Earlier this year India telecom service provider Tata Docomo and transaction processor Syniverse announced a new partnership to improve the user experience for Tatta Docomo customers.

By enabling the use of Syniverse’s intelligent policy capabilities and hosted services, the partnership allowed Tata Docomo to offer its subscribers more control over their data usage through prepaid data passes, volume-based data caps and high-usage alerts.

At the time, Tata Teleservices’ head of marketing for mobility Gurinder Singh Sandhu called the collaboration “the first of its kind in India’s telecom market to empower our customers to manage their experiences and costs.”

With India expected to overtake the United States as the second largest smartphone market globally by 2017, we reached out to Syniverse’s Vice President and Managing Director of Sales for India Sanjay Kasturia to find out how agreements like the one between Tata Docomo and Syniverse can help operators serve such a rapidly growing pool of smartphone customers.

Wireless Week: Why is it so important for operators in up and coming markets like India to adopt policies and controls like those provided by Syniverse?

Kasturia: The penetration of smartphone users in developing countries will continue to grow as economies in these markets continue to scale. Higher levels of prosperity will drive business demands and provide more disposable income that lead to increases in mobile usage both at home and abroad. It’s important for operators to prepare their networks and operations now for the quickly rising data consumption and cross-network device usage of the future. Intelligent policy services ensure that operators in these markets can gain a foothold in today’s hyper-competitive landscape by consistently delivering top services in the domestic market while also ensuring that the service quality when roaming is consistently the same as the superior experience at home. These are achieved by multiple methods including:

• Identifying network abnormalities, such as data registration failures and traffic patterns, to proactively solve issues before they affect subscribers.
• Providing real-time targeted offers to users through campaign management, audience segmentation, discounting and data roaming sponsorship.
• Allowing subscribers to control the usage and costs through prepaid data passes, volume-based data caps and high-usage alerts.

Wireless Week: Ok, so what drew Tata Docomo and Syniverse together?

Sanjay Kasturia: Syniverse’s relationship with Tata Docomo began eight years ago when the operator needed network infrastructure, clearing and settlement, and interstandard services to support GSM and CDMA technologies. Tata Docomo selected Syniverse due to its ability to provide access to a wide breadth of managed hosted services, which ultimately paved the way for the operator to add intelligent policy to its capabilities.

Wireless Week: What is the benefit of using Syniverse’s policy portfolio over an operator trying to create its own policies?

Kasturia: Operators many times lack the upfront investment needed to create their own policy infrastructure. Additionally, operators also do not have the connections with partnering operators across both domestic and outbound markets necessary to create vast amounts of meaningful subscriber data.

Syniverse provides operators with an alternative option by offering hosted services that do not require major capital expenditure costs or require the operator to take on additional responsibilities that would come with managing infrastructure and processes. In addition to already established infrastructure, Syniverse is uniquely positioned to leverage the subscriber data it gains from its reach to over 1,000 operators and 6 billion devices. Operators need the combination of powerful cloud-based tools plus global reach to easily gain visibility into and influence over the quality of a subscriber’s experience in real time.

Wireless Week: What kinds of personalized experiences can operators deliver to subscribers using Syniverse’s tools?

Kasturia: Basic intelligent policy services put subscribers in control of their data usage so they are free to use services on their own terms. Subscribers, like those of Tata Docomo, are able to manage their data by viewing usage in real time or controlling usage through prepaid data passes, volume-based data caps and high-usage alerts. For example, operators can prevent subscribers from inadvertently using data services in amounts that exceed their plan limits – the phenomenon known as bill shock – by providing subscribers real-time transparency and control over their data usage via SMS.

Moreover, there are many products offered through Syniverse’s intelligent policy services, including those that provide operators with visibility into and control over the user experience to ensure the superior service that leads to long-term customers. Operators are also able to leverage subscriber data to offer a number of tailored data usage and pricing plans that can be targeted to specific subscriber segments. These plans represent a major improvement over the more traditional one-size-fits-all plans, offering subscribers packages based on exactly how they expect to use services. This also helps operators entice customers to consume more data by delivering personalized offerings.

Wireless Week: How do Syniverse’s account management policies benefit both the subscriber and the operator? How do they benefit the relationship between the two?

Kasturia: Intelligent policy services provide operators with an instantaneous view of a user’s connectivity needs and the ability to serve those needs in a relevant and timely way. It keeps the customer pleased with services and the operator able to drive new revenue through repeat business as well as through upselling of promotional data offers.