F2M: What's the fuss about?

Allow me to share with you my thoughts about Fixed to Mobile convergence and its impact to billing systems and processes.

It’s true that F2M is a trend being imposed by both cost reduction and customer experience dictate.

Cost, under these tough economic circumstances, is a key factor for the survival of all telecommunication operators; a convergent system such as the billing or a technology platform like the IMS is surely a step towards the right direction, since a single convergent system means lower maintenance and operational costs.

On the other hand, end user’s device convergence constitutes a must that all operators owe to respect and comply with. Nowadays, the customer wants to experience all services through a single device; fixed or mobile, voice or data all provided through his tablet, laptop or cellphone. Furthermore, customer wants to get a single convergent invoice for all his services irrespectively to the devices used.

Consequently, there are apparent reasons for the telecom operators to seek for F2M implementations; especially for F2M billing solutions.

But, the thing is, that billing systems are already prepared for F2M convergence. They already support multiple services rating, multiple services billing, multiple services invoicing, and of course discounting schemes that share common buckets across multiple services; even the Prepaid to Postpaid convergence is currently fully supported.

So, what’s all this fuss about? If the systems are ready, the devices already offered and the customer experience constantly showing the way, what is the underlying force behind these admittedly very interesting discussions and debates regarding F2M?

Well, to my opinion, the issue is (as it always was) the customer himself. A F2M implementation usually implies the merge of two typically different companies: The cumbersome incumbent fixed telephony operator and the lean and agile mobile operator. Both operators usually have large (and dirty) customer bases with multiple services. Hence, the problem is to identify the customer: his fixed as well as his mobile instance. And then, to carefully clean and successfully migrate all his relevant data into a single unified instance. Last but not least, to generate the convergent invoice.

Bottom-line, customer identification and customer data migration is the critical factor for the F2M venture to successfully complete. It is neither the technology nor the system capabilities that would make the difference, whatsoever.