siliconindia | | December 20199Wi-Fi Hotspots: Today's con-sumer is always connected. He ex-pects the internet to be available to him irrespective of his location. Un-fortunately, there are constraints un-der which the telecom operators have to work with in terms of spectrum and availability of sites. There are also cases where there is a congrega-tion of multiple consumers at a single small location. To ensure the avail-ability of continuous high speed data to the consumer, most telecom oper-ators are working with ISPs to allow seamless transition between the mo-bile network and the Wi-Fi hotspot provided by them. This allows both the ISP and the mobile operator to work together to provide the best ex-perience to the consumer.Bundled Solution: Given that content drives most of the traffic in today's world, ISPs are tying-up with content providers to offer a bundle of services to the customer. There are two different models which ISPs are using to provide content to the con-sumer. In the first model, ISPs have created their own apps, wherein they have purchased content directly from content providers in order to provide a bundled offering to the consumer. In the second model, ISPs don't cre-ate their own app, but tie-up with content generators (Netflix, Amazon Prime and others), and give either free or discounted packages to the consumers. Both the above models help the content reach a much larger base while driving the usage of the internet, turning it into a win-win for both the parties.Dynamic Pricing Plans: Using analytics on the data usage pattern and trends, ISPs can generate dynam-ic plans which offer consumers cheap-er rates during off-peak hours. This strategy has a dual benefit. It allows the ISPs to decongest their network, as a block of users start accessing the network during off-peak hours. It also encourages increased network usage by giving users reduced rates during off-peak hours.Replace Satellite Television through IPTV: While satellite tele-vision still forms a large chunk of the television viewing market, in-creasingly, ISPs are looking to see if they can make inroads using IPTV. The ISP provider is already a part of the home network. Consumers today don't want to deal with different ser-vice providers, and would be happy if there is a single solution which takes care of both their internet needs as well as their television needs. IPTV allows the ISPs to be a single point-of-contact for the consumer, taking care of two of his major requirements in one go.Machine to Machine/Internet of Things: Smart homes will even-tually become a reality. There have been several inroads in developed countries. However, the scope and potential in developing countries is phenomenal. As the ISPs are part of the home, they would be best placed to take advantage of this phenome-non, allowing the devices to talk to each other over the network.These were just a few examples of the evolving trends in the ISP world today. The world around us is chang-ing at a very rapid pace. Data has become a commodity and is allow-ing hitherto unthought of solutions to be available to people who did not have the same kind of access even five years ago. ISPs are at the fore-front of this change and are unique-ly poised to help explode the market even further. Dynamic Pricing Plans allow the ISPs to decongest their network, and also encourages increased network usage by giving users reduced rates during off-peak hours
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