Communication service providers (CSPs) need data generated by their customers’ service usage to do everything from basic billing to network optimization. It might seem obvious that information about a customer’s data usage could also direct the CSPs’ operations team on where to deploy new technologies. Most of us would also assume our CSP directs offers to us based on information about the devices on our plans, services we consume, and our usage patterns. Those of us savvy in telecom practices might even think our CSP would be able to recognize us regardless of where our request originates. Unfortunately, for most CSPs, it doesn’t work this way.

In a report last year, Telecom.com found that over 80 percent of mobile operators do not have real-time data collection and rating systems in the post-paid plans. The lack of real-time information presents a problem for CSPs wanting to offer temporary bursts of bandwidth or shared family plans. It also limits their marketing team’s ability to direct offers when customers need them.

Marketers’ Holy Grail: Intent-based Marketing

Intent-based marketing is the Holy Grail for marketers. If a marketer is able to approach a customer with a valuable offer on a service the customer has expressed an interest in, the chance of success is significantly higher. It goes without saying that it is easier to sell lemonade to someone a marketer knows is thirsty, versus someone the marketer knows nothing about. The same analogy applies to telecom services.

This starts with CSPs being able to understand and manage all the services their customers subscribe to.

It is a back-office challenge for CSPs to implement convergent charging systems, which are necessary to handle the real-time elements of an increasingly connected world. The challenge is expected to have a big pay-off. Infonetics Research believes the convergent charging market will grow 24% (compounded annually) between 2011 – 2016.

It doesn’t end with convergent charging. Infonetics’ Shira Levine notes that policy management has moved from an operations function to a marketing tool. “We’ve long maintained that the balance of power within operators in making policy management investment decisions is shifting, and our latest policy survey bears this out. Increasingly, operators view policy as a key tool for service creation and customer management that extends well beyond basic bandwidth control, and as a result their marketing departments are taking a larger role in the policy management procurement process,” notes Shira Levine, directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence at Infonetics Research.

The change Levine notes is a trend we have seen across many of the traditional back-office telecom practices. Information once viewed as relevant only to route traffic and make network investment decisions now has new life. Data about the types of telecom services consumed, the customer’s geographic location, hours spent online, and even preferences about fixed-line or mobile can all be used to recognize customer’s preferences.

Bringing Together Data

The ability to bring internal data together to better understand customers as individuals versus a series of transactions is something I’ve been talking a lot about this year. There is more CSPs can do to understand their customers and bring them a level of customer service that will keep them coming back. With additional information, CSPs can verify their data to build a broader mosaic of who their customers really are.

Put An End to IVR Systems

It is a favorite skit with late-night comedians:. a customer calls a business with a minor service change or question only to spend hours navigating through an interactive voice response (IVR) system. The alternative option is nearly as tedious. The customer opts out of the IVR and then needs to verify their identity with each agent as they work toward the person that can eventually help them. These scenes are popular fodder because it’s something nearly all of us have experienced.

CSPs now have an alternative.

In many households, one CSP provides voice, video and data services. The subscriber’s fixed-line voice, cable TV, and Internet service are all provided through a single Internet Protocol connection.  As long as they are using one of their service connections, the CSP can recognize its customer  Within a few seconds, the CSP can determine all the services the household subscribes to and the authorization level of the person calling.

If the subscriber needs to contact their CSP through another service, however, the CSP can no longer identify the customer. For example, when the power goes out and the customer calls from a wireless phone, the CSP loses the ability to offer differentiated services based on the customer’s history. The result: the customer ends up back in the IVR maze.

The alternative offers a powerful customer experience that differentiates the CSP’s service offerings.

Imagine if the caller’s CSP could immediately link a customer’s wireless phone to their triple-play service account and recognize them upon entry to the IVR.  What if the IVR, based on the customer’s account profile, could route them to an attendant who had all of their account information in hand?  The CSP representative could ask one or two verification questions to verify the caller and then solve the problem quickly and with a personal touch.

Wouldn’t that be different?  What if, after they solved the customer’s problem, they provided them with a relevant promotional offer?  The result: a fantastic customer experience and a loyal customer.

It’s possible today. The magic is the CSP using the information know from its real-time systems and enhancing it with additional attributes. Private information remains private, but what the customer wants the CSP to know is available.

This is just one example of how information can enhance the customer mosaic. At Neustar, we are able to harness basic identifiers. A CSP is able to use one of these identifiers to validate information. For a business, it means being able to know it is a customer on the other end of the line, which can be invaluable.

Want to learn more? Click here to find out more about Neustar’s services.

With spring comes the realization that maybe we won’t get to all of this year’s resolutions. However, it’s never too late for communications service providers (CSPs) to become more efficient and more profitable. If you accomplish only one resolution this year, make it this one: turn information into your biggest asset. How? By organizing, analyzing and maximizing your data.

CSPs are fortunate because they’re rich in information: subscriber data, services, devices, network data, demographic, etc. Unfortunately, that information is often spread across multiple silos managed by different service groups, networks and database systems. As a result, many CSPs find themselves drowning in data, but thirsting for real intelligence about their customers and their business.

Over the years, CSPs have found themselves managing multiple database systems — often by necessity — due to mergers and acquisitions, transitioning from 3G to 4G to LTE, and the resulting difficulty of consolidating systems. The recent explosion in the number of mobile and other Internet-connected devices only compounds the problem. Today, it’s common for a single subscriber to have multiple forms of account reference data beyond their ten-digit telephone number: IP addresses, SIM numbers, account numbers, equipment identifiers and more.

There’s a big difference between managing data and maximizing it. As my colleague Gary Zimmerman pointed out in an earlier post, CSPs need to turn information costs into information assets.

Organized Customer Data = Consolidated Data Nirvana

This dynamic brings us back to the beginning, and the need to organize your customer data so you can turn it into an asset. Consolidating silos of data makes it possible to analyze and draw real business value. In the world of telecommunications, that means knowing multiple forms of data are really associated with one customer. It’s a daunting task, and one many CSPs postpone tackling. But there is a way to reach this state of consolidated data nirvana—yes, even this year—with Neustar NumeriTrack®.

NumeriTrack consolidates valuable, but disaggregated data from multiple and mixed-data silos into a primary data repository. It’s through this consolidation and organization that CSPs can get a holistic customer view that increases operational efficiency, removes obstacles that can limit growth and paves the way for better customer service. Here are a few examples of the positive impacts:

• Improved data integrity achieved by eliminating discrepancies and out-of-synch scenarios
• Better and faster customer service because agents have accurate, up-to-date information in one system;
• More effective marketing because you’re no longer asking two-dimensional questions (e.g., Does Customer X buy this service: Yes/No?), but instead probe for deeper insights and offer services that increase revenue and retention rates (Customer X has been with us for [x] years and subscribes to services A, B and C – reps are authorized to make [this] offer if they call in to cancel service.)

Think about it: You may be sitting on millions of dollars’ worth of untapped data right now. Can your operations really afford to wait for next year’s resolution to organize it?

It was just five years ago that Apple revolutionized the way people think about communications. Since the launch of the iPhone, applications have flooded the market creating a need and want for information to be served up now.

We assume our connections will support everything from traditional voice to streaming video on-demand. Mobility is no longer a question; it is the expectation. The multi-service, ubiquitous connectivity model has changed the way CSPs must approach their network.

CSPs can no longer address their network and corresponding services in silos. They need to interact with their customers through personalized, highly relevant communications. Creating communications and go-to-market strategies based on individual services — in isolation — isn’t a winning strategy.

Communications Analytics is a dynamic solution that answers this change.

What is Communications Analytics?

Communications Analytics enables CSPs to process all the information created by this 24×7 connectivity, bringing critical data together from across different parts of an organization to form a total customer view. Then, by applying Neustar’s analytical expertise to better understand the complete profile of a customer, CSPs can make smarter decisions about the future direction of their own services. This is a significant advancement, enabling CSPs to save costs and identify opportunities for new revenue.

We designed the service to grow with the CSP’s business. The solution is comprised of four introductory modules that can be deployed as a total package or in tandem with existing systems. The goal is to make it easy for CSPs to harness their information assets and start generating real returns.  And, we may expand on this initial solution with additional functionality to meet our customers’ new and changing needs.

The four components of the Communications Analytics solution are:

#1    Revenue Assurance

• Enhance forecasting with a comprehensive and accurate view of customer information and usage data
• Validate billing by identifying lost revenue from incorrectly billed subscribers
• Identify weaknesses to increase revenue by maximizing routing accuracy and identifying stranded network assets

#2    Risk Management

• Get real-time analysis on prospects, including validation of subscriber identity and account history
• Identify high-quality customers and dynamically manage their customer lifecycle across all of the products they use
• Flag subscriber purchases correlated with historical fraud indicators
• Obtain a detailed view of all subscriber data via an intuitive dashboard and comprehensive reports

#3    Margin Management

• Manage four dimensions of margin (costs, quality, capacity, and revenue) through interactive analytics
• Decrease total cost of ownership as compared to on-site installation with a fully hosted platform
• Lower operational costs by identifying abnormal usage patterns in order to identify and flag excessive use and shut down toll abuse quickly

#4    Sales Performance Management

• Manage dealer/agent sales performance through increased transparency
• Drive sales behavior patterns to desired business outcomes
• Improve take rates by aligning offers with customer behaviors to maximize opportunity

March 10^th marked the 137^th anniversary of the first telephone call. For some of us, it’s hard to imagine life without our smartphone, but it’s interesting to reflect on the innovative steps that brought us from the first electric phone to the modern day smartphone. It is a lot of change that has impacted everything about our communications. For CSPs, this innovation brings new opportunity.

Our Communications Analytics solution is designed to help CSPs take advantage of this new paradigm. Today when you call an associate, you don’t have to say, “Come here – I want to see you.” You can simply say, “Hi” and let your CSP anticipate your need by enabling your webcam.

We all want more customers. When was the last time you heard a business, especially a communications service provider (CSP), declare they no longer needed to add customers? Never. The mission is to grow subscribers and increase the average revenue per user (ARPU).

CSPs often have different initiatives for each goal. One campaign to increase the number of subscribers and another to broaden the services delivered to those customers. We would encourage a different approach: harness your information assets to build a cohesive campaign targeting both goals. This strategy starts by knowing your customers as individuals.

Understanding your customer means creating true, intelligence-based customer insight. Whether the target customer is a Fortune 500 or an individual consumer, your ability to grow depends on building relevancy and creating loyalty. This is where your information assets are invaluable.

CSPs generate huge quantities of information from their daily operations. Information tells them about the network’s performance, what type of traffic is causing congestion, what services subscribers are using, if they are winning or losing customers—on and on. All this data is essential for CSPs to effectively run their businesses. But, buried in this information, CSPs can also uncover valuable information that can help create customer intimacy, increase loyalty and open the door for more cross and up-selling opportunities.

Let’s look at a real world example. Every day, you have thousands of customer interactions and from those touch points, you know which services are receiving the most interest, which type of device is being used most often, and whether your customers are responding to one of your messages or external factors. Based on this information, you can establish a general profile of your ideal customer and then target potential customers with a great degree of specificity.

Knowing Your Customer

What information do you need that is essential for truly knowing your customer? These are just a few of the many information assets important to understanding your customer:

• What’s the customer’s persona? (Read my blog post Learning the Language of Me for more details)
• How does your customer like to communicate? Text? Email? Chat? Voice?
• What services does your customer use today and what offers is your customer paying attention to?

It might sound too good to be true, but I assure you the information assets are there. I didn’t say there weren’t hurdles. There are technical challenges, internal business hurdles and you must ensure privacy is maintained at all times.  However, the benefits of obtaining this information are worth the red tape.

But wait, there’s more! It is now possible to know more than just past data usage and the end-user’s device type. CSPs can now understand the personality of their customers. Here a quick example:

Person A:

Spends $50.00 per month on a voice and data bundle

Owns a smart phone

Has purchased 2 gigs a month

Person B:

Spends similar amount

Same phone

Same plan

Do you treat them the same? Your historical information might suggest that you do. A closer look tells you something very different.

Person A is part of a market segment that loves innovation and new technology. He’s a huge proponent of buying the latest and greatest, and actually the only reason he just has a typical smartphone is because he’s waiting on the next big thing.

Person B is in an entirely different market segment.  He’s a family man. He doesn’t care about gizmos. This dad needs a cheap way to communicate with his family. His children, like many others, predominantly use text to reach their dad. Given this family dynamic, you know that a two-gigabyte/month data plan isn’t likely to meet his needs.

Having this richer customer insight, you’d recommend a very different solution for each customer. Helping your customers chose the right solution for their personalized situation is crucial to building customer loyalty.

At Neustar, our rich history working with CSPs around the globe gives us a unique perspective on this intelligence. We understand what you need and potential pitfalls. Click here to learn more about how Neustar can help you truly know you customers.

Our connected lives produce huge quantities of data enabling us, as consumers, to keep track of our daily activities. We can monitor everything from how many movies our kids watch online, to how efficient our energy usage is compared to our neighbors.  From a business perspective, a communications service provider (CSP) can use the same kind of data to understand the most effective way to route traffic.

What happens with all this data?

For decades, each CSP business unit kept the data about its service data and usage stored internally. Each business unit would utilize its own data to perform revenue assessments or identify least-cost routing (LCR) paths. Data was viewed as a cost that determined how a network was administered, and where potential problems could arise. Today, however, the rich data generated by our 24×7 connectivity is moving data from the cost column to the asset column, and creating immense opportunity for those who know how to put it to work.

CSPs have access to a broad set of user-derived data. They know where subscribers are physically located when they make a call, how their subscribers consume content, and what types of services they use. Additionally, CSPs know when and how their customers are most likely to use those services. Telecom subscribers, like all customers, want to be treated as individuals, not just account numbers in a giant system. The data CSPs collect in the course of providing subscriber services can help them grasp their customers’ needs.

A better customer experience isn’t the only business benefit that comes from turning data into information assets. When data becomes an information asset, it can be used by CSPs to understand and deliver the types of services customers in a particular region prefer, for example. It can also help CSPs better allocate network assets to respond to customer demand or understand where to deploy new infrastructure to meet customer demand.

How do you turn all this data into an information asset?

CSPs can transform their data into information assets by thinking differently about their customer data. With a few high-level steps, CSPs can begin laying the foundation to build a business on real intelligence.

Step # 1: Organize your customer data.

A typical CSP has customers that vary widely in the services they subscribe to and how they consume those offerings. Although CSPs have all the information needed to fully understand their customer base, it is largely in silos and out of reach. For example, a national CSP might provide cable, telephone, and Internet services. It is likely that a different department provisions or manages each service. To get a full sense of each household’s needs, the CSP has the complicated task of pulling together the pieces of the puzzle.  Having this information organized and readily available allows for a solid foundation of real intelligence.

Step # 2: Analyze your information.

Once all of these records are together in one location, the data must be organized. Subscriber usage is very complex.  Looking at my own family for example – my two children living at home have mobile phones with data packages, meaning there are devices logging on and off our home network all day long. They also have laptops and occasionally use my iPad to stream movies. My wife, meanwhile, uses her mobile phone only to text with our kids and access Facebook. I predominantly use my phone to talk to a college-aged daughter in California. All of this tells my CSP a lot about the services we individually use as well as what our household looks like from a telecom services perspective. If they have that same information for all their customers in my neighborhood – the picture starts to get interesting. It allows a CSP to think outside the “typical subscriber” box, and understand who I am as a complete customer.

Step # 3: Maximize for business benefit.

In some ways, this is the easiest part of the process. Once the CSP has a complete picture of who I am, what services I use, how I like to communicate, and when I am active… they have lots of options. They can develop current offers that more accurately fit my needs as a customer. They can effectively leverage channel partners to deliver compelling new services that enhance the types of services I currently use. They can set up interconnection agreements for regions based on the real world information describing the customers’ behavior. This is where the CSP can change that data from a cost center to a true information asset.

Organize. Analyze. Maximize. Those three simple concepts have the power to deliver big business benefits. Painting a new picture of their customers, CSPs can use the information gathered to become more predictive in their offerings. Real intelligence is a theme at Neustar and this is just one example of how it has the power to improve business models and the customer experience.

We will be talking more about the value of information and how CSPs can harness this vital asset in the coming weeks. To learn more about Neustar’s solutions, click here.

We are spending more and more time online. The accessibility of wireless Internet and device capabilities have made it possible for businesses to expand the ways they engage with their customers. Businesses that historically conducted most of their customer interactions through a call center might now be harnessing online chat services or social media. A customer might start by exploring your website, move into an online chat session, and then call into your contact center. They might have different services supported by distinct business units within your company. It is entirely possible one of your most valuable customers prefers to engage entirely through a digital connection. All of these nuances help define your customer relationship.

In a recent IDC white paper, sponsored by Neustar Inc., “Data Augmented with Context Provides Richer Customer Experiences“*, it is noted that every interaction you have with your customers has the potential to either strengthen the relationship or commoditize it. And a commoditized customer relationship, as communication service providers (CSPs) know, soon leads to customer churn. So how do CSPs turn customer interactions into stronger customer relationships? By keeping those customer interactions in context.

Using real-time contextual information about your customers can dramatically improve customer service, increase sales, and reduce operational inefficiencies. Those are three top priorities for any CSP. As IDC underscores, and most CSPs know, there’s a wealth of contextual data available through network intelligence (e.g., location, device capabilities, service plans usage), historical customer behavior and account information. Collectively, this data can help CSPs deliver better customer service and even predict customer behavior.

IDC gives some examples in the white paper of how context-enabled customer communications can positively impact a business’ bottom line:

• Creating targeted and predictive marketing campaigns,
• Increasing the success of up-sell and cross-sell offers, and
• Lower operating costs by resolving customer issues faster.

On the flip side, the IDC white paper uses the ubiquitous Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system as a case of commoditizing the customer relationship: every customer is sent to the IVR regardless of their loyalty, profitability, preferences, etc. What if, the IDC white paper proposes, the network could identify its best customers and forward them directly to a live agent instead of an IVR system? And what if that live agent already knew the customer’s identity, purchase history, preferences and so on? Those are the kind of context-enabled communications that build customer loyalty.

Let’s take the IDC white paper example one step further. In the example of the high value customer that only engages with your business through a digital connection you know:

• The customer’s preferred communication style
• What services they subscribe to
• When they’ve engaged with you and about what

What if you harnessed all this information to deliver new offers based on this customer’s history and in the way they like to communicate? The right message at the right time and with the right communication channel.

The IDC white paper also sees an opportunity for CSPs to augment their own contextual information with third-party information that adds demographic, psychographic and geographic data to the picture. Doing this would allow CSPs to gain even deeper insights into their customers, including individual granularity at the household level, more accurate customer segmentation, and more powerful predictive capabilities.

Yet, the IDC white paper also points out many companies have been historically wary about collecting customer information. Government and regulatory agencies strictly define how some industries can share and use customer information. Specifically, the IDC white paper outlines the challenges of contextual-based information systems as follows:

1) They must comply with data privacy requirements,

2) They must demonstrate an ability to work in concert with existing operational systems, and

3) They must integrate securely and cost-efficiently with legacy systems.

Given those challenges, and the fact that CSPs historically loathe to share customer information, where would this contextual customer information come from? The IDC white paper has one suggestion: “From IDC’s perspective, there are few companies in the world that we would trust more than Neustar with customer data.”

In the future, customers will expect businesses to not only know who they are, but where they are and what kind of device they’re using (e.g., smartphone, tablet, computer). Personally, I see contextual communications as table stakes down the road, much as people today expect that a customer service representative on the other end of the phone will have access to basic information like your address and account number. It’s an interesting topic, and one explored well in the IDC white paper, sponsored by Neustar Inc.,“Data Augmented With Context Provides Richer Customer Experience.” I’d encourage you to read the entire paper, which is available at no cost, courtesy of Neustar.

 Source: *IDC White Paper, sponsored by Neustar Inc., Data Augmented with Context Provides Richer Customer Experiences, January 2013.

Our online lives create millions of gigabytes of data daily. That’s right — daily. That is a lot of data. Actually, it is ‘big data’ – pun intended. There are multiple products available to help businesses handle this wealth of information, but they fail to address the opportunity that comes from our online lives. The real value is derived from the processes and analytics that turn data into a valuable information asset.

Information in its raw form is just data. It is burdensome and — at the current rate it is being produced — unwieldy. Many approach the data landslide by trying to usher it out of the network and into storage as quickly as possible. While that solves the quantity dilemma, it doesn’t put your most valuable asset — information — to work.

As an example, every day communication service providers (CSPs) process thousands of gigabytes of their customers’ data. Daily activities are recorded and eventually stored away. CSPs also look through the data to spot aggregate sales trends. They might even dig a little deeper to understand specific geographic or product line differences.

What happens next? Is this where it ends? Is the data then archived on a server just waiting until it can be erased? For many – the answer is yes. This is the lifecycle of customer interactions. Those interactions are individualized with discrete transactions to tell part of the story from a historical perspective.

It’s what you do next with your data that determines when and if your data can become a valuable information asset, which can be utilized to grow your business and enable businesses to think prescriptively. The disciplined practices put in place to manage data also help define its value.

What is an Information Asset?

We all know the term ”big data” but ”information asset” might be new. When using the term ”big data” – the industry generally means any large amount of digital data, from sales records to five years of employee emails. An “information asset,” on the other hand, is defined as stored information that is considered valuable by an organization. In the telecom world, we are largely referring to communication service provider’s operational data — the information used to run their business and make decisions.

In its raw form, information assets are (as the name states) important to your business, but provide limited insights. Most CSPs pull their customers’ usage data from various sources to produce user records and other types of billing data. The question CSPs should be posing to themselves is this: Are we processing data to better understand our customers and increase value of our data?

It is this information that comes from our digital lives that provides exactly the type of detail CSPs need to create a better business model and support their customers. What types of media are customers consuming? Do they only access content during peak hours? Are they taking advantage of all the services offered or just a few? These are just a few of the questions that only the CSP would know, based on usage data collected to generate billing statements.

Information Assets: The Game Changer

Saving precious resources is on the top of everyone’s list for 2013. By analyzing your data and employing services to detect risk and promote best practices, you can outline steps that will save money. It becomes even more interesting when you take the analysis a step further: an integrated demographic and usage behavior trend line will help identify more relevant, targeted offers to decrease churn and increase customer satisfaction.

We all love our data. It is a cornerstone in any business plan. At Neustar, we’d submit data is interesting, but information assets are the real game changer. We’ll be talking more about information assets and what makes them valuable in the coming weeks. Follow the Carrier Services blog to get the latest information and be part of the conversation.

Mobile marketing, especially via SMS, is a growing business. Studies show that consumers are much more likely to read and respond to text messages than traditional electronic channels, such as email. As with any new market, there is still a certain amount of frontier lawlessness in the mobile marketing landscape. This especially takes place in the area of low-cost, bulk SMS delivery.

Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that there are many legitimate, low-cost SMS delivery service providers. Known as SMS aggregators, these companies partner with existing mobile operators to offer wholesale SMS services at a reduced price to customers. This is similar in some ways to how long-distance VoIP (Voice-over-IP) services are sold. In this model – mobile operators sell SMS aggregators bandwidth on their SS7 network and, in return, the SMS aggregators re-sell that bandwidth to their customers.

As anyone who has used a long-distance VoIP calling card knows, quality of service can vary considerably –usually in direct proportion to the price you pay. SMS services are no exception. SMS aggregators offer different levels of price/performance, depending on the type of connection and agreement they have with the mobile operator.

Behind SMS: a Technical Overview

To understand this ecosystem, we need to get into a few technical details – so please bear with me.

At the highest quality level, the SMS aggregator has what is referred to as a “direct connection” to the mobile operator’s SS7 network via a special signaling gateway. A direct connection to the SS7 network enables SMS aggregators to provide quality assurance for their customers.

At the other end of the spectrum are those SMS aggregators that have an “indirect connection” to the SS7 network via the mobile operator’s SMS Center. This kind of SMS service is typically cheaper but also provides less assurance that the SMS messages will have a good or fast delivery rate.

SMS Fraud: How Does it Happen?

SMS aggregators pay a price to mobile operators that is below the retail price. But how can some companies offer FREE SMS services? There are two answers and neither of them are good.

1. Aggregators can steal SMS services from a mobile operator or a legitimate SMS aggregator by exploiting network vulnerabilities using fraud techniques like spoofing, or
2. Aggregators may be using the SMS service as a lure to increase costs later or to use your marketing list for their own purposes via SMS spamming.

Fraudulent SMS service providers may use a combination of the above, stealing bandwidth on the one hand while spamming your customer list on the other. SMS marketers therefore should be wary of SMS service providers that advertise unusually low prices—for example, offers of 75 percent off, free unlimited SMS messages or free unlimited service to a specific country. Rest assured, you’ll be paying for the service in one way or another.

In addition to bargain prices, SMS marketers should be wary of newly established SMS service providers, as some of these may be fly-by-night companies. Many SMS service providers have been in business for years and have a proven track record. Try to stay away from choosing an inexperienced, possibly illegal SMS service provider because it could have serious consequences for your business:

• Your service provider could be blocked for fraudulent activities, and you might not be able to recover the money you paid to send messages that were never sent;
• Your service provider might not be able to guarantee the same rate from week to week, or even provide SMS delivery from week to week; or
• Your customer list may be exposed to spamming.

Even in the case of legitimate SMS services, there are still traps to be avoided. SMS aggregators frequently re-sell their own services to each other. This can make the quality of service vary widely between SMS service providers, so be sure to ask your SMS service provider about:

• Mobile Number Portability Correction: If an SMS provider doesn’t correct for number portability, SMS messages may cost you more than anticipated. Mobile operators often charge an extra fee for off-net messages or messages may be dropped by the network altogether.

• SMS Anti-Spam Checking: Not every SMS provider checks their network for spam, and using these services can result in your SMS messages being blacklisted by certain mobile operators.

• SIM Farms: Some SMS service companies offer something called a SIM farm, which involves plugging a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card that you’ve purchased into their servers for the purpose of sending and receiving text messages. SIM farms are not a direct connection service, and may result in slower SMS message delivery due to additional network hops between endpoints.

While the Wild West landscape of mobile marketing is beginning to settle down, don’t let your spirit of adventure overtake your common sense. Choose your partners wisely to avoid being swindled later on.

Special thanks goes to Lee Suker of Neustar Europe who writes his own blog on issues related to HLR Lookup and SMS. Lee spends a lot of time working with CSPs and aggregators around the globe to create solutions that work for today’s mobile landscape.

If you are over 30, you probably remember your parents telling you to hurry to the phone because your relative was calling “long-distance.” You likely also remember that moving was a big deal, not only for the hassle of the physical move, but also because you needed to let everyone know your new phone number — even if you only moved across town.

It also wasn’t long ago that switching your wireless carrier not only required selecting a new pricing plan and handset, but also a new phone number. Let’s face it – our phone number… home, business or wireless, is something we get attached to.

Thanks to some amazing people at Neustar and the efforts of the hundreds of telephone carriers in North America – your number is now really yours.

Neustar takes its role as a trusted, neutral provider seriously. With that as a background, we felt it was time to provide more content in a fresh layout that makes it easier than ever for CSPs (communications service providers) to find what they need.

When building the new Carrier Services site, we organized around three categories that reflect our customers’ needs: Operational Solutions, Networking Solutions and Marketing Solutions.

Operational Solutions

The Neustar crew loves numbers. Many operational teams within our CSP customers share this passion. It doesn’t make us the popular guest at dinner parties, but we have a lot to say about the way numbering systems are created and managed. The complexity that goes into assigning a telephone number and connecting a phone call is staggering. And, it takes a lot of work across the ecosystem to ensure two people are never given the same number.

This new Operational Solutions section of our website unites these communities, putting valuable information at the fingertips of those that need it most.

Networking Solutions

As today’s networks become more capable, businesses and consumers are digesting more dynamic content. A network that was originally built to handle voice with a little email or web traffic is now managing real-time streams of on-demand video, gaming, video calling, etc. That is a lot of stress on the network. And, we all know how frustrating it becomes when our favorite video clip buffers.

CSPs have multiple options to navigate this new dynamic. At Neustar, we are focused on delivering solutions that help optimize our customers’ networks, expand offerings and minimize service interruptions.

In our Networking Solutions section, we are providing the information you need to stay current on maximizing those network investments.

Marketing Solutions

Information is power. Today’s networks enable CSPs to understand who their customers are and provide them with intelligent services customized for their unique needs. This dynamic has the potential to change the competitive battlefield. If a CSP can change the discussion from minutes and megabytes to personalized, protected services – everyone wins.

Our marketing solutions aim to do just that. You’ll hear more about these solutions in 2013. For now, visit our Marketing Solutions section and see what is already available.

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By 2017, mobile messaging is expected to reach over $7 billion, according to Juniper Research. Yet behind all of those messages is a darker subtext. The omnipresence of mobile devices in our daily lives that attracts marketers to SMS also attracts spammers. SMS spamming is a growing problem for mobile operators, who increasingly find themselves in the middle, policing between responsible marketers and spammers/phishers.

Fortunately, mobile subscribers in the U.S. are spared from an avalanche of texting spam in large part through the efforts of CTIA – The Wireless Association. CTIA and its members have taken an aggressive stance against text spamming, levying heavy fines against violators and/or shutting them down. As with any policy enforcement, however, text messages from legitimate marketers can also be accidentally flagged as spam.

This brings us to an interesting question:

How can mobile operators make it easier for legitimate companies to use SMS marketing to reach their customers while making it harder for illegitimate companies to use SMS marketing for spam?

Customer opt-in programs and short codes are one way to encourage legitimate SMS marketing. Another solution: help legitimate marketers get the maximum value from SMS marketing by qualifying text recipients through a process known as an HLR (Home Location Register) Lookup. An HLR database is the location where mobile operators store important information about their mobile subscribers, such as:

• Whether a number is active or inactive, and
• Whether a particular subscriber is local, out of state or out of the country.

This information helps legitimate marketers make more informed decisions about who to target and when. By performing an HLR Lookup for each mobile subscriber number, marketers can create a “clean” customer list that ensures they don’t send text messages to inactive numbers, or pay costly international texting rates to roaming subscribers.

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But here’s the problem: spammers can take advantage of these same HLR Lookup services to target subscribers and exploit mobile network security vulnerabilities.

To date, spammers have been very crafty about how they get their information, often splitting HLR Lookup requests across multiple mobile operators and otherwise altering their HLR Lookup requests to appear as though they’re coming from different entities.

Mobile operators do have tools to combat the illegal use of HLR Lookup services, such as filtering techniques. Unfortunately, these only catch some spammers — and then only for a short while until new workarounds are discovered. More importantly, mobile operators must be cautious about creating overly stringent security measures that might also restrict HLR Lookup services for legitimate users.

Five Golden Rules

For the time being, the best way to ensure the success of SMS marketing is to practice safe text with the Five Golden Rules that every mobile marketer should follow:

1. Follow consumer opt-in laws. Mobile marketing opt-in laws vary from country to country. Are yours strong enough? Does your regulator offer services that facilitate opt-in compliance?
2. Do a double opt-in. Send two notices to confirm mobile marketing opt-in. Make sure you get an affirmative response on each notice. Remember a “no answer” means No.
3. Update your list annually. It’s a good idea to go through your mobile marketing list every year and re-confirm or remove names and numbers that haven’t generated a response in the last 12 months.
4. Check your list twice. This is also known as the “Santa clause.” Double-check to make sure you have the required opt-in approval for each contact and that all names on the list were received through proper channels.
5. Make it easy to opt out. Mobile subscribers should always have the option of opting out of marketing. The opt-out process should be no more complex than replying to a text with a simple “unsubscribe.”

Special thanks goes to Lee Suker of Neustar Europe who writes his own blog on issues related to HLR Lookup and SMS. Lee spends a lot of time working with CSPs and aggregators around the globe to create solutions that work for today’s mobile landscape.