We are already seeing an increase in customer interaction via data options such as SMS, web chat, email and social media channels like Twitter and Facebook at the expense of voice interactions in contact centres. While many captive or in-house call centres cannot justify reengineering their technology because it has not achieved its predicted ROI, outsourcers are starting to show considerable interest in the new technologies to start ahead of the curve and manage their businesses more effectively by addressing one of the major costs to their business – Telephony.
LTE, short for Long Term Evolution, is considered by many to be the obvious successor to the current generation of 3G technology, which will enable it to provide significantly faster data rates for both uploading and downloading.
LTE would enable all calls to be carried over the Internet, and they would be billed as data rather than voice minutes.
REVENUE from mobile phone calls could be wiped out by the next wave of technology because network capacity would justify free phone calls, a telecommunications analyst says.
The cash cow of a Telco’s traditional income is fixed lines and mobile voice revenue which will be lost when more calls were being made over wireless Internet.
The first LTE network will be opened in Japan later this year, according to Ovum’s industry analyst, Nicole McCormick: ”In a 4G world, data pricing is perhaps going to be more crucial than today because voice is going to be practically given away for free,” she said. ”And that is why all eyes in Asia are on [Japanese carrier] NTT Docomo to see how it pitches data pricing come December.”
Regulators were still defining which technology would be classified as 4G, but long-term evolution (LTE) networks were being tested by all Australian carriers.
