AT&T and Accenture Create Private Mobile Network for Phillips 66

U.S. operator AT&T and professional services company Accenture are working with the American multinational energy company Phillips 66 to create industrial mobile wireless connectivity via the development of a private mobile network platform. The platform will lay the foundation for potential future 5G use, including support for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and low-latency applications. Phillips 66 invited Accenture to address mobile performance gaps with its existing public mobile network near one of its refineries in Belle Chasse, Louisiana.

The private mobile network was selected as a proof of concept to demonstrate the ability to handle increased mobile connectivity needs from the ongoing Phillips 66 digital transformation initiatives. The proof-of-concept private network was designed from the ground up to address Phillips 66’s industrial digital requirements. AT&T was selected as the telecommunications provider to create the necessary engineering for a dedicated mobile network platform, using multi-access edge compute across licensed spectrum. 

Despite the great strides being made in mobile network technology, including 5G, there are circumstances in which normal public networks do not fully meet the needs of enterprise customers. For heavy-industry companies such as Phillips 66, which rely on constant communication between workers on oil refineries and other large installations, as well as IoT applications, a private mobile network may be a better solution. Free of interference and potential narrowing of bandwidth due to other users, a private network delivers greater reliability and high-quality connectivity.

In consultation with Accenture, Phillips 66 decided to choose AT&T as its MNO partner in developing such a network. And while the project is still in the proof-of-concept phase, Phillips has described the results as “promising.” At present, the solution is filling in gaps in coverage; in future, it can be extended to include IIoT and 5G applications. Phillips also expects it to be expanded to include other locations within the company’s ecosystem.

For major mobile operators like AT&T, such special projects represent a very lucrative and exciting opportunity. Developing a private network for a large enterprise of course brings in significant revenue, in terms of project fees and future network usage charges, but it also allows the operator to explore possibilities for innovation that may not at present be affordable or even possible for a public network. In essence, a private network may be a laboratory of sorts for the development and testing of possibilities that one day will be made more widely available.

Tarifica is a global SaaS company and a market leader in the real-time collection, analysis and delivery of telecom plan and pricing data worldwide. Through a mix of AI, modeling and market expertise, Tarifica tracks hundreds of thousands of plan and pricing data points daily. No other company tracks more. Tarifica's mission is to continuously convert data into the dynamic intelligence that fuels opportunities for its clients, the world's leading operators, regulators and consultants. 

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Sandvine to Support Smart’s Bite-Sized Data Plan Store

Smart Communications, the leading MNO by market share in the Philippines, has selected Canada-based Sandvine, an intelligent broadband solutions provider, to support its mobile internet store, PowerApp, which offers bite-sized, application-specific mobile data plans.  PowerApp, developed by Smart’s technology partner, Chikka Philippines, offers email, chat, photo and social packages in 15-minute, 3-hour or per-day increments with unlimited access.

Emerging-market operators such as Smart are increasingly adopting application-specific data pricing as a strategy. It offers a versatile means of tailoring plans according to customers’ usage, allows customers to use apps such as Facebook or YouTube without fear of bill shock and gives them a clear understanding of what they are paying for. Apart from benefiting from an incremental revenue stream, operators can also potentially upsell their customers as data usage grows and continually adapt their offerings to market needs. In emerging markets, where many users may not be able to afford a full-scale data plan, allowing them to access the apps most relevant to their needs not only encourages greater data consumption but puts mobile data within reach of a wider population. It also enables operators to attract users to data at an earlier stage of their mobile-use timeline. The success of this pricing strategy is increasingly evident—one example is Zimbabwean MNO Econet Wireless’ introduction of unlimited Whatsapp bundles, which we reported in the 22 May Tarifica Alert. Another is Facebook’s recent acquisition of Finnish startup Pryte, which enables operators to offer bite-sized data plans; the acquisition is aimed at supporting Facebook’s Internet.org initiative in emerging markets.

However, app-specific data pricing can also be relevant to certain segments of developed markets, such as the youth demographic. Since some users may utilize most of their plan allowances on certain apps only, offering an app-specific data plan may allow operators to better meet the needs of these subscribers. Furthermore, operators could offer app-specific plans or even unlimited data plans with short-term validity to coincide with popular events such as the FIFA World Cup. Operators could also price apps such as YouTube that consume a large amount of data at a different rate from apps such as Twitter that use less data. App-specific pricing also creates the possibility of allowing sponsorship of data for specific apps, which would constitute an additional revenue stream for operators. In the U.S., MVNO FreedomPop has already announced plans to launch app-specific and bite-sized data plans as well as sponsored apps in Q3 2014. These plans, currently in test mode, will be offered alongside FreedomPop’s basic service, which provides users with 500 MB of 4G data per month with no associated monthly fee.

The above item appeared in a recent issue of The Tarifica Alert, a weekly resource that analyzes noteworthy developments in the telecoms industry from around the world. To access all of the latest articles and issues:  http://www.tarifica.com/TarificaAlert.aspx