Industry Leader in Telecom Data Analytics and Revenue Assurance

At ATS, we work at the intersection of Telecom and IT and, in order to focus our efforts on what we’re really good at, we outsource our IT wherever possible.  So, naturally, we’ve turned to a few of the big cloud providers for help here.  If you’re using our services, you’re also using AWS’ and Google Cloud Platform -- they’re both too big and impressive for any mid-size software company like us to ignore, and we firmly believe our customers are better served when we focus on what we're really good at, which is developing software.   But, when you dig a little deeper, you realize that some of the cloud providers' tech offerings tell a tale of how they got big and impressive in the first place.  What can the Telco industry learn from the rise of these Retail and Search giants, given what they've exposed as cloud services?  

When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) first mandated Local Number Portability (LNP) on June 27, 1996 in the 100 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas by October 1, 1997 and elsewhere by December 31, 1998 as a spur to open up competition for customers among local service providers, I doubt that it had any idea how pervasive their requirement would become.

At the time of the initial FCC ruling on LNP, the concept of allowing a user to transfer his/her fixed-line telephone service from one service provider to another without changing the service’s ten digit telephone number was viewed as the end-of-the-world by Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC) and Independent Local Exchange Carrier (ILEC) personnel.

The most common issue we run into when beginning work with a new customer, whether they are a telecom or cable company, is gaining access to data records.  Call detail records (CDRs) and IP detail record (IPDRs) contain an enormous wealth of information that can be used to drive KPIs and analytics for almost any part of the business including operations, marketing, regulatory, revenue assurance, etc.  Unfortunately, we find that that majority of the time these data records are owned by a specific department and gaining access to them can take weeks, months, or in some cases even longer.  As a solutions provider, this can obviously be frustrating.  But when an internal group has the same issues accessing its own data, it can be downright debilitating and ultimately impact customer experience and revenue.

The title is most likely one that would cause certain readers who happen to be service providers to experience a little negative reaction upon reading it.  However, the title is not meant to be anything more than a cause for some reflection in that there is considerable amount of information about customers that is not always utilized to expose traits and trends that could be harnessed to generate increased revenue as well as to promote customer loyalty in an environment of ever-growing competition.

The title is somewhat misleading in that I am sure there are many user tasks that go beyond the scope of Big Data and Cloud Computing to satisfy.  However, being a dinosaur-type with over fifty years of professional experience in the telecom environment, I am continually amazed by the capabilities and associated minimal costs with implementation of systems and processes that were only dreamed about when I started in the telecom business.

It is apparent that in the new world regime of Bill & Keep of interstate terminating switched access charges there are still many reasons why the Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) providing interstate terminating switched access must record, summarize and report calls and associated conversation Minutes of Use (MOU) of this type.

Advanced Technologies and Services, Inc. is pleased to announce that Bennet Wong has been appointed Director of Sales. Mr. Wong will be responsible for expanding sales in North America and Internationally.  He comes to the organization with a strong technical background and extensive experience in all facets of the communications industry.

Years ago, ‘all you can eat’ plans, the staple of internet service provider’s (ISP) high speed data billing, were great for attracting customers. But today the popularity of YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and countless other video outlets have turned the tables on service profitability. Thus, in the U.S. cable internet market, all signs now point to the widespread adoption of usage based billing.  The same kind of tiered, usage based billing plans that are now popular in cellular.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably the kind of person who’s attended a Big Data conference, and maybe find yourself sitting in on those “How to scale to your first x million users”.  The problem is that in the real world, the problem isn’t so much scaling up from a prototype into production, but having enough horsepower to wrangle data in the conceptual phase, then scale down into a business application (then scale up again when customers want access to the raw data, but I’m getting ahead of myself.)  As an industry, we’ve relied too heavily on borrowed-terms from architecture because the analogy breaks down when you consider that an architect doesn’t usually have to build first.   Here, we’ll look at how  Google’s BigQuery helped us do just that.