Driving New Revenue Streams with API Management

Are your Voice and SMS margins experiencing significant pressures?  Would new revenue streams sound interesting?  If so, it may be time to start thinking outside the box as mobile operators begin to shift from being mobile service providers to mobile service innovators.

It is becoming apparent that in order to survive mobile operators must reposition themselves in the mobile value chain. With the rise of consumers using their data over Voice and SMS, traditional mobile operators are struggling to make significant revenues.  For example, consumers are finding alternative ways to communicate through social media and social messaging applications such as Twitter, Facebook and Whatsapp.

It has been recognised by some mobile operators that Over The Top (OTT) players should be seen as potential partners rather than threats, as collaboration would enable both parties to offer compelling services to their customers. These third party services will add value to the operator’s core offerings for their customer base and beyond.

By unlocking their network and data assets, mobile operators can leverage the API Economy and expose successful APIs that can enable the introduction of new services and applications.  These services and applications will in turn reduce churn, increase revenues and enhance customer satisfaction.  However in order to do so the data needs to be brokered between the mobile operator and the outside world which means there is a requirement for an additional layer of architecture commonly known as the API Management Platform. The purchase and maintenance cost of this type of software can be expensive but is it normally the ongoing cost and resources required to support the platform that is the problem.  Whilst this is a key stepping stone that mobile operators must take, it is not easy to achieve.