The document discusses how communication service providers can monetize their digital assets by leveraging real-time charging capabilities. It describes how CSPs can select core assets like customer profiles, locations, and devices to expose to third parties. Advanced charging is needed to address the challenges of pricing diverse asset bundles and partnerships. A revenue sharing mechanism is also required to fairly compensate all stakeholders involved in multi-party business models and value chains. An example use case illustrates how a smart parking app synergistically partners a CSP, app developer, and parking operators to monetize exposed assets through complex charging relationships.

1. June 2014 | www.tmforum.org
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RESEARCH
INSIGHTS
Real-time charging accelerates
multi-partner services
Sponsored by:
Report prepared for Nikos Tsantanis of Intracom Telecom. No unauthorised sharing.

2. 42 www.tmforum.orgINSIGHTS RESEARCH
Sponsored feature
Monetizing CSP Digital Assets
Leverage Charging to enable innovative & profitable business models
The challenge is well-documented and
widely-manifested among Communication
Service Providers (CSPs) worldwide:
revenues from traditional voice and
messaging-related core activities are
constantly diminishing in favor of a
diverse and ever-growing population of
third party application providers, service
suppliers, and the likes. These so-called
Over-the-Top (OTT) players establish
themselves in the digital arena ‘eating the
lunch’ of CSPs. Nevertheless, the shift of
revenue from CSPs to OTTs is just one
manifestation of the structural changes
currently taking place in the industry.
Looking under the hood, it is more
and more acknowledged that this shift
is accelerated by the decline of B2B
or B2C as paradigms of choice. These
long-established business models are
gradually complemented by complex and
demanding B2B2X, multi-entity, many-to-
many value delivery ecosystems.
This strategic evolution has led many
operators to embrace newly-thought
business models and value propositions,
powered by their core assets – data
and capabilities – toward repositioning
themselves from CSPs to DSPs (Digital
Service Providers).
Although CSPs do realize that new
revenue streams could be generated
through core asset monetization, many
such efforts fail due to shortcomings
imposed by the currently employed
charging approaches. Key questions to
be answered range from selecting the
core assets that can be monetized, to
addressing the challenges that arise in the
process, up to finally sharing the revenue
among involved entities in a fair and
efficient manner.
Selecting Assets to Monetize
Each CSP possesses a wealth of digital
Nikos Tsantanis, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Big Data Analytics, Intracom Telecom
Iraklis Pilatos, Product Manager, Revenue Mgt. Solutions, Intracom Telecom
assets that have unique characteristics:
n Are ‘owned’ and/or controlled,
sometimes exclusively, by the CSP.
n Have an intrinsic value particularly
pertinent to third-parties, like OTTs.
n Are hard, or impossible, to find
elsewhere, outside the CSP, and are
thus non-imitable.
The combination of these three
characteristics accentuates the
strategic positioning of the CSP in the
value-creation ecosystem and inspires
innovative ways to uncover new sources
of competitive edge and revenue.
A tentative list of assets may include,
among others, customer profile
(identification details, subscription
information, communication preferences,
credibility & loyalty), location and
presence, type of devices, payment
method (pre/post-paid), performance
requirements (e.g. QoS/QoE), etc. Such
assets are already exposed today to
collaborating third-parties, mainly via
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
Addressing Monetization Challenges
Possession and exposure of assets alone,
is necessary but not sufficient for realizing
value. Equally important is the ability to
place a ‘price tag’ on each asset that is
exposed. Yet, due to the diversity of the
assets and the plethora of partners, there is
no ‘one size fits all’ monetization approach.
The challenge here is to adopt the method
that best fits the chosen business model.
The CSP should be empowered to
flexibly – even on demand – enable
commonly-utilized charging methods
(e.g. flat rate, volume-based, transaction-
based, value-based, discretionary, etc.)
depending on the business model needs.
Although the above charging methods
are both powerful and tested, CSPs
are often challenged by additional
functionalities that extend well beyond
those typically available today within CSPs:
n Assets need to be exposed either
individually or bundled together to
serve the diverse needs of a broad OTT
audience.
n The complexity of meshed B2B2X value
ecosystems often demands a multitude
of highly sophisticated charging
capabilities that can only be met by
flexibly ‘mixing and matching’ common
charging methods.
n The boom of IoT, cloud and M2M
introduce new business models and
expose CSPs to specific demands of
vertical markets outside their core
domain.
Sharing Revenues Fairly & Efficiently
In a typical scenario, an OTT player
leverages exposed assets, adds value
via proprietary means and creates a new
service offering toward other third-parties
or the end-user.
However, the many-to-many
relationship between assets and OTTs
gives rise into, practically countless,
alternative value-flow and revenue-
sharing scenarios. This enormous number
of possibilities, compounded with the fast
and voluminous propagation of value and
revenue, uncovers another considerable
challenge for the CSP: how to reward
each entity according to their respective
contribution in value creation.
A comprehensive partner management
mechanism is needed to maintain
revenue-sharing agreements among
all stakeholders (CSPs, OTTs, third-
party service providers and internal or
external app developers) and monitor the
necessary SLAs end-to-end.
Report prepared for Nikos Tsantanis of Intracom Telecom. No unauthorised sharing.

3. 43www.tmforum.org INSIGHTS RESEARCH
Use Case: Smart Parking App
Let us illustrate how a CSP can leverage
its advanced charging capabilities while
monetizing assets in the following real-
life B2B2X business scenario.
While approaching by car to a client’s
premise, Alice consults a parking app
on her smart phone. The app first
determines the exact vehicle location,
guided by the CSP’s network. It then
displays on the map all nearby parking
stations with vacant parking slots as well
as pricing information for each of them.
Alice chooses her preferred station and
gets driving directions.
Upon arrival, she is granted access to
the parking station by pointing her mobile
handset to the NFC device at the parking
gate and ‘delegates’ payment to her CSP:
if she is prepaid subscriber, the charge is
deducted from her mobile phone balance; if
postpaid, the charge appears at her next bill.
Three business entities interact syn-
ergistically to serve the subscriber, as
follows.
n CSP, which exposes core assets
(user’s location, subscription type and
capability for in-app payment, etc.) to
the OTT and orchestrates a complex
business partnership by distributing the
revenue during the settlement process.
n OTT, the app developer/owner, which
acts as a value creation layer by
bridging drivers’ demand for parking
slots with parking operators’ supply.
n Parking Operators, which benefit by
virtualizing their Demand Generation
process through paid promotion on the
app and by extending their accepted
payment methods.
The above business interactions involve
multiple complex charging relationships,
in which the CSP is always in the middle:
n CSP collects payment from the
subscriber and acts as clearance center
determining what revenue portion each
party deserves. CSP also charges OTT
for the assets used and both OTT and
Parking Operator for the brokerage/
clearance service offered.
n OTT receives a percentage of the
amount of money paid by app users for
parking services, net of the charges for
accessing CSP’s assets.
n Parking Operator receives from the
CSP a share of the revenue generated
by parking services, net of the charges
for promotion made possible by the app
(e.g.: pay per appearance).
The mobile subscriber receives a
hassle-free, seamless parking experience,
while remaining loyal to the CSP.
NGINius-Charging™ is a
comprehensive next-generation charging
solution from Intracom Telecom enabling
CSPs to realize innovative and profitable
business models and monetize assets
exposed to third-party OTTs end-to-end.
The solution incorporates a scalable
module providing efficient revenue sharing
and partner management functionality
across complex B2B2X settings.
Contact us: charging@intracom-
telecom.com
Report prepared for Nikos Tsantanis of Intracom Telecom. No unauthorised sharing.