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Imagine this. You are a telco offering gaming services and have a significant user base. You meet a new content provider who agrees to give you unlimited rights for his next game, which has become a major hit. You want to get it up and running by the approaching weekend. Do you have a solution that can help you manage and monetize this new service? Or will you simply pass up the opportunity?

Welcome to the dynamic world of broadband, where a new service gets born a minute! With broadband access proliferating across the world, telcos providing these services are getting increasingly pressurized to rapidly introduce NextGen offerings that capture the imagination of the user, enhance customer delight and open up fresh revenue streams.

The key challenge before these telcos lies in how they can successfully maximize revenues from the new services they are offering. How they can combat competition and differentiate in an increasingly "me-too" market. How they can charge for these NextGen services and integrate the billing for these services with existing solutions, well before others catch up.

Voice: Ruling the Roost
If we review the current broadband services landscape-touching areas such as entertainment, business, e-governance, e-medicine, e-education or consumer applications-we will find it continues to be dominated by voice services. Voice is also the core service in applications such as video telephony, video-on-demand, live streaming services, movies, Web video and games.

For telcos offering some of these newly available converged services to the consumer, SOHO or business segments, issues of bundling and monetization are assuming utmost importance.

While targeting consumer, telcos need to remain cost sensitive and focused on "keeping it simple." What this means is that they have to go in for simple pricing schemes and ease-of-installation and use. Real-time usage monitoring and unified billing are some of the features they require from the product management software they deploy.

Telcos targeted at the SOHO segment need to opt for a monetization solution that is cost sensitive and offers customer the ability to roam, enhanced features and the flexibility to add or remove services.

When targeting large enterprise customers, telcos have to look at offering telephony infrastructure, high quality services, integration with business applications and remote and home working solutions.

NextGen services: in search of monetization solutions
In today's environment, most of the NextGen services being monetized by operators/service providers, focus on unlimited bundling for voice and a per minute fee, once the usage exceeds the bundle. Product bundling, meanwhile is the grouping of multiple services, which can be either offered free or in conjunction with certain features.

Leading global telcos, including reputed VoIP services providers such as Vonage are attempting to differentiate their offerings by creating bundles for different types of users-Business, SOHO and home.

In the case of companies such as Webex, that provide a range of broadband services which have moved beyond voice, to applications such as Web conferencing, the bundle extends beyond plain minutes to the number of participants and total minutes for all participants, combined.

In the area of online gaming, for instance, broadband service providers are attempting to figure out how to transition pricing from a flat subscriber basis to a per participation basis (or per stroke basis).

NC Soft, the company that has launched the popular game, City of Heroes, is even considering linking the issue of monetization to the result of the game!

Most services providers are monetizing services in three ways: on a per transaction basis, on the basis of a limited bundle or an unlimited one.

Typically services such as voice mail, caller ID and three-way conferencing are included for free as unlimited bundles. Access comes in a limited bundle. Enhanced services such conferencing, online gaming, among others, attract a premium and can be charged on a per transaction basis.

Besides a fixed monthly subscription, NextGen service providers are offering consumers a "prepaid wallet," a replenishable debit card paid for in advance, to charge for additional offerings such as international long distance calling, ring tones, skins, etc.

For services such as web conferencing more often used by business, usage fees appear as postpaid charges on the bill since its simpler to deal with.

At the end of the day, what telcos need, are tools that manage the revenues for their NextGen services, increase RoI and help them bring new offerings to market rapidly.

Ankur Lal Founder and CEO Infozech Software vadmail@cybermedia.co.in