fring Alliance executive argues that operators must experiment to stay relevant

BARCELONA, Spain -- Carriers need to risk failure in order to stay relevant to consumers and small business users, by experimenting with value added apps and services, a fring Alliance executive said.

Speaking exclusively with Fierce Wireless:Europe here at the Mobile World Congress, Roy Timor-Rousso, general manager at the fring Alliance, said that trying out new app services will help operators to create new revenue streams outside of the beleaguered airtime minutes market.

"This is what carriers need to do to stay relevant with consumers and SOHO [small office; home office] users," he noted, adding that carriers need "to change their revenue [to a model] which isn't based on minutes".

The Genband-sponsored fring Alliance is building a federation of over the top (OTT) carriers to enable operators to innovate and find new revenue streams. Genband acquired fring's OTT mobile IP comms service in 2013, to expand on its consumer cloud portfolio; later the company created the fring Alliance to create more value for carriers.

Timor-Rousso said that, for carriers," the revenues from termination has gone," and noted that once operators understand that "they can begin to experiment in new development paths that are not based on minutes. You cannot afford not to experiment."

This week in Barcelona, the fring Alliance announced the launch of its inaugural suite of Revenue Engine Applications. The first four apps of this catalogue of services include in-app advertising, payments, federation and user generated creative experiences.

Timor-Rousso said. "These are the first batch of apps. I think they will be successful, but you might see one that fails in Australia being incredibly successful in the UK, I don't know. But this is what carriers need to do."

Also in Barcelona, Genband is talking about Max, Bulgaria's first provider of 4G LTE mobile services, which has selected fring's white label telecom OTT solution, powered by Kandy -- Genband's platform as a service -- to launch its next generation Voicer app.

Voicer enables users to connect via voice, video and text, both over Max's 4G LTE networks and over other available connections including 3G and Wi-Fi.

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