The OSS world moves Eastwards

The centre of gravity of the world economy is the geographic hotspot of income generation based on the distance weighted gross domestic product of 700 locations (Quah, 2011). In 1980 the hotspot was in the Atlantic Ocean midway between the economic powerhouses of Europe and the United States. However, today the hotspot is over Saudi Arabia and by 2030 the hotspot is forecast to shift to a location firmly between India and China. Rapid economic growth in Asia is pulling the whole world economy eastwards.”
CSIRO’s Our Future World 2012 report here.

We’re now part-way through what has been called “The Asian Century.” Just as the economic centre of the world is shifting eastwards, so are the trends that may impact the OSS industry, including:

  • The Asian continent has some of the largest populations in the world (China [largest population in the world], India [2nd], Indonesia [4th], Pakistan [6th], Bangladesh [8]). They naturally have massive consumer bases for communications services and have CSPs with monumental subscriber counts. As such OSS databases need to be able to scale more than in other regions
  • Similarly, economies of scale mean that the CSPs can offer innovative services at price points that would not be viable in other regions
  • These nations are also heavily reliant on mobile / wireless technologies in their communications networks, so mobility (and locational services) will become increasingly important to OSS
  • English is not the first language for any of these countries so OSS frameworks need to support multi-lingual user interfaces
  • There are large cultural differences between countries in the region, not to mention the western world, so suppliers need to be even more willing to adapt to their customer’s needs. OSS implementation and configuration techniques that have worked in other regions may not necessarily work here
  • Billing models and ARPUs are often quite different in these developing countries so different B/OSS analytics criteria apply
  • The growing middle class and prosperity in this region means more discretional income for communications services so B/OSS are likely to need to cope with increased “product” diversity and bundling
  • Other than mobile phone and smart phone use, many industries in many Asian countries have yet to fully embrace e-business. Hence, there is the opportunity for CSPs to provide innovative service offerings to customers that must be supported by or leverage their network and OSS assets (eg OSSaaS, OSS APIs, etc)
  • Whilst other regions have crowded OSS markets, many CSPs and utilities within the Asian region are just beginning to embrace B/OSS suites

How is the Asian Century impacting the perspectives of your OSS organisation?

If this article was helpful, subscribe to the Passionate About OSS Blog to get each new post sent directly to your inbox. 100% free of charge and free of spam.

Our Solutions

Share:

Most Recent Articles

No telco wants to buy an OSS/BSS

When you’re a senior exec in a telco and you’ve been made responsible for allocating resources, it’s unlikely that you ever think, “gee, we really

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.