New telco billing models attract new names to the game

Neither Mozy nor Aria Systems are names that are generally associated with telcos or the telco market.

With an executive team from a wide range of high tech industries, a customer list that includes Disney, CA, Hootsuite and Digital Bridge, Aria is a name that will be appearing on the telco scene. Mozy, an EMC company, provides on-line backup services.

This week, Aria announced that it will be providing new subscription-based billing services for Mozy – providing the storage services company with some new service approaches in the process, including the ability to better market its services through resellers.

As the opportunities for telcos increasingly appear outside their normal operational space, so too suppliers of billing solutions with experience outside the carrier market are moving in. Aria is one such case.

As new billing models are triggered by the demise of flat rate, ‘all you can eat’ plans the market needs new ideas – or perhaps old ideas in a new form.

As subscription billing becomes more popular – it is simple, customers like that; scalable, telcos like that – then companies from ‘outside’ will be entering the telco market and bringing with them a new wave of competition.

If they bring with them expertise in how other industries work and take the initiative with telcos pushing out into other industries, then they could have a definite advantage over ‘traditional’ vendors.

Equating on-line storage solutions with new models for telcos is hardly far-fetched—carriers are lining up to offer similar cloud services of their own.

Aria’s solutions address familiar challenges – the need to establish new lines of recurring revenue quickly, particularly in a world of cost constraints; an increased need for customer segmentation; and the ability to deal with continually changing customer buying patterns. What their subscription – or cloud-based – billing service provides is rapid time to market, automation, analytics and flexibility.

It sounds very much like the new telco model.

Because of the cloud-based nature of the solution, scale is also addressed - Mozy provides online backup service for more than 3 million customers and 70,000 business customers around the globe.

New times mean new models and new models will bring new players.