In this session with Mark Newman, Chief Analyst, TM Forum, Mao Mohapatra, Chief Executive Officer, Comviva, explains how communication service providers can leverage their data and build new revenue streams in the business-to-business market. Excerpts…

Mark: What do you see as some of the key trends in terms of the services that mobile users are consuming?

Mao: Well, we can see that data consumption is still increasing massively. In India it is grown more than 4 fold and now more than 10GB per user per month today and I could easily see it increasing to 1GB per day.

There is a huge amount of innovation in new services, choices are growing exponentially but there is a limit to how much content anyone can consume.

What you really want to stop your life becoming miserable is a more efficient way to navigate and get access to the most relevant content. I was speaking to an operator in South East Asia recently which has divided its customer base into 1500 different segments in an attempt to serve them all with the services that are most relevant to them. But ultimately this customer segmentation is not sustainable; it has to be systems driven.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will play a huge role in this, allowing communication service providers (CSPs) to segment markets, segment data, and allowing consumers to narrow down the choices that they have to make in the shortest amount of time. It's all about customer experience and ease of use at the end of the day.

Mark: And from a telecoms operator perspective, do you still see most growth potential in the consumer market?

Mao: No, I don't think so. Consumer average revenue per user (ARPU) is falling and most CSPs are now starting to look at the enterprise market for future growth. But these business-to-business (B2B) opportunities involve using consumer market data. We see big potential for them to monetise their consumer data in the B2B market. In the model that I am talking about, we, Comviva becomes a customer of the telecom company.

We buy customer data from them and we add value to it through the use of AI and machine learning. From this data we know consumers' working habits, when they get to the office, when they return home, what devices they are using and which channels they are using. This data has huge value to banks, for example, and they will pay us for this data. We then do a revenue share with the operator. This is a service that we started trialling two years ago but only in the last six months have made some progress. But the data secrecy and confidentiality plays a crucial role and all the compliance around it is a must.

Mark: Presumably this business model means you are changing who you sell to within the telecom company and build up new relationships with enterprises that want to buy this data?

Mao: Yes, that's right. We have had to transition from selling to the technology function within the CSP to working with enterprise line of business. We have shifted from partnering with the chief technology officer (CTO) organisation to working with the chief marketing officer (CMO) organisation. When it comes to selling this data to enterprise, we tend to work with aggregators because this allows us to reach more potential customers than if we approached them directly.

Mark: And how quickly do you see this business growing?

Mao: That's a really difficult question. Uber took three years to reach 100,000 taxis. But the next phase in their growth took them from 100,000 to three million. In practice, we are finding that a large amount of regional customisation is required for this new business opportunity. As such, we are only targeting a few select countries. Our focus is on large markets such as Bangladesh which has 170 million people, Indonesia with 240 million and Egypt with 120 million. This is also a function of regulation. India, for example is very heavily regulated when it comes to the use of consumer data so it would be a difficult market for us.

Mark: What other opportunities do you see for CSPs in new markets, particularly the B2B market?

Mao: I see potential for collaboration more broadly between telecoms operators and the digital ecosystem. Applications providers depend on telecom companies for delivering services over their mobile networks but operators still have a vital role billing customers, collecting their money, and, with half the world unbanked, providing them with mobile payments services. They have also invested hugely in customer care, customer acquisition, billing and collections. Not every application vendor can build these capabilities and I see huge potential for a marriage between the two with CSPs making some of their core capabilities available to applications providers.