Editorial

Alex Leslie - 2 days ago

Why do we keep billing things not people?

I just recorded a podcast with one of our sponsors about horizontal billing – a familiar subject you might think. The CTO had written an article on the subject for a financial magazine based in Asia Pacific and I was curious to find out why. The reason is that the financial services industry is trying to get away from billing or charging being embedded in the product lines. As in telecoms several years ago the dangers are obvious – more so with the advantage of hindsight. They will not be able to bundle services, they cannot have a single view of the customer – at least not seamlessly – and they are unprepared for serious innovation in this area.

I have always been fascinated by the lessons that one industry can learn from another. I have also been incredibly frustrated by the same thing. Many is the time that I have offered an example or anecdote about telecoms doing something well that could be translated into the Water world for instance and being told ‘we do things differently here’.

But that was then and things are changing. It is very encouraging to me that there is a melting happening at the edges of industries – telecoms people are being hired by financial services groups to manage transformations.

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Operators' Views

Alex Leslie - 19 days ago

What makes an MVNO tick?

What makes an MVNO tick? BillingViews went to find out from a successful start up in Europe that has begun well.

How does your MVNO operate?

We are actually a joint venture with the network operator. This was an early decision and one that we felt would make for the best relationship between the parties.

You have worked for a network operator too, what was the biggest difference between working for a network operator and an MVNO?

The biggest difference is the speed at which you can get things done. It was a real eye opener to be able to get things done, get proposals approved and executed as quickly as we did. I think large companies can learn a lot from this. Small teams!

What were the challenges from a billing perspective?

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