By Simon Loe, Alcatel-Lucent

Telecom service providers in developed markets are turning to customer experience as a business strategy to address growing market saturation, reduce customer churn and increase profitability. There is a growing body of evidence that demonstrates better services generate price premiums.

The strategy is being implemented in a number of different ways, such as:

• mobile service providers providing subscribers with a small cell to improve signal strength and broadband speeds;
• operators improving new service switch-on by making process simpler through smarter software in customer equipment;
• call centres using smarter technology, such as IVR and network monitoring, to resolve customer problems faster.

However a bigger return can be achieved by taking a broader perspective on customer interaction, as well as implementing specific product or service improvements.  

By Beecher Tuttle

Believe it or not, Generation Y is all grown up and hard at work. As was highlighted in a recent artile on the entrance of Millennials into the workforce by Cassidy Shield, head of global solutions marketing for content, cloud, and communications at Alcatel-Lucent, these new employees are bringing about a drastic change in IT departments across the globe. As baby boomers retire and Millennials take their place, chief information officers are being forced to radically alter the manner in which they set up and manage their organizations.

While previous generations have become comfortable with static infrastructures, Millennials – who have grown up with constant connectivity – expect much more. The same teenagers who chose mobile, social and multimedia lifestyles are now ready to bring those habits and expectations into the workforce.

By Erin Harrison

The so-called “Internet of Things” is expected to connect 15 billion devices by 2015, demanding a new approach to communications business models, operations and technologies.  As a result, driven in no small measure by the dramatic projected increase in machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, wireless network operators are in a position where they need to prepare for an explosion of signaling traffic, according to a recent Alcatel-Lucent TechZine item, "Getting Ready for M2M Traffic Growth."

By Erin Harrison

Networks are crucial assets, which service providers can leverage to build data centers that deliver cloud services successfully.

According to a recent Alcatel-Lucent article, "The Network-Enabled Service Provider Cloud," services provided through the cloud are a natural extension of the virtual private network (VPN) and hosting capabilities offered by service providers today – they’re also a significant business opportunity.