Introducing moments

If you’ve ever paid for express shipping, enjoyed a scenic location so much you decided to have dinner there too, or taken a cab to avoid being late, you’ve been caught in a moment. Rather than spending in your usual way, you were tapping into the special part of our wallet we save for moments of excitement and joy, or to avoid feelings of concern and unease.

In this article series, we will explore the business value of these moments for the telecom industry when willingness to pay suddenly skyrockets. We aim to show how they represent a new, untapped market. We will also share examples of the early movers in this space.

Most of us try and go about our daily lives as rationally as we can. We know how much money we have, what we need, what things should cost, and try to spend our money wisely. Then we find ourselves in a situation where the emotional stakes are high. We hope, we desire, or fear something – and, suddenly, we won’t let our usual spending habits stand in the way of the much more important value of achieving our goal.

It's our strong feelings about the situation that makes our willingness to pay spike. It’s worth more because it’s important to us. We call these situations “moments”. The power of moments is that the emotions involved let us tap into a much greater share of peoples’ wallet than the small part they would rationally set aside for such spending. While moments may not happen to us every day, they can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Industries like entertainment, travel, automotive and many others have been very successful in capturing moment revenue with premium and add-on offerings. So far, the telecom industry has generally delivered the same quality of service to all customers, regardless of need, missing the chance to target moments of higher willingness to pay.

Now, with 5G Standalone and the introduction of differentiated connectivity, the game is changing. With it, the opportunity emerges to create a whole new breed of service offerings, that deliver an enhanced user experience by adapting the connectivity to the applications needs and requirements. This gives the telecom industry the freedom to start targeting moments. The great advantage of moments is that you can start by more efficiently targeting your existing subscribers and then grow into new segments.

For telecoms moments can be segmented by considering the drivers behind the moment. Firstly, is it about enhancing the current experience or is it an assurance that is required for critical applications.  Secondly, is the usage planned for in advance, or is it a spontaneous requirement that arises.

This gives us four types of moments that you can target, each with its own mechanisms and triggers for willingness to pay. These moment types represent clusters of related business opportunities that can be captured in a similar way. Each type of moment is built around a core idea that can easily be replicated, adapted and packaged to fit the specific needs of different segments, allowing you to use it to capture a wide range of business opportunities over time. The question for you is: Where do you want to start?

Before diving deeper into the business of moments, let’s take a quick look at some examples of the business possibilities within each type of moment:

A 5G Standalone network is the starting point for differentiated connectivity service offerings, and the pioneers have already gotten started. In one case, 3 Sweden partnered with Bildbyrån, a sports photography distributor – an industry where time is money. Together, they enabled professional sports photographers to quickly upload the latest high-definition shots of the action at a big sports event, regardless of the mobile traffic generated by 1000s of fans. In another, Verizon reinforced their position by creating a new offering that provides enhanced and unhindered video calling and real-time collaboration for the customer that depend on it.