2016 Trends

Aptilo Networks: Johan Terve's 2016 Trends

Monetising Wi-Fi should be firmly on the agenda of emerging market service providers in 2016, according to Aptilo’s Johan Terve…

Which developing or emerging markets (regions/countries) do you cover?

While Aptilo Networks has customers globally, Latin America and Africa have become hot markets for Wi-Fi.

What are your main hardware and/or services focus areas?

Aptilo Service Management Platform (SMP) has become synonymous with Wi-Fi service management and Wi-Fi offload in large-scale deployments, and is a critical component of Wi-Fi calling.

What are the top market and customer trends that will drive change in your area in 2016 and why?

Wi-Fi monetisation will be one of the biggest business drivers in 2016. Wi-Fi monetisation happens very differently in emerging markets than in more developed areas. In emerging markets, access to the Internet is hard to come by, so users are more willing to directly pay for the Wi-Fi service. Users buy a low-cost phone or a Wi-Fi-only tablet and then pay for the amount of data that they use.

In developed markets like the US or Europe, users are accustomed to getting access to the Internet via Wi-Fi for free. Thus the business case for Wi-Fi in developed markets has so far mostly been based on customer retention and, for mobile operators, reduced CAPEX using Wi-Fi to offload the cellular traffic.

Service providers globally are now also turning to other ways of direct monetisation of Wi-Fi such as sponsored access, data analytics and delivering Wi-Fi as a Business-to-Business (B2B) service to different venues. Venue Wi-Fi is also crucial for service providers to find new creative ways to expand their Wi-Fi footprint.

Wi-Fi access points in ATMs, in coffee shops and other “venues” are essential in emerging markets. People gather at these hotspots which creates more business opportunities for the venue that go beyond the Wi-Fi service.

In developed markets users typically have 3-4 devices, but maybe only one of these devices has a SIM card. This is another reason why operators need to go Wi-Fi. They need to cater to all the different devices a user has. This will become even more important in emerging markets where low-cost devices such as Wi-Fi-only tablets are key.

What are the solutions that will make the greatest impact in your area during 2016 and why?

Solutions that allow service providers to sell attractive B2B Wi-Fi services to venues. This is the only way that service providers can get this crucial footprint. Just renting space to setup access points won’t work because venue owners want to engage with the visitors. These solutions must be tailored to the needs of each venue, for instance, the requirements for a hotel are often very different from a shopping mall.

Wi-Fi Calling is another technology that will continue to grow quickly in 2016. We have seen very few technologies in the past that have picked-up so quickly as a “no brainer to deploy” for most mobile operators.

Carriers also need flexible solutions that enable them to creatively solve the unique challenges in emerging markets. For example, what works for one of our customers in Latin America might need to be tailored differently to suit the needs of, say, our customers in Malawi.

What changes need to be made to speed up developments and what can hold them back?

In the case of Wi-Fi Calling in emerging markets, the penetration of Wi-Fi in people’s homes needs to become higher. The support for native Wi-Fi Calling must also be available in the low-cost smartphone models. Another thing that may hold back deployments of Wi-Fi Calling is that a full IMS system is quite costly. Here I think that IMS vendors must be prepared to come up with more flexible deployment models, why not a cloud-based IMS serving multiple operators?

Which technologies do you think will be most important in emerging markets in 2016?

Wi-Fi Offload or rather Wi-Fi delivered by service providers. Emerging markets need low-cost access technologies. Combine this with low-cost smartphones and Wi-Fi-only tablets and you will get a very strong solution for developing the economy of emerging markets.

Johan Terve is the VP of Marketing at Aptilo Networks.



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