Monitoring Customer Handset Capabilities on Your Network

Operators no longer have to stab in the dark to find out which services will potentially be successful among their customers. Sicap has unveiled the details of a service that gives operators a complete picture of devices being used in their network.

Common marketing questions such as "Are enough of our customers using devices capable of syncing with a PC for us to launch a bluetooth service ?" are answered by the Sicap service, launched this week.

When overwhelmed by the number of service opportunities on offer or in doubt as to the timing of a campaign, Sicap CEO Dominique Schmid suggests operators get a "snapshot" of device usage. The Sicap service helps them predict ROI and adopt the right strategy. "It is not about "what" or "how much" is on offer" said Mr. Schmid, "but on "whether" customers will actually use it. This implies gathering profile metrics on devices so that only services relevant to the devices in-use on the network will be offered".

Details of mobile devices according to type, model, features or capabilities can be captured and graphically exposed for service marketing purposes. The service works by correlating IMEI records drawn from the HLR, or from a Device Management Center, with device attributes recorded in the Sicap Device Base Analysis tool. The latter relies on a comprehensive database of devices with currently more than 2500 recognised models, each tested for a total of 240 device attributes. Hardware & software information, OMA DM capabilities and supported bearers, software applications and pre-installed clients are all made available to operators using the service.

A Device Base Analysis has already successfully been conducted twice "off the record" with Sicap operator customers, once in Asia and once in Africa. Significantly, in both these regions, operators have less control of the devices belonging to their subscribers as these are typically purchased outside the operator point-of-sale context. In both cases, the results enabled a calculation of volume for their GPRS service launch after the analysis revealed the number of GPRS-enabled phones actually available for targeting multimedia services.Monit

Posted to the site on 14th February 2008