Bharat Book Bureau

This update studies recent developments in the public sector software and IT services market; it includes an analysis of major events of the last few months and identifies the emerging trends currently defining the sector.

Self-service online portals are an essential tool for telcos aiming to improve the customer experience and provide a key differentiator against their competitors. Self-service also enables the telco to significantly reduce its customer care costs.

Alcatel-Lucent is a market leader in the wireline broadband access market and has an extensive and evolving product portfolio, particularly with the launch of new access products in March 2008 and ISAM Release 4 in July 2009.

Operators adapted their offerings to cater to changing consumer demands during the poorer economic conditions caused by the global financial crisis. In particular, many operators focused on maintaining and extracting more value from their existing

Mobile broadband in emerging markets is a very different proposition to that seen in mature markets. Mobile broadband is viable as a fixed-line alternative as long as operators can rise to the specific challenges of providing data in low-ARPU markets

The concept of universal service needs to evolve with the changing digital environment. Current policies and practices are already outdated when viewed in the light of technological developments and the dynamic broadband markets around the world.

Twenty-first century wholesale telecoms is evolving to address the needs of an emerging class of enterprise intermediaries. These customers look like multinational corporations, but behave a lot like telecoms companies. They purchase large volumes

In developed markets, operators are facing increased competition, a slowdown in growth, and steady if not dropping ARPU levels. In emerging markets, growth is stronger but ARPU levels are lower. In response, SIM cards are being widely deployed

The application lifecycle is supposed to cover software from cradle to grave. Yet in practice, most software development organizations pass off responsibility to IT operations once software is migrated to production.

With the rollout of 3G networks earlier this decade, mobile video (and later mobile TV) was touted by many as one of the killer applications. Video has been successful on a small scale, but uptake and revenues have been largely underwhelming.