In The News

Alice Bartram, Comverse AVP Marketing, Billing & Active Customer Management shows how cross-channel consistency in a Communication Service Provider's ecosystem can help create an optimal customer experience that ultimately leads to user satisfaction and loyalty, cuts operational costs and improves competitive positioning.

3G auctions may have refueled India's economy, but at a huge cost to telcos. Comverse VP Pushpendra Mankad, one of the industry experts consulted for the article, sees good cause to be optimistic about the market in India. "The onset of 3G and India's 600 million mobile phone users… will make mobile Internet a significant growth engine." He expects VAS services to "grow exponentially, giving operators a new revenue source."

According to this article marking World Telecom Day, telecommunication has become more than a basic need; it is also about personal identity and empowerment. Prominently quoted Comverse Senior VP Pushpendra Mankad notes that the "latest trend in the telecom industry is the shift to value added services." With 3G, we can expect "rich media content and services coupled with a great user experience. Data services may experience a surge in adoption and usage." VAS services will play a key role in increasing ARPU.

Pushpendra Mankad, Senior VP, Comverse Asia., is prominently quoted in this article about machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. The number of potentially connected M2M devices far exceeds the number of mobile broadband subscribers; with chipsets getting smaller and cheaper, M2M is forecast to soon become a major new source of revenue for mobile operators.

A combination of geospatial and mobile computing technologies, Location Based Service (LBS) is appealing to industry giants and operators as one of the new breed of personalized information utility services that have found massive uptake among the Indian subscriber base. A leading expert in the field, Daphna Steinmetz, Comverse Vice President for Innovation & Research, and Chief Innovation Officer explains, "Enhancing the user experience with context information allows for a new level of interaction between people, in a deeper level of sharing," and goes on to explore why the industry is eying innovations on this front.

The article discusses the role of policy management and how it helps carriers to create new business models to generate revenues and improve the end-user experience. Tal Rotem, Comverse MIH Product Management Director, is prominently quoted, underscoring Comverse's position as a key player in the growing data management area, which closely links the Mobile Internet with BSS.

Daphna Steinmetz, Chief Innovation Officer at Comverse, is prominently quoted in this article, discussing the promise of M2M, whose revenues are projected to quadruple from $4.3 billion in 2008 to $19 billion by 2014 -- and the opportunity M2M presents for mobile operators.

Comverse Assistant VP of Marketing Alice Bartram is prominently and extensively quoted in this article about the billing needs of multi-service Communication Service Providers today. She explains how single data model can save money and vastly improve the experience for customers. The bottom line, she says, is that one must converge billing and customer support platforms — not simply mash systems together.

How can communication service providers capitalize on the mobile broadband uptake, while also enhancing their customers’ experiences? The answer lies in “smart charging," writes Gabriel Matsliach, President of Comverse Global Products & Operations.

As India is about to announce the winners of 3G spectrum, Pushpendra Mankad, senior vice president of Comverse Asia was interviewed about what end users can expect in the way of new services.

The mobile is an innovative advertising platform that can really make a difference to the advertiser. Pushpendra Mankad, Senior Vice-President, Comverse Asia discusses the unique attributes of mobile advertising that can deliver new levels of effectiveness and success and take the relationship with the end user to a new level.

Pushpendra Mankad, Senior Vice-President, Comverse Asia is one of the industry experts consulted in this article about the inter-relationship between value added services and handset features – with a special focus on the Indian market.

Mark Pendergast, Director, Product Marketing, Comverse Americas, explores why mobile advertising is increasingly popular with brands and users. He notes that one of the ways that users are getting more personally engaged is with personalized advertising that encourages buying into the brands more emotionally.

This article speaks to Remi Bouchard, Director of Comverse Netcentrex IP Communications, to assess the implications of the all-IP environment for OSS and finds there are many advantages that can be derived even during that transition.

Three quarters of CSPs believe the lack of interoperability between legacy customer management systems in causing a suboptimal customer experience for their customers, according to a recent study.

Pushpendra Mankad, senior vice president, Comverse, served as an expert on a panel focused on the Indian telco market conducted by this publication. Among the conclusions were that operators need to focus on real-time intelligence as the market witnesses new content distribution models.

Keeping customers helps protect profits. The article refers to a recent study by Telesperience, a U.K.-based telecom analyst firm that surveyed industry players worldwide to find out their challenges and objectives concerning customer management. Tools such as Comverse ONE’s BSS customer management system are identified as an important means of reducing churn by knowing the customers, their needs and wants, and meeting them promptly, consistently and professionally.

Observing how the print media is being overtaken by mobile Internet consumption, Xen Mendelsohn, Comverse Mobile Advertising Product Marketing Manager, identifies opportunities for publishing industry in the mobile sphere, and explores the role of mobile advertising in those opportunities.

Ofer Razon, Comverse Director of Marketing, Messaging & Mobile Advertising, is prominently quoted in this article about the value of ringback tones as a mobile advertising channel.

One of the innovative highlights at MWC for this analyst was location-aware messaging, as demonstrated by Comverse. Mashing-up location with many forms of mobile messaging has many practical benefits. For example, mobile users can receive a map of the real-time location of the person sending them a voice, text or multimedia message.

Alaska’s largest operator GCI began consolidating its cable business into Comverse’s Unified Billing and Customer Management systems, which follows converging its billing and customer care for its Internet, mobile and wireline services through Comverse systems. Comverse AVP Alice Bartram comments on Nucleus Research reporting many proof points why the Comverse unified approach is so powerful.

When augmented reality mixes with social networking, one result is the ability to empower a user to point a handset camera at a friend and then click to see the person’s social networking links (like Facebook), to send messages and more. Filed from Mobile World Congress, this article includes an embedded video of the service in action — recorded live on the spot at the industry event.

If you were unable to attend Mobile World Congress this year, or were tied to a stand and are wondering what other attendees made of the Congress, then what you need is Telesperience speedconferencing. Get a digest of the whole Congress in a mere 38 minutes brought to you live from the show. Featuring Comverse’s AVP Billing & Active Customer Management Alice Bartram, and other telecom executives, here are live interviews that provide a day-by-day account of the show.

Visual Voicemail, whose information-rich inbox makes listening to and handling voicemail easier than ever, is furthering its presence in the mobile phone world, as another handset maker (Sony Ericsson) now supports the functionality. In high demand, it is still a limited service, since only a few dozen handsets offering visual voicemail. However, it seems like a natural progression to mobile technology and will probably soon become a standard.

Daphna Steinmetz, Chief Innovation Officer for Comverse, is prominently quoted in this article about the promise and the possible downsides of augmented reality, which overlays facts and figures from the Internet and other sources onto the real world to create a combined image rich in functional benefits. Steinmetz discusses current research in her laboratories regarding augmented reality mobile applications.

“If there was ever any doubt over the opportunity that mobile advertising presents, Apple’s acquisition of mobile advertising network Quattro Wireless and the Google-AdMob deal have cleared it right up,” notes Xen Mendelsohn in this review of recent activity in the mobile advertising arena.

Addressing a wide range of topical industry issues – messaging growth, mobilization of the Web and more — Comverse Asia Senior Vice President Pushpendra Mankad shows how the adoption of consolidated messaging platform with a well-defined service roadmap can allow operators to address their current needs for a cost-efficient, robust and future-proof messaging platform.

Pushpendra Mankad, Senior Vice President of Comverse, Asia talks about the new VAS offerings and the potential of the Indian VAS market in a one-on-one interview with CIOL.

India has entered a new era of convergence, whereby a mobile subscriber is able to make use of a variety of services at one time and data will take center stage. “The biggest difference in billing for 3G services is the need to interface with IP network elements and the myriad rating options required to charge for data services," says Pushpendra Mankad, senior VP, Comverse Asia.