Get creative with BSS and 5G consumer use cases

5G is an ecosystem play, it gives service providers a new opportunity to increase revenues outside their traditional domain of connectivity and mobility. This is often touted as a chance to move up the value chain, what’s more important is optimising value chain positioning and it may vary from service to service, or geography to geography. As the CSP role evolves, BSS needs to be flexible enough to support new and different business models to properly monetize new 5G & IoT use cases.

CSPs are transforming from traditional connectivity players or network developers to service enablers collaborating with ecosystem partners for 5G and IoT and creating even more value as service creators with the potential to be part of an ecosystem partners and offer 5G rich services throughout the value chain. The three roles are the following:

The network developer role applies the B2X business model, which is close to the current core business of CSPs. CSPs provide tailored connectivity solutions for consumers and business by implementing and operating network infrastructure, including access, core and transport.

A CSP acting as service enabler applies the B2B2X business model. Here he evolves the basic connectivity offering into a network and digital platform offering with end2end orchestration and programmability enabled by service exposure.

When acting as service creator, the CSP operates as integrator in the B2B2X business model and creates whole solutions by bundling platform services with applications to address vertical sectors directly.

Long-term CSPs will probably adopt the three models in parallel.

The “Getting creative with 5G business models” eBrief investigates three 5G consumer use cases, their associated business models and the implications of these scenarios for BSS. The use cases focus on eMBB connectivity with specific consumer applications.

1. Gaming where the CSP partners with headset and/or cloud gaming content providers to bundle offers to customers
2. FWA for private homes: The CSP replaces or supplements fiber connectivity from fixed-line providers. This could be bundled with add on entertainment services.
3. High Definition (HD) video streaming: The CSP partners with video content provider to offer video-on-demand as an add on subscription or as part of a larger bundle Using Ericsson’s use case design based approach, each use case is described by its engagement model, the position of the CSP in the value chain, the various stakeholders’ interactions and how the service is fulfilled to end customers.

These consumer use cases are prevalent in the frontrunning 5G services and booming during the pandemic as social distancing puts greater demand on all things digital. Gaming and streaming video services are surging across LTE and 5G while FWA is proving essential to home working in order to facilitate business continuity for many organizations across the world.

To fulfil those 5G consumer use cases, we present the various BSS capabilities like 5G consumer charging and billing, network slicing, partner management, etc… required to enable differentiated service offerings with the objective of:

1. Improving the monetization scope of 5G through catalog driven charging
2. Enabling faster time to market (TTM) of products and associated offers
3. Enhancing customer experience (CX), improve ARPU and reduce churn
4. Managing the application and content ecosystem partners for rich services

The BSS requirements can be summarised as follows:

1. 5G connectivity forces an evolution in charging systems with the 5G Core updated architecture that defines a completely new BSS monetization approach
2. New charging rules and network slicing support providing differential charges based on network slice type for premium services
3. Consumer IoT charging and billing in a complex partner ecosystem
4. Centralized product catalog for agile launch of 5G rich services
5. Scalable partner management functionalities to maximize monetization on partner solution ecosystem
6. Flexible billing capabilities to mitigate risk of financial exposure

As the role of the CSP evolves in the value chain, BSS can support and empower innovation in different business models to properly monetize new 5G & IoT use cases, many of which will involve partners. Unlike 2G, 3G or even 4G, where only the volume of data or minutes are monetizable parameters, 5G provides many more currencies like latency, throughput, reliability, mobility, QoS, energy efficiency and more that can be used to articulate value and construct revenue models for the particular use cases that BSS needs to monetize.

If you want to explore the BSS implications of supporting 5G consumer use cases, the “Getting creative with 5G business models” eBrief can give you further insight.

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