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lockchain is now, decidedly, not a fad.
It has reshaped several industries
worldwide, including here in the Arab
Gulf region. In Dubai alone, initiatives around
Blockchain are proceeding at a heady pace.
A report from Research and Markets
estimates Blockchain in the global telecoms
market will grow at a CAGR of 84.4%
between 2018 and 2023, spurred by the
technology’s ever-improving compatibility
with operational support systems (OSS)
and business support systems (BSS). The
capability of Blockchain to map onto an
operator’s business functions, in ways that
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS
Issue 23
AHMAD SAYED, REGIONAL HEAD
AND VP SALES, MIDDLE EAST AND
AFRICA AT NEXIGN
add instant value, will undoubtedly drive
widespread adoption throughout the GCC Platforms will have full support for
e-SIM profiles exchange (for both human
and beyond. subscribers as well as IoT devices that
are now common-place in sectors such
as automotive, consumer electronics and
logistics), Internet of Things (IoT) Apps
tokens, non-telco services and application
service provider (ASP) subscriptions.
Operators will be able to tailor their
own authentication service as they see fit,
publish their own tokens and sequences,
and sell direct to partners without any
need for intermediaries. This is another
industry first. In the Middle East, where
telecom monopolies and duopolies are
common, Blockchain-driven BSS solutions
are of vital importance.
All the benefits of incremental revenues
apply, and there is no requirement
to relinquish any control in the local
marketplace, as operators are part of a
global community of buyers and sellers.
And as identity management and protection
become the paramount talking points
throughout the sector, so will Blockchain
integration become the obvious solution.
The Blockchain can optimise everything
a telco’s c-suite worries about – billing,
provisioning, number portability and more
– and acts as a potent agent of Digital
Transformation, delivering significant
operational efficiencies.
Telcos that get in on the ground floor of
the Blockchain revolution will be poised to
become pioneers of new business models
in both the B2B and B2C segments. To do
so will require astute vision and planning
and recognising the wide range of market
use cases out there and how to serve their
needs. The benefits of Blockchain-driven BSS
are there for all to see.
A new global marketplace
A full-platform Blockchain BSS has the
potential to open communications service
providers’ (CSPs) business models to re-
engineering on a scale previously unseen.
Consider the possibilities. On joining
the global marketplace, operators can
immediately publish product information, on
the distributed ledger system, for roaming
visitors on their network, or purchase
product offerings from other telcos in the
community and then sell these either as-is
or bundled with other services and products,
to their own subscribers – this model is
analogous to a wholesale stock exchange.
CSPs can also create complex bundles
with digital non-telco services. This allows
an unprecedented streamlining of inter-
operator collaboration on a global level and
the ability to offer individually determined
volumes and quality of service to
subscribers in their native self-care channel
and language. This is a fresh proposition for
the sector.
The Blockchain platform becomes a
global community of buyers and sellers,
embedded into the BSS of each operator
and consistently adding value through the
optimisation of previously unwieldy business
functions. Operators, now capable of spicing
up the customer experience, will boost their
customer bases and their revenue, without
any significant additional costs.
No more intermediaries
Blockchains, like the one described, are
not theoretical, but real works in progress.
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