Operators are becoming accustomed to sharing access networks, but they will increasingly have to pool their resources in other respects, to fend off over-the-top rivals. Three Polish carriers are showing the way, working with the OpenCloud core network technology to deliver innovative services.
Orange, T-Mobile and Polkomtel are working with local developers and academic institutions to create an ecosystem of applications and services, all held together by an open service layer within their core networks. This will help them to save development and deployment costs, and launch new offerings as nimbly as web players, said the participants.
Grzegorz Sikora, intelligent network expert at T-Mobile Poland, told Telecoms.com: ‘Our true competition comes not from the other operators within Poland, but from the OTT players. If subscribers on two separate networks want to chat or share video on their phones but their operators don’t offer the service they’ll use gTalk, Viber, Facebook or similar. To combat this we must cooperate: on open technologies, platforms and communities.’
The open layer within the core network is provided by standards-based technology from OpenCloud, whose CEO Jeff Gordon reiterated one of the cellcos’ favorite themes ‘ that they can harness the qualities inherent in their networks, such as location awareness and subscriber behavior records, to deliver differentiated experiences, in the same way that web players do with device-side apps.
‘To counter the threat from OTT players, and boost their revenues, operators need innovation within the network and not just in device apps. However, delivering innovation in the core network has, historically, been an expensive and slow process,’ he commented.