Battle for revenues and the race to virtualization set to Intensify in 2015

As operator revenues continue to be squeezed through OTT applications, Openwave Mobility evaluates how developments in video and encrypted data optimization will come to the fore in 2015 – and provides insights into virtualization developments.

Generating new revenues through mobile video optimization

John Giere, President and CEO: “Mobile video soared again in 2014. Thanks to social media outlets such as Facebook allowing auto-play for adverts and the ubiquity of video as the default medium, mobile video optimization will remain at the fore. By re-deploying bandwidth saved, operators will use video optimization to not just reduce cost of ownership, but to generate new revenues.

Video optimization as a cloud proposition is now deployed by several operators. It will quickly become a popular deployment option. Operators will invest in private cloud infrastructure and leverage virtual resources for use cases such as roaming traffic optimization or cloudburst during one off events that drive peak traffic.”

Network virtualization increasingly on the agenda

Indranil Chatterjee, VP of Product, Sales and Marketing: “2014 saw NFV move from lab trials to field trials. In 2015 operators will take a more pro-active role to safe-guard it from becoming a vendor-silo’d technology. Applications will start with simple virtualization followed by integration with orchestration platforms for dynamic elasticity. The latter will still be in PoC stage as large domain vendors will enter an intense battle to establish their solution as the orchestration platform of choice. Operators will need to tread carefully to maintain freedom from vendor lock in.

We will see more applications transition to the private and in some cases public cloud – which will bring security and privacy issues to the fore. Migration of services from in-network to Cloud will be a major disruptor for operator staff for years to come. But there is significant first mover advantage for the operator who gets programmability and flexibility into their network planning”

Mobile operators take strategic action to avoid becoming dumb dark pipes

Indranil Chatterjee, VP of Product, Sales and Marketing: “In 2015 secure/encrypted traffic will continue to grow, and will account for 25-50% percent of all mobile data traffic with a larger percentage in developed versus emerging countries– putting mobile operators at risk of becoming dark pipes. As a result operators will begin to trial ways to effectively manage secure content, with special focus on video. Trials will mainly consist of trusted proxy models or intelligent layer four heuristics based approaches.”

Operators look to mining subscriber data to secure new revenues

John Giere, President and CEO: “In 2015 attention will focus on mining subscriber data. At the end of 2015 most subscriber data will still inevitably reside in deep silos within the operator network. The mobile operators that are leading in Subscriber Data Management will break out of just being data aggregation and federation. SDM will be used to expose data to trusted third parties and Identity Management will begin to gain momentum”.