Subscriber data management will generate $17 billion in 2014

NEW YORK, USA: Subscriber Data Management (SDM) will prove key to growth for mobile network operators, fueling more than $17 billion in personalized service revenue for MNOs in 2014, according to ABI Research.

“Mobile operators are developing ever-expanding suites of customizable services for their customers,” says senior analyst Mark Beccue, “but a critical key to monetizing them will be understanding their subscribers down to the individual level — calling patterns, billing history, data usage, location, and availability.”

To do this, MNOs will have to aggregate their vast arrays of subscriber data, which typically reside in a wide range of separate databases. SDM solutions, which accomplish subscriber profiling by allowing MNOS to read and write to the data, are available today. These solutions come in two basic forms — solutions that federate data, pulling it from separate databases, and solutions that centralize data, creating central databases and eliminating siloed ones.

The benefits of implementing SDM solutions include speed to market -- deployment of subscriber database management solutions enable MNOs to launch new services much more rapidly – and greater competitiveness compared to service providers who do not offer personalized services, and to Internet companies.

However, adds Beccue, “Many of these personalized services depend on carriers’ migration to IMS infrastructure, which will form a controlling piece, allowing centralization of subscriber information in one place.”