Telecom managed services is growing at 19 percent per year. The revenues touched $8-9 billion at present.

Telecom managed services globally has grown to about $190 billion in revenues with expected growth rate of almost 14 per cent year-on-year for the next couple of years, experts said at the third conference  on managed services.

Experts at the conference said that it is important to move towards a model where everybody has a managed services partner.

It’s not new. It’s almost 7-8 years old. We started with managed capacity and later from active to passive sharing,” said H.L.Gupta, head, Operations and Deployment (Network Services Group) Bharti Airtel.

Managed Services allow operators to focus on the customer base, core competencies and transfer risk to third party. There is also increased subscriber revenue through high performing network and enhanced customer. Functional expertise is the key criteria for selecting vendors and partners.

Managed services in India are yet to go a long way as compared to European and other markets,” said Pranay Misra, CTO, MTS South India Hub.

According to experts, the major challenges in India are in terms of high fund requirement.

Many operators have common managed services vendor. Now the challenge for these vendors is to gain the trust of the client companies regarding the fact that they are not offering the same solution to any other client,” said Vikram Tiwathia, senior director, Cellular Operators Association of India.

The service should provide business value beyond cost reduction and operational efficiency. Pro active problem solving based on mutual understanding and commitment is another factor driving the service’ growth,” said S.Krishnan, CTO, Videocon Telecommunications. A partnership that works in both good and bad times is what is needed.”

The session concluded with the message that there is a constant hunger for newer services. With MNP rolled out, customer churn and loyalty is going to keep the operators on their toes. Hence, the need for better services and value added services comes in. Keeping this in mind, it is imperative that operators opt for a set up where most of their services are taken care of by their strategic partners. Also, they should think of outsourcing HR management, advertising management, fraud management and customer satisfaction management.

Companies engaged in managed services in telecom sector – Nokia Siemens Networks, Amdocs, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Shaildhar Telecom, UBIqube and Luminous Teleinfra  participated in the event.

Among the senior representatives from the telecom operators Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Aircel, BSNL, MTNL, Reliance Communications, TATA Teleservices, Sistema Shyam, Etisalat, Videocon Telecommunications and Uninor attended the conference