesses and government units .Driven by thegrowing surge for mobile interactions, mobile commerce andonline digital purchasing, carriers worldwide are investingin mobile identity infrastructure as an economically efficientsolution fraud detection/prevention and identity theft issues.

Many different technologies and infrastructures have beendeveloped with the aim of implementing mobile signatureprocesses. Some are based on the SIM card. Otherswork over the middleware of the mobile device andcryptographic providers. Finally, there are already someframeworks which are independent of specific mobiledevice technologies and make mobile signatures availableto application providers.Mobile signature solutions can onlywork on compatible SIM cards, that match the WPKIspecifications in terms of security and capacity, and containa SIM Toolkit application capable of performing signatures.The PKI system associates the public key counterpart of thesecret key held at the secure device with a set of attributescontained in a structure called digital certificate. The choiceof the registration procedure details during the definition ofthe attributes included in this digital certificate can be used toproduce different levels of identity assurance.

A solution must also be implemented on the operator sideto manage signature requests. If the access control secretwas entered correctly, the device is approved with access tosecret data containing for example RSA private key.Securityis guaranteed by cryptographic systems (e.g. SHA1) and on-board key generation. The service is only made available onEAL4+ certified SIM cards which provide a high level ofsecurity. Legal compliance is ensured by a country specificElectronic Signature Law that gives electronic signatures thesame authentication level as wet signature as long as they rely

on a “qualified certificate”. Qualified certificates are defined bythe ETSI Standards4 and a directive by the EU Commissionsas certificates that are issued by an authorised CertificateAuthority following face-to-face verification of both the userand government issued photographic identification.

According to GSMA , Turkey and Turkcell was the globalfirst in launching a mobile signature service. The idea behindTurkcell MobilImza was to offer a remote way to completetransactions equivalent to an “original” signature on a hardcopy – making it possible to sign documents and authenticateoneself via a mobile phone,in a way that is legally approved,secure, easy and convenient.Their Mobile signature servicesare easy to use, since they don’t require any softwareinstallation. The certificate is activated Over-The-Air oncethe user has subscribed to the service. Signature requeststhen automatically pop-up on the user’s phone each time herequests access to secure services. Once the user has enteredhis PIN, the signature is sent to the service provider, whochecks its validity and grants access to the service.

Turkcell Mobile Signature can be used in all transactions,except for the ones that require a ceremony and the witnessingof a third party such as marriage or buying a deed, that requirea signature such as private affairs, public affairs, and bankingaffairs. For example, EFTs can be carried out over internetbanking with mobile signatures. Turkcell has imported e-signature technology to the mobile realm and it contributes tothe e-Turkey transformation by carrying all transactions thatrequire signature to the virtual realm where you will not neednew readers or smart cards.

It is often the case that service providers are reticent aboutadopting mobile signature solutions if there is not a largeinstalled base of users, and users are not enthusiastic aboutservices that are not backed by multiple service providers. Thisleads to a stand-off that can often threaten the commercialsuccess of mobile signature services. Initially, Turkcell’sproject was supported by the five main Turkish banks, whichtogether pushed for the government to adapt the electronicsignature law. This collaboration helped drive adoption sincebanks offered customers pre-registration at their branches,and then sent the forms to Turkcell.The banks also promotedthe use of mobile signature through marketing campaigns.

The initial business model for Turkcell MobilImza was a pay-per-use model. The service was free to subscribe to, andusers had to pay a fee each time they used the signatureservice. The idea was that the cost of the certificate wouldbe covered after a certain number of transactions, and thenprofit would be generated by extra usage. But this model reliedon consistent levels of usage from subscribers. However asignificant proportion of non-active users made this modelunsustainable. Therefore this business model was replaced bytwo complementaryapproaches:

■ Monthly subscription: subscribers pay 5 Turkish Liras for anunlimited number of signatures■ Price per signature: service providers pay a small fee pertransaction. Public enterprises and educational institutionsare not required to pay this fee, because of their publicservice orientation. It is anticipated that service providers who

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actively promote mobile digital signature will also enjoy awaiver of this fee.

In Europe the Mobile ID program in Moldova is a government-led project that is being deployed in partnership with mobilenetwork operators. It is designed to offer citizens the speed,privacy, convenience and transparency of digital access tonumerous government services and information for citizens,including online applications and copies of official documents.Their selected UICC-based solution is compatible with alltypes of mobile telephones, whether feature phones or smartphones. The application allows citizens to confirm theiridentity and sign documents directly from their mobilephone, by entering a unique user-selectable PIN code. AMobile ID solution is responsible for the entire life cyclemanagement, from user registration to verification of mobiledigital signatures, and connection to the Certificate Authoritybody and e-government portals.

Lattelecom offers the Mobile ID service platform to Latvianservice providers and mobile operators. The Mobile IDusers are able to securely sign in to online services andsign documents and transactions, simply by using theirmobile phone. As mobile phones are typically always athand, a legally binding digital signature can be doneregardless of time or place.Lattelecom launched the servicewith nine service providers, including Latvijas Krājbankabank, Riga city council, Lattelecom’s and Latvijas MobilaisTelefons’ (LMT) online customer service, along with localenterprises and universities. Lattelecom handles user andtransaction validation, making it easier for other serviceproviders to join in. Lattelecom offers the Mobile ID serviceto third-party service providers in a variety of industries,including other Latvian mobile operators.

The ability to leverage network assets, such as the SubscriberDatabase Management (SDM) system, and the potential forincremental revenue from third-parties such as credit bureaus,banks, and credit card companies, makes mobile identity ahigh priority service for carriers worldwide. Mind commercethus expects that mobile identity infrastructure market willgrow at a CAGR of nearly 17% over the next five yearseventually accounting for nearly USD 12 Billion in revenues bythe end of 2019.

Sadiq Malik ( Telco Strategist )