Execution expertise

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) telecom sector is extremely diverse, with advanced communications markets sitting alongside less developed ones. However, the demand for high-speed mobile broadband access and digital content is a consistent theme across the region, and Pierre Chaume, Alcatel-Lucent’s VP for MENA offers his impressions of the dynamics at play there

Pierre Chaume, Alcatel-Lucent’s VP for MENA, is confident of the company’s prospects in the region in 2013

MENA is a region that comprises a population in excess of 380 million inhabitants, making it a significant agent for change in emerging markets. Key performance metrics in the telecom sector have been generally positive in the region in the past year, and Pierre Chaume is confident 2013 will be another positive period for the sector in general, and for Alcatel-Lucent’s activities specifically.

“I am confident in terms of growth in the region, and believe it looks very promising in 2013,” Chaume said. “For Alcatel-Lucent I forecast as much as double-digit growth, with much of it being driven by the acceleration of the move to a fixed broadband alternative, which is LTE.”

Chaume also envisages an acceleration of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) deployments in the region as service providers look to offer higher-end services to subscribers.

“We will sell a lot of fibre in 2013 and beyond, and we see an opportunity for bundling services. We believe that transport infrastructure is also going to see investment, as will everything related to improving the customer experience,” Chaume said. “There is a drive amongst service providers to reduce the cost of operation while at the same time satisfying users. Alcatel-Lucent is actively partnering with operators in achieving this balance.”

Alcatel-Lucent expects to achieve further wins in terms of helping service providers manage their customer experiences, and the technology provider already has substantial credentials in this area.

To hone in on what really matters to end-users, Alcatel-Lucent believes service providers need to harness network and customer data, and transform it into relevant business intelligence. Next, operators need to deliver actionable intelligence to the various stakeholders (for example, operations, engineering, marketing and customer care) in the form of reports and dashboards.

The real-time actionable insights that can be delivered can result in improvements that have a significant effect on customer loyalty, costs and revenue.

Alcatel-Lucent already offers a solution called Motive Analytics, which helps drive more value from customer and network data. Insights gathered improve performance and ensure that the service provider operates dynamically with living data. Real-time capabilities can harness predictive models, optimising business decisions quickly and effectively. The net result being the gaining of a competitive edge.

With Motive Analytics, service providers can better understand QoE (quality of experience) with solutions that deliver customer-focussed, data-driven insights. This results in improved delivery of services, providing significant differentiation, decreased churn and increased customer lifetime value (CLV).

“Application platforms and the monetisation of such is another area of growth, as are on-demand services and the cloud,” Chaume explained.

Alcatel-Lucent is in the unique position as a global telecom technology company that is able to offer service providers in the Middle East and North Africa, and indeed across the rest of the world, an end-to-end solution that covers networking elements from access, through to transport, core, backhaul and more.

The Alcatel-Lucent High Leverage Network (HLN) gives service providers a strategy for continuous innovation and business success. The HLN architecture addresses the dual challenges of simultaneously scaling and managing network capacity to meet increasing bandwidth demand while delivering differentiated, revenue generating services. It achieves this by delivering scalable bandwidth at the lowest cost per bit and by embedding intelligence in the network to enable dynamic service creation and delivery.

Evolving toward an HLN architecture means collapsing today’s complex, multiple overlay and costly network architectures into a simpler, fully optimised all-IP network that provides a common, converged foundation that delivers scalable bandwidth and differentiated services. It also supports Application Enablement, the Alcatel-Lucent vision of how to expose selected capabilities of the network in a managed and controlled way for enhanced application development and delivery. This innovative approach enables new business models to address market challenges and opportunities and provides sustained competitive differentiation. The shift from keeping value in the network to extracting value from the network allows service providers to grow revenues and accelerate ROI from their networks.

An HLN architecture requires four key technologies — wireline broadband access, wireless broadband access, IP and optics — as well as the appropriate software and services that provide the foundation to support Application Enablement. The HLN architecture comprises seven different domains, each providing a specific set of capabilities and functions. These domains provide a framework to enable and guide network transformation. Depending on scope and circumstance, service providers may focus on one or several domains, or may address the end-to-end challenge of implementing a complete HLN.

“Our wide portfolio of services and products helps us tremendously with service providers,” Chaume explained. “It is our duty as a partner and technology supplier to offer the service providers we work with the ability to provide services at the cheapest price per bit, and this is what we have been successful in doing,” he added.

Tied in to the range and quality of products that Alcatel-Lucent has on offer, Chaume is a firm believer that the quality of the company’s project implementation is a key differentiator for it, and an area that continues to make it successful in the region.

“Most of our customers express their satisfaction with the execution of our projects for them, and this is very important to us,” Chaume concluded. “Successful project implementation means that we gain the trust of our partners, and are then better placed to help them in the development of their longer-term plans.”