Monetizing 5G: Opportunities for telecom providers

June 18, 2021

5G networks offer an unprecedented transmission speed, faster than many existing home broadband connections. This is beneficial for smart devices and IoT gadgets. A smoother interconnection and more complex operations will be easier to achieve, helping drones, autonomous vehicles, and smart cities develop faster.

Enterprise adoption of advanced wireless technologies like 5G is already on the rise, and telecom providers are meeting new challenges. Besides exploring new business models to better understand new customer behaviors, companies are trying to figure out how to leverage technology in creating agile products and services, while also monetizing them and driving revenue growth faster.

But monetizing 5G is probably one of the greatest challenges facing telecom providers in 2021. What solutions are businesses looking for? And what are the opportunities?

Read this article to find out.

Seizing opportunities

Growing investments of service providers in 5G networks around the globe have created an influx of new revenue opportunities for businesses. However, not many companies are tapping into these new opportunities. So, to maximize returns, telecom companies will need to transition to flexible cloud-native monetization systems and keep up with innovation to monetize every revenue opportunity.

In order to capture these opportunities, telecom companies will need to upgrade their monetization systems. This can be done by:

  • Enabling business agility
  • Creating support for new architectures and practices
  • Responding to customer expectations and needs

Business agility

Creating new offers in a fast-paced environment is crucial for telecom providers. As the number of new services grows due to the 5G networks, companies need to adapt their business models and monetization systems to support a faster time to market. This requires a shift in perspectives and leveraging new technologies, such as AI, to enable more dynamic offerings. 

Businesses need to be able to respond to the ever-changing customer expectations and continue to keep up with a highly competitive market. 

Dynamic architectures

5G was architected to support high data rates, low latency, and massive connectivity. This is perfect for IoT applications. It’s proof that 5G can be capable of much more than what we are using mobile networks for today. 5G also enables new revenue streams easily: It is a reliable and secure solution to connect critical IoT devices.

But, as 5G networks evolve, new features are developing, such as network slicing. This is a virtual networking architecture that allows for creating multiple virtual networks within a shared physical infrastructure, thereby improving performance.

Telecom organizations will need to create new strategies that are more flexible and dynamic—to enable the shift toward a modern monetization system. These strategies are crucial for creating new offers to enterprise customers who are looking for specific products and services, at competitive prices.

Customer needs

When it comes to responding to new customers, companies need to offer a new level of user experience: simple, personalized, and transparent. So, the traditional way of offering services is no longer enough. Today, customers are looking for the best perks that a network service provider can offer, including the ability to quickly change plans and receive all the updates on their usage in real time. Speaking of real time, new monetization systems use open APIs to provide transparency and better experiences, as well as quotation precision and payment flexibility. 

In the process of personalizing interactions, using AI and analytics is also something companies are looking into.

Operational efficiency

Telecom providers need to transition to modern monetization systems that are built with cloud-native computing and continuous integration in order to be able to scale services efficiently.

Conclusion

By focusing on the modern user experience and the virtual payment experience, allowing new customers to onboard quickly and easily, telecom organizations are taking a step forward in growing their revenues. Payment flexibility and transparency are also essential, besides offering real-time services and optimized delivery.

Failing to address the latest changes in the telecommunication industry will leave room for the competitors to secure new revenues. However, companies will have to face a number of challenges in offering new services to match the ever-evolving technology as well as customer demands.

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