HOT Article
IPX providers need to go the extra mile down the value add road
By Steve Heap, CTO
HOT TELECOM
March 2015
Increasingly “me too”, IPX solutions need value added applications to make the difference
According to the “IPX Competitive Analysis – Racing into 2015” report released by HOT TELECOM, the past year has been one of consolidation and growth for IPX providers. In this comprehensive survey of 19 leading IPX provider solutions, one thing becomes clear – their offerings are becoming more similar in both the basic service set and the reach around the globe. We saw fewer announcements from new IPX providers and more focus on number of access PoPs, peering arrangements and other approaches to make the IPX based services more accessible. What is needed now are services and applications that really add value to the service provider customers and help with monetizing their international users and increase their revenue and profitability.
Some of the IPX providers are already making solid progress in this area, focusing on the Big Data analysis of the mass of information that is available in signaling and IP packets transmitted across the IPX. From simple analysis and reporting on the success of activating roaming services, through to a much deeper understanding of how roaming customers are using the services and what difficulties they are encountering, this new frontier is going to make a big difference between who is successful in the long term and who gets relegated to being mainly a pipe based provider.
Looking forward, this deep understanding of customer behavior, and even location, could be used to drive specific commercial offers that were of use at that specific time and place. This could be for example a restaurant booking or higher speed downloads of map data because they were about to start a journey and so on. The more advanced IPX providers are already thinking about and developing such offerings.
‘Compared to our previous reports on IPX providers, where their focus was in adding service functionality, what became clear this year was that most providers were at or above the GSMA requirements bar’ said Steve Heap, CTO at HOT TELECOM. ‘We found that distinguishing between them at the basic level became significantly more difficult this year. Value added services and new types of customers are the two big messages for 2015 onwards'.
The research involved questionnaires completed by 19 of the major international IPX providers backed up with a series of in-depth interviews with senior leaders in those companies. From these discussions, HOT TELECOM developed a comprehensive survey and comparison of the various attributes of their global reach, service set, features and plans for 2015.
The 100+ page report is available for immediate purchase at http://www.hottelecom.com/reports/ipx-competitors-2015.html. You can also access a range of IPX reports from HOT TELECOM at: http://www.hottelecom.com/research/IPX.html