Blog Post

Our recent research with AT&T showed that 72% of businesses lack a clear hybrid-work strategy. The findings also show other sentiments and challenges around Covid-driven hybrid working, including lack of innovation, insufficient oversight and cultural shifts.

But. Hybrid work will be the default by 2024. Half of the work will be performed offsite: 81% believe hybrid work will be the foremost working model by 2024, with 56% of work done offsite.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning were identified as the leading transformative technologies in the survey, with their intrinsic value identified specifically in the areas of employee training, intelligent enterprise search and learning and conversational help.

AI is a great example of the dilemma facing most service providers – how to monetize a transformative technology – does this opportunity get left to those running on the network – or, can AI on both the end-point and in the core of the network usher in a new era of conversation-based services?

Address the challenges at the network level

The issues emerging in addressing both AI and Hybrid Working as opportunities are challenged by macro issues: Businesses and consumers increasingly relate more to the app or service than the businesses that made the conversation possible – as a result, even the new 5g opportunity is relatively undifferentiated. Without new services and innovation based on AI, differentiation is unattainable, resulting in churn – a dependence on price and packaging, and balance sheet impacts from decreasing revenue and margin.

The question is will the shifts increase the value of the network to you, the Service Provider? Empowering increasing ROIC, revenue, retention, and differentiation; will they open opportunities for innovation for the service provider, allowing for innovation-powered differentiation?

Or will they deliver a more powerful platform to others? Those running on top of the network have shown us that revenue doesn’t return to the source of where value was created. But what if there was a way? This is why we started Dubber – not just to record calls but to deliver value from the network from our Platform.

Delivering on the promise and value with the Conversation Cloud

The new conversational era will be powered by the Conversation Cloud – the one place conversations can be retained, refined and AI-enriched to create value. Many of you who know Dubber may gravitate towards thinking that we are a call recording company… and that is understandable. The platform, however, has been designed to match the philosophy, namely that capturing the conversation should be from the source of that conversation – the network. Call recording, as tangible as it is, was only ever going to be the start. You’ve all heard the word ‘platform’ after the term ‘cloud’; it is the most overused and over-abused term in our vernacular.

That’s what Dubber is, a single global platform that enables service providers to deliver features at scale anywhere across the network. Features that enable value to be created from any conversation on the network, features that unlock content insights, features that enable the prospect for innovation, features which can create new and needed experiences for customers, and features that drive revenue from the source of their creation – the network.

Dubber is not your typical ISV partner, looking for re-sale partnerships with all the challenging sales motions that that entails to ultimately deliver unilateral value around our own detached technologies and customer base. We believed that the focal point needed to be the Service Provider for two key reasons: Firstly, because we believe that that would provide the best customer experience, and secondly, that would drive value throughout the supply chain. To do that, we need to be on board with you in every sense.

Solutions delivered to you should enhance the value of the network through differentiated services, not monetize the network at your expense. Those solutions should be burdenless, deployed with simplicity and scale, on with a click and integrated easily with provisioning and billing. And that they must unify applications and end-points, so conversations – text, video, mobile, UC could be accessed and enriched in one conversation cloud.

And that this could enable endless AI-based innovation opportunities for service providers with minimal CAPEX.

Reimagining the value of the network starts with reimagining the value of a conversation. And that begins with unlocking the value of content. Network operators generate an average of 10 to 15 per cent of their revenues outside of core connectivity; the type of services we deliver have the potential to double that. And this increases further when the customer adds other communications services to the Conversation Cloud.

The monetization opportunity is immense. Take any conversation – serve new applications – native widgets and or notifications. Let me give you a few examples of what we see as an exciting opportunity.

The emergence of new network services

We launched Notes by Dubber at Mobile World Congress. Deployed at the heart of a Service Provider network, users now get any meeting or call transcribed, turned into actions, with highlights and more. Enabling users to review meetings that they weren’t able to attend on the way home and easily share highlights for action by others.

The use cases run across all demographics, from consumer through to small businesses and enterprises. For example, say, on a mobile network, I could get a text nudge following a call with all the key actions from the call. Or a reminder of a meeting I committed to during the conversation to drop onto my calendar. Or perhaps my service and mobile might come with an app that quickly flags to me customer and employee sentiment for that day and gives me snippets from customer calls I should know about. Let’s say I’m a major bank, and I might have provided to me by my Service Provider a fully integrated compliance reporting dashboard that gives me total visibility into calls that potentially breach policies.

Or a simple search console that enables me to pull up highlights, a recording or a transcript of any conversation across the business. That same application would prove invaluable to HR, dispute resolution teams, or customer service managers. All of this is possible today. And this is just the start of a new era in which every conversation is a source of value for the service provider turning the network into an innovation factory with endless new services created and deployed with minimal CAPEX investment.

In most media industries, there is a well-known saying that content is king when it comes to future value. The networks which you operate contain an enormous amount of content that, to date, remains untapped. Every day, huge amounts of calls or conversations go across those networks and disappear into a vacuum. Others land on third-party infrastructure and applications where they are monetized independently of the service provider. One key question is how quickly can that change?

Reimagine the value of your network today

‘Speed to market’ is a familiar imperative that is identified by analysts and management alike. The Dubber platform is ready to go, as are primary revenue-generating applications which can deliver that content in the network.

What if this took months, not years and what if revenue flowed in days? And what if it did that without traditional CAPEX and OPEX burdens? We see an incredible opportunity to help to redefine the value of every network through the Conversation Cloud and Dubber Platform. It starts with a new form of partnership between companies like Dubber. One where we all benefit from increasing the value of the network and expressing the life of the network and conversations in new ways.

Customers are going to benefit from it; more than that, they are going to require it and what better way to serve it to them than directly from the network.

by Bill Bennett

Service providers have an opportunity to recapture the value in their infrastructure.

Telecommunications technology changes fast. Telcos and other service providers face ever-increasing infrastructure investments to stay competitive. Upgrading mobile networks to 5G or building fibre to the premise needs more capital.

Each year they spend hundreds of billions of dollars. There is no let-up in sight.

Meanwhile, there is no corresponding revenue rise. Customers get more data and faster data with each passing year although the price they pay remains steady. They get more reliable connections. Traditional telecommunications companies around the world built networks that millions turned to when they had to work from home.

When they look at the future through a traditional telco lens, they see few opportunities to add value.

Competing with free

Moreover, the value-added services telcos were able to sell in the past are now given away for free.

Technology companies provide free or low-cost digital services running on top of fixed-line and wireless networks, often, but not always, funded by advertising sales.

Take the free messaging offered by Facebook, Google and Apple. It can be advertising-supported or as a lure to sell hardware or other digital services. Zoom, Teams and Webex replace telco-provided video conferencing. The list of free or low-cost over-the-top services goes on.

Streaming video, music and gaming are other classes of over-the-top services that rely on networks built and maintained by telcos

To rub salt in the wounds, over-the-top companies continue to clock up record revenues and enjoy high margins.

Meanwhile, telecommunications experiences flat to decreasing revenues, increasing capital outlay requirements and reducing opportunities to differentiate.

Telco share of the online digital universe is decreasing

When comparing telcos to these tech companies the numbers make for sobering reading. The profits of the world’s top 25 telcos has fallen 46 percent. Their share of revenue is down 40 percent. Their share of the market cap dropped 60 per cent.

Meanwhile, the likes of Google, TikTok and Zoom are heading in the opposite direction. It’s no coincidence that Apple and Microsoft are among the world’s most valuable companies.

The telco sector’s long-time fear of becoming little more than a series of pipes could soon be reality. There’s irony in this: none of the new value the over-the-tops generate would be possible without the networks. They are the enabling technology.

There are other challenges. Governments around the world have different regulatory goals, but their rules often work to increase competition, which in turn keeps margins low. It’s not unusual for telcos in a contested market to compete all the profit away.

The logical conclusion of where the markets are heading is that telcos have lost the battle for opportunities on the network. However, things are quite different if we look in the network.

The opportunity is in conversations & content

All the extra value created by over-the-top companies comes from conversations. People and businesses need to communicate with each other. It remains as valuable as ever.

For over-the-top companies, those conversations take place on top of the network.

There is another set of conversations with untapped value. We’re talking here about the millions of conversations people have every day when they make voice calls on their mobiles or fixed-line phones through traditional telecommunications networks.

These conversations take place in the network.

Each of those conversations could hold as much value as those taking place on the over-the-top services. They represent an opportunity for telcos to win a much higher average revenue per user.

Moving beyond connectivity

Telcos have found it hard to move beyond connectivity in the past. There are huge barriers. Over-the-top players are not restricted by national boundaries, networks inevitably are.

The skills needed to develop and market digital services were expensive and hard to attract to firms unable to distribute start-up equity or offer seemingly unlimited career opportunities. That’s less the case today, skills are more widespread and, thanks to the cloud, technologies often need less complex integration.

Tapping into the conversations that take place in a network is one set of opportunities beyond connectivity. Other trends have potential.

Organisations with large on-premise call centres are shifting to cloud-based systems. They need flexibility and to be able to support new modes of working including home-based call centre staff.

Bigger than connectivity

Connectivity services typically deal in large numbers: customers serviced, call minutes, data traffic and so on. The numbers can be equally large beyond connectivity.

And unlike connectivity, where the number of customers is at saturation point, the market for in-network services holds huge growth potential. The examples are endless:

• Deployed at the heart of a Service Provider network, Dubber Notes users now get any meeting or call transcribed – turned into actions – with highlights and more. A user can review meetings I wasn’t able to attend on the way home and easily share highlights for action by others.
• Another service might deliver a text nudge following a call with all the key actions from the call. Or a reminder of a meeting I committed to during the conversation to drop onto my calendar.
• Or, mobile services might come with an app that quickly flags customer and employee sentiment for that day – and provides snippets from customer calls a manager should know about.
• A major bank could receive from their Service Provider a fully integrated compliance reporting dashboard that gives total visibility into calls that potentially breach policies. Or, a simple search console that enables them to pull up highlights, a recording or a transcript of any conversation across the business. That same application would prove invaluable to HR, dispute resolution teams, or customer service managers.

All of this is possible today. And this is just the start of a new era in which every conversation is a source of value for the service provider – turning the network into n innovation factory with endless new services created and deployed with minimal CAPEX investment.

Many of today’s business challenges are best dealt with from in-network services

Many businesses face challenges that are best addressed by value-added services telcos can offer from within their networks. There’s an ever-increasing compliance load, especially of those companies operating in and around the finance sector where record keeping becomes critical.

Conversational intelligence is an ideal way to capture the necessary information. It makes sense to do that at the network level. It makes even more sense for capturing and mining the conversations in the Network to take place in the Cloud where vast amounts of data can be stored safely and securely.

AI opens the door to a new frontier

Moving from connectivity services to capturing vast amounts of conversational recording data opens the door to new frontiers with even greater potential to disrupt and reshape telco business models. Voice call recordings already enable AI technologies like sentiment analysis, where customers can instantly read reports on how customers respond to conversations.

Understanding this opportunity changed our orientation at Dubber from the utility of call recording to the creating a platform that will enable value to be created from any conversation on the network – to enable the content on the network to unlock new sources of innovation and the creation of new, needed experiences for customers.

We believed that the majority of providers looking to enhance the value of the network had it wrong and we would get it right – and that the focal point needed to be the Service Provider:

1. Solutions delivered to you should enhance the value of the network through differentiated services – not monetize the network at your expense
2. Those solutions should be burdenless – deployed with simplicity and scale – on with a click – integrated easily with billing and provisioning
   And that they must unify applications and end-points. So conversations – text, video, mobile, UC – could be accessed and enriched in one conversation cloud.
3. And that this could enable endless AI-based innovation opportunities for service providers with minimal CAPEX

Mining the gold in the network starts with native services the Service Provider can monetize and provides the pathway to increased revenue, retention and differentiation.