2011 was also a banner year for new product development, with new products, including
Edge Offload,
CONTROL-IT Policy Management v6 and the
VBS and VNS suites, launched. We are also quite proud of some new awards and prestigious honors we garnered during the year, including inclusion in
Gartner's Hype Cycle and our finalist status in
Light Reading's 2011 Leading Lights. To top it all off, we welcomed a wonderful
new CFO to the Volubill family, Mr.
Philippe Mechanick.
In order to keep the momentum going, we must be able to successfully forecast changes in the comms landscape in 2012.
Gartner predicts that, over the next four years, smartphones and tablets will grow to represent over 90 percent of new net-growth in device adoption, which poses huge challenges and huge opportunities for our industry. With the rocketing rise in smartphone and tablet adoption, the amount of data spread out over a broadband network will also grow rapidly. Ultimately, it will become too expensive for service providers to continue to use the same methods for charging their customers.
As this issue continues to evolve, the main challenge facing the telco industry will be less about policy management and more about consumer charging models. While we have already seen numerous issues pop up in regard to bill shock and poor charging management in 2011 (such as
Verizon recently being included on Consumer Reports' Naughty List for this exact reason), we will hopefully see an industry transition toward more sophisticated charging practices. Some of our customers already use our technologies and services to handle issues such as bill shock, but even these may need to be updated and refined in 2012 - I look forward to that challenge!
To kick off 2012, we are already slotted to speak and appear at conferences like
Mobile World Congress and others in regions such as the Middle East and Latin and South America. As much as it is a testament to our own hard work, it is an equal testament to how quickly broadband and high speed networks are being adopted globally, making the need for solutions all the more obvious. By the end of 2013, I wouldn't be surprised to see 3G access available in every corner of the globe. So, there is a lot of work to be done, and there may be some bumpy roads ahead. But we at Volubill are eager to help the world connect in a way that is both profitable to the service provider and fair to the customer.
Happy New Year! Have a great 2012!
