Customers of Telefónica Deutschland will soon be able to view their data consumption and use in real time, thanks to a new partnership between Telefónica and Chinese device manufacturer Huawei. The operator will use Huawei’s newest online charging system (New Generation OCS) to deliver real-time invoices of users’ data consumption and thus meet increasing customer demand for such information.

All of Telefónica’s prepaid and postpaid customers will have access to their consumption data in real-time, either via Huawei’s app or a customer portal of the operator’s. Huawei’s New Generation OCS will provide the technical underpinning for these invoices, as well as for future voice and data services, according to Telefonica.

Tarifica’s Take

In today’s mobile markets, especially the developed ones such as Germany but not limited to them, consumers are using more and more data. They are also demanding and getting more choice with respect to their data packages, which operators are offering with ever-growing focus and ever more variations.

With these two trends in mind, it stands to reason that users will increasingly want to know the particulars of their data usage as it occurs. While budget-minded users—and indeed pretty much anyone not on a truly “unlimited” plan—would ideally want to have this information, in this era of plan flexibility and design-your-own bundles, real-time information about data use is even more important and desirable. With it, users are able to have the metrics they need to make informed choices not only about their data usage patterns and spending but also about plan choice going forward.

The Telefónica–Huawei app will allow customers of the operator to do their own analysis, seeing not only how much data they used and when but also to distinguish between various applications and functionalities on the basis of relative data consumption.

We believe that this partnership, while it will not directly drive large amounts to revenue to Telefónica, is a very good idea because its likely positive impact on customer relations and, by extension, on customer retention and acquisition. Providing this kind of transparency in a real-time format will almost certainly be very attractive to many different types of subscribers (it is an excellent idea to make it available to both prepaid and postpaid users). If the app ends up being as easy to use as promised, it will very likely give a big boost to customer satisfaction and confidence in the operator.