The increased capabilities of mobile networks, the increased capabilities of smartphones, and the increased availability of network based applications go hand in hand as revenue growth and ARPU growth engines. However, it can be argued that of the three, network- based applications are the most important, because if there were no innovative or interesting applications, the networks would be acting simply as on-ramps to the internet. And if the networks were just on-ramps to the internet, then they just act as pipes and you’d quickly get to pure commoditization.
Based on everything I’m reading, and based on conversations with service providers around the globe, most mobile service providers, and even landline-based service providers, do not want to simply be bit-pipes. They desire to find ways to continue to increase ARPU. Hence, interesting network-based applications are always a topic of conversation – that is, what could they deploy that their subscribers would pay to use? Texting is an obvious one. But voice SMS and video SMS are also growing in popularity to where there are no voice and/or video mail option, as well as applications that integrate landline and mobile networks, such as video calls. In pre-paid parts of the world, we see mobile commerce take the form of moving units of pre-pay from one subscriber to another subscriber, for a small fee. Location-based services such as family-tracker or ad insertion are also interesting. In fact, I could write on and on about this, and if you’ve been a regular reader of this blog, you know I have written about interesting applications from around the world (and will continue to do so!)
Another key part of what enterprises and service providers are looking for (beyond additional applications to increase service or ARPU respectively), are ways to reduce costs. Again, this involves some kind of solution – in the case of a global enterprise it could involve utilizing IP infrastructure to add voice and therefore reduce traditional PBX expenses, or in the case of service providers, it could involve optimizing available bandwidth to either better service subscribers or add more subscribers to existing networks.
And from a perspective of applications that serve the enterprise, such as IVRs or contact centers, these integrate the ability of an enterprise to create more revenue through enhanced self-service with cost-savings through more automation.
Dialogic in general either enables service creation, or enables the services that are created to move through the network in a more efficient manner. And we often get asked about solutions to both of these problems, even though we may not sell the solutions, but play a key enabling role as an engine to one of our customer’s solutions. Since Dialogic is part of a larger ecosystem, we decided to make is easier for those asking us – service providers, enterprises, TEMs, ISVs, the press, and analysts – to find this information faster.
This is what the Dialogic Solution Showcase is all about. It’s an online portal that enables people to find key, innovative solutions built on Dialogic technology. Today is the second day of life for this portal, but this is a living part of our website and it will be continually updated. Please visit it, and bookmark it.
