Ways operators can accelerate customer migration to advanced networks

Arthur D. Little suggests expediting migration through incentives, education, and a simplified transition.

Migration is a continuous process in the mobile telco industry — whilst the phaseout of 2G and 3G networks is underway, 4G and 5G will eventually be replaced as 6G rollouts occur and mature. 

To minimise churn and maximise migration success, operators need to standardise their approaches to make them repeatable and effective to ensure the cost-effective delivery of connectivity, capacity, and services required by customers in the future.

In an Arthur D. Little report, a customer migration “playbook” was introduced to offer a concise approach to facilitating customer migration and expediting the switch to new technologies.

Define strategy
First on the outline is a thorough planning phase that balances technical, financial, and customer considerations. This initial stage involves assessing customer impacts and potential risks to offer guidance for subsequent stages.

Prepare migration operating model
A detailed roadmap based on knowledge gained during the assessment provides a clear path toward the intended goal. The roadmap should outline timelines, milestones, risk management strategies, and contingency plans. 

Run migrations and shutdown
This stage helps manage expectations and maintain customer trust during the transition. A comprehensive customer migration program offers customers an affordable, accessible option for maintaining service. Efforts focus on avoiding customer complaints and surpassing expectations. Stakeholder communication should be consistent and transparent and include customers, employees, and partners.

Collect and analyse network data
This process includes logical and physical network inventory and analysis.

Select vendor and execute decommissioning plan
This stage involves shutting down old systems and integrating new technologies. It’s best to complete this task in phases to minimise service disruptions.

Monitor and optimise
Once new systems are operational, they will require continuous monitoring and optimisation to ensure the delivery of anticipated benefits. Unforeseen issues are identified and addressed, and processes are refined to improve efficiency.

Ensuring seamless transition

As telecommunication technology evolves from traditional to cutting-edge, crafting a thorough customer migration strategy and steering it successfully is key. Ideally, the shift to advanced systems should be as intuitive and frictionless as possible for customers.

A close monitoring of progress is also critical to the migration process which involves tracking the number of successfully migrated customers, the rate of customer churn, and customer satisfaction scores. Studying these metrics can help measure success against planned milestones and identify potential issues.

Preparing for the future involves not just adopting the most advanced telco systems but ensuring a seamless, customer-centric transition that enhances the customer experience and opens new avenues for service improvement and revenue generation.