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10REVOLUTION Cont. from pg. 7Jeff GordonChief Technology Officer“Almost any operatorcan look to thrive inthis dynamic environmentby establishingan indispensable roleas the ecosystem’s‘smart pipe’ ”Challenge 1: Maintaining relevancy in the ecosystemNew players are entering the mobile ecosystem on a daily basis, including cable MSOs, M2M, Internetand VoIP providers as well as thousands of over-the-top application developers. And just as operators are,they’re all focused on achieving end-user interaction and tapping into the revenue streams that have beencreated by the mobile revolution.Fortunately, almost any operator can look to thrive in this dynamic environment by establishing anindispensable role as the ecosystem’s “smart pipe,” delivering value to its subscribers, other operators andnew mobile players.The road to “smart pipe” status requires an operator to become an ecosystem partner rather thanstanding alone. This means working with these new entrants and thinking about how an operator can addvalue to the relationship.By sitting in the middle of the industry’s tremendously complex communication structure and havingthe proper business intelligence tools in place, an operator can analyze the massive amount of data flowingthrough its systems to create value for its ecosystem partners and customers. As a result, the operator iswell-positioned to offer its partners valuable, actionable information, such as presence and location. Moreover,the operator is able to create a superior user experience by proactively managing operations.Challenge 2: Transitioning to LTEThe transition to 4G is at the forefront of the mobile industry right now – and rightfully so, as thisnext-generation technology opens up bandwidth highways to take the mobile revolution to the next level.Without a doubt, moving to LTE is much more complicated than simply launching a new network.Success depends heavily on how customer experience and business operations are addressed.First, operators must ensure subscribers have seamless interoperability, both horizontally and vertically.A 4G transition has to provide users with a seamless experience across all flavors of mobile networktechnologies, including the legacy systems of traditional mobile operators as well as a growing numberof new entrants. Just as importantly, an operator moving to LTE has to provide its subscribers withflawless interoperability with its own legacy network and with futurenetwork iterations.Another key tenet of LTE transitionis roaming. If LTE is to be successful, eachoperator must be able to give its subscribersthe ability to roam and access a full array ofLTE benefits beyond that operator’s ownnetwork islands.Finally, an operator’s legacy networklikely will be operating in parallel with itsLTE network for many years. Running independentoperation silos for each network is not only expensive, butalso creates significant complexity from a customer support perspective, which will be unacceptableto subscribers. To overcome this, the rollout of LTE needs to be accompanied by a set ofbusiness operations fully integrated with the operator’s legacy business systems to create a simplified,seamless user experience.Challenge 3: Maximizing customer experienceThese first two challenges clearly lead into the third because it’s all about the end user. The mostCont. on page 11