CASE STUDY
Customer
As a full-service electronic communications operator (mobile, fixed, TV, Internet and cloud computing), Bouygues Telecom serves 11.3 million mobile users, 1.9 million fixed broadband customers and more than 1.6 million B&YOU clients. The operator is the third-largest service provider in France.
Challenge
Since the launch of FREE the French market has become one of the most competitive in the world. This led to commoditisation of voice and messaging, the introduction of P2P communication apps by operators like Orange, Libon and an ongoing fierce competition for user loyalty. Bouygues sought to introduce an innovative service under their B&YOU brand which would extend their unlimited billing plans to roamers.
Advantages
- Delivered via a “Smart Cloud” – service can be customised to meet the operator’s marketing needs
- Simple and effortless integration to the operator’s network for voice, messaging, provisioning, billing etc.
- Fast time to market, reaches any smart device
- Providing an end-to-end service guarantees performance, rich feature set and ease of use
- First step towards a new kind of telephony, where operators allow users to access their service and personal phone number on multiple devices (smartphones, tablets and PCs) and use them anywhere in the world over any IP connection
- Branding, billing and service customisation remain completely under the operator’s control
Solution
Recognising it would have been expensive and time-consuming to build their own platform, in March of 2013 Bouygues Telecom trusted Ribbon’s Kandy with an aggressive mission: deliver a live service by June, ahead of the summer vacation. Within 3 months Ribbon delivered an end-to-end CaaS (Communication as a Service) solution extending their brand, their services and their billing plans to an application connecting over IP networks.
Bouygues Telecom’s World & YOU service, launched under the B&YOU brand providesusers the ability to call and SMS while abroad without incurring any roaming charges, as if they were in France. World & YOU was defined by working very closely with the customer’s marketing and network departments to extend their service bundles and leverage existing network interfaces for effortless integration.
The service is location-aware and implements smart call and SMS screening according to the user’s geo-location, network connection, destination number, user’s profile and allowed calling policy. Through intimate network integration, World & YOU delivers a user experience that is vastly superior to what independent OTT services can provide, allowing users the simplicity and transparency of accessing their existing plan and phone number to call or SMS any phone number in France.
Result
Bouygues Telecom successfully launched a compelling service in a very short time-to-market, without building their own platform and with very little network integration effort. User adoption exceeded the customer’s expectations as users chose it as their preferred communication tool while spending their summer vacation abroad. The launch led to extensive press coverage for the company and very positive user reviews, positioning Bouygues as innovative and the service as very relevant to their subscriber needs. Following the success of the service the company decided to extend World & YOU service to their main brand, bundling it with their recently launched 4G offering.
Testimonial
“Our customers expect high quality, low cost mobile service which, thanks to the fring service, we can now extend beyond local French cellular coverage, allowing subscribers to enjoy international communication as if they were calling from within France. Our World & YOU launch was a great success, with an increase in new users and substantial interest from the French market.” Benoît Torloting, head of digital & B&YOU, Bouygues Telecom
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