FEATURE: 5G
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5G and IoT
monetisation
opportunities for
South African CSPs
The Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G monetisation are important considerations
for communications service providers (CSPs) in South Africa, with so much
more still to understand about how operators can use these technologies to
unlock their full potential. Hassen Hamza, Presales and Business Development
Manager MEA, Nexign, tells us more.
A
ccording to a report released by
the Independent Communications
Authority of South Africa (ICASA),
titled The State of ICT 2019, smartphone
penetration in South Africa in 2018 nearly
doubled from that of 2016 at 81.72%.
While mobile data traffic in South Africa
in terabytes has shown strong growth over
the period that the ICASA report reviewed,
increasing by 55% in 2016, 67% in 2017
and 68% in 2018.
Global research firm Frost & Sullivan further
predicts that the ICT industry in South Africa
will earn R305 billion in revenue during 2019,
with the telecoms sector expected to be the
largest contributor with R149.5 billion or
49.6% of this total.
5G will provide faster, lower-latency access
to Internet connectivity and will also have
an effect on the number of devices that can
connect to a network. As 5G is rolled out
and becomes more available, we will see
an evolution of IoT devices, services and
other offerings. 5G and IoT will also allow
for advancements in the development and
deployment of Smart Cities, Smart Industries,
Smart Utilities, Smart Transportation, Smart
Healthcare, and more – with each of these
requiring reliable communications networks in
order to function.
BSS IoT support
When it comes to Digital Transformation,
CSPs around the world are focusing on IoT
and its potential to transform their existing
business, and the same can be said for South
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INTELLIGENTCIO
Africa providers. The biggest challenge the
industry faces today with regards to IoT is
effective monetisation of use cases. CSPs will
either have to extend their current systems
or deploy new platforms.
Future-proof business support systems
(BSS) should be able to support all types of
charging scenarios, pricing models, quality
of service (QoS) policies and interconnected
relationships. Beyond commercial,
architectural and technical challenges, CSPs
will look for optimal total cost of ownership
(TCO) platforms, suitable for multi-tenant
and multi-device environments, provided by
vendors that are ready to offer innovative
business models suitable for the digital
economy era. NIDD (Non-IP-Data-Delivery)
case is one of the examples of economical
effective approach to serve millions of non-
human IoT devices on the existing network
with low impact on limited radio spectrum
and core network resources.
Are you ready for 5G?
5G networks, hailed as the next major
milestone for mobile communications, have
thrown the world into a frenzy, with CSPs
trying to maintain the edge in connectivity
and exploit the vast opportunities the
technology is expected to offer. The
impact will go beyond ubiquitous, ultra-fast
connectivity. It will also have a profound
impact on operators’ monetisation streams.
Consequently, operators will need to
transform their BSS in key areas in order to
capitalise on the opportunities presented
Hassen Hamza, Presales and Business
Development Manager MEA, Nexign
by 5G. BSS providers will need to also make
changes to their systems – this will affect
real-time domains such as rating, charging
and policy control. The changes will focus on
complex usage-cases that require integration
with a wide range of other systems or
complex interactions. These include IoT,
collaboration and settlement payments with
partners, eSIM subscriptions management.
Another important usage scenario is network
slicing support. The telecom operator’s
network should be able simultaneously to
serve different domains which have different
requirements. In one case, an operator
needs to ensure high speed for each
subscriber using new services, for example,
real-time video with augmented reality (AR)
technologies. In the other case, it’s necessary
to provide the ability of millions of sensors
to work for the benefit of Smart Cities. And
finally, for self-driving vehicles and mission-
critical services, reliable communication with
minimum latency is vital, especially under
conditions of congestion in the network.
For all industry vendors – including
infrastructure, applications and BSS – 5G
adoption will be a serious opportunity to
not only keep market share, but to grow
it significantly. Only vendors with new
generation systems with future-proof
architecture and a clear vision, for how to
generate revenue growth for CSPs, will be
considered in future projects. Vendors will
need to provide systems that support African
telcos in convergent scenarios and different
types of networks, on their journey towards
the 5G and IoT monetisation era. n
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