What are value-added services (VAS)?
A value-added service (VAS) essentially refers to the non-core features offered in telecommunications, such as video, data, etc. As these functions have mostly become standard nowadays, the concept of value-added services is evolving in parallel.
Even though it is possible to operate these add-on services and products provided in addition to the core functions on a stand-alone basis, telecom companies usually choose to use these services to promote their primary business. Value-added services offer benefits both to service providers and customers because these services add new product functionalities to the end-users while also sourcing a greater volume of data and analytics for business purposes.
What are the advantages of VAS?
As mentioned above, value-added services provide benefits to not only the service providers but also the customers. Operators that offer various types of value-added services gain competitive advantages by generating further interaction with end-user customers, which in turn, results in increased revenue. Customers, on the other hand, get to enjoy a superior service experience with a better pricing proposition.
Telco customers generally demand a convenient, fast, and personalized experience. With VAS, subscribers are offered alternative ways of communication through channels related to voice and messaging. They get to choose from many services, some of which are personalized and enable more diversified communication with the service provider. Improved quality and a more comprehensive range of offerings are among the other advantages enabled by VAS. All in all, customers get more for less.
Advantages of VAS for Service Providers
Operating in a highly competitive industry, telecommunication companies need to differentiate their business from the competition. This poses many challenges as
next-generation technologies are being rapidly developed. Being ready for technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), NFV, and 5G requires considerable investment and sound planning within a continuously transforming and highly dynamic landscape. There are many issues that operators need to consider, including but not limited to privacy, security, generating new revenue streams, reducing operational expenses, ensuring growth, and improving user experience.
Value-added services provide various advantages to operators in overcoming the
above-mentioned challenges, while offering more capabilities and multiple options to their customers. This naturally translates to an increase in customer loyalty and revenue per customer. Increasing service versatility and availability results in enhanced user interaction on devices and increases VAS ARPU. As value-added services provide personalized functionality, multi-channel communication, and versatile offerings, they improve customer experience and provide service providers with additional revenue streams.
What are the types of VAS?
There are two types of VAS. While some value-added services provide foundational capabilities (SMS, USSD, and Call Control), others provide additional value on top of the services already offered by service operators (Personalized SMS service, Voice Mail, Ring Back Tone, Missed call notification). Although there is no need to couple the former category with other services, such services are developed to work with core services and create synergy. The value-added services in the latter category, however, require a core service to work with and add more value to them.
How does VAS Consolidation Work?
Through VAS Consolidation, service providers simplify their VAS service network structure. Replacing vendor-specific silo-based deployments with a unified and consolidated approach enables service operators to implement best industry practices, increase operational efficiency, reduce operational costs, and improve customer experience.
With an NFV-ready architecture, network applications and functions can also be deployed as Virtual/Containerized Network Functions (VNFs or CNFs). NFV adoption starts with running network applications on common-off-the-shelf (COTS) virtualized hardware and continues with automated elasticity (ability to scale in and out dynamically) and centralized management of infrastructure, resources, and applications.
VAS consolidation reduces the complexity of the deployed systems and benefits service providers to use the shared resources (E.g., network resources, storage, capacity license, etc.) in a shared and need-to-consume base. In addition to a reduction in shared resources, consolidation also results in a significant increase in the efficiency of companies’ operational and financial organization. By unifying operations under a single platform, value-added services also enable the measurement of service performance for continuous improvement.
Telenity VAS Consolidation Platform Solutions
The Telenity VAS Consolidation Platform (VCP) consolidates all the foundational messaging and voice services of the mobile VAS world on a single robust platform of the highest telco standards. It is a high-performance, carrier-grade, fully converged, messaging and voice platform that enables a complete transformation of the mobile operator service network foundation.
Eliminating dependencies on specialized network appliances, VCP provides applications for the following sub-domains;
- Consolidated Messaging: 3GPP-compliant next-generation, IP-based,
high-performance, and consolidated messaging solutions (SMSC, SMSF, IPSMGW, USSD, USSI, etc.) - Consolidated VAS: Network-agnostic, converged voice/video, and intelligent call services (C-RBT, VM, MCC, MCA/NoR, etc.)
- Location Information Hub: Location enablement for third-party applications, positioning solutions for consumers, and asset & employee tracking solutions for enterprises.
- NFV Director: VNF Manager for Telenity Network Services (NS) and Virtual Network Functions (In case the target infrastructure is NFV and a dedicated manager is required)
Benefits of the Telenity VAS Consolidation Platform
The benefits of the Telenity VAS Consolidation Platform can be summarized as follows:
- Significant decrease in operational costs,
- Enabling mobile operators with new technology requirements (5G, NFV, etc.),
- Simplified integration and faster time-to-market,
- Increased efficiency in operational and financial teams.
Telenity VCP improves the operating performance of the legacy systems and paves the way to migration to all-IP core networks, resulting in significant operational cost savings. Faster time-to-market enables quick and cost-effective deployment. It reduces the integration effort to a single point for various services. With flexible capacity management on the run and aligned with customer traffic, service providers can make use of scalability and resiliency. Multiple value-added services can be used via a single platform. By eliminating the need for a dedicated server for each application and using optimized virtual servers, they can reduce their OPEX and maintenance needs. The Unified UIs, Configuration and Management, Fault Management, Reporting, Auditing, and flexible shared-pool licensing mechanism help simplify integration and optimize daily operations.
With Telenity’s market-proven software products, operators significantly improve their operational efficiency and the performance of their service offerings while providing a much better customer experience.
