My job gives me great opportunities to meet communications service providers (CSPs) and to hear in person about the most important questions they face. There are common ones.  What is the best way to deliver sticky services to customers? How can such services be monetized quickly? What are the most effective ways to deliver great experiences to customers, whether they are consumers or business users?

Behind these questions are a range of challenges that CSP executives must deal with. These include demonstrating growth to stakeholders, the ever-present need to optimize costs, making the best technology investment decisions and reducing churn by offering innovative services. I see for myself the pressure these executives work under and how they need to make difficult decisions every day.

So how can we help? There is a huge and complex range of actions we could recommend, but for simplicity let’s focus on four key priorities and how to tackle them.

First: Reduce risk

According to a new Omdia 2022 study (read more here), a CSP’s most strategic technology asset is the mobile core network because it is, or should be, future proof, open for innovation, stable and robust. That makes it hugely important to make the right decision on which vendor to choose to provide a core and then build and operate it to achieve the highest availability.

There’s an easy answer here - Core Software as a Service. CSPs taking this route avoid all the risks associated with delivery, operation and software updates. All that’s required is to align the Service Level Objective of the network and let it run.

Eliminating the risk of delivery and operation also frees up a CSP to focus on other urgent topics to create a successful business.

Second: Be fast

Getting to market quickly is critical when delivering new, monetizable services. The key is rapid deployment and scalability.

With a core network delivered under a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, a CSP can begin new service incubation projects without delay and then continue into commercial delivery with the core matched to growth.

For start-up and test projects, a small scale 5G Standalone Core is adequate, which can then be ramped up rapidly when needed into a practical operating network with greater capacity and stricter reliability parameters.

Third: Innovate in an agile way

In the fast-moving telco world, change happens often and quickly. This means it must be possible to reconfigure the core network very quickly with updated parameters to support new use cases or simply just to increase capacity the moment it is needed.

A SaaS core network is highly agile because it can be changed and scaled easily by redefining a few parameters on the CSP’s control portal.

We recently demonstrated Nokia Core SaaS as a working platform at our annual Core Users Group in Espoo, using a live working environment. The demo was a powerful way to show how all cloud infrastructure-related responsibilities and the entire network deployment and operation are looked after by Nokia.

Fourth: Fit the network to your business needs

Traditionally, the creation of new services has been limited by the network’s capabilities. That’s no longer a barrier because a Core SaaS allows the CSP to let the desired use case define the network’s requirements. Suppose a service requires 5G with Ultra Low Latency Communication, or IoT packet core connectivity is needed, or even simply that the CSP needs a multipurpose test network.

Such requirements can now be met by ordering and configuring a Core SaaS, making it much easier to provide new user experiences needed to boost business. For further insight, take a look at our Enterprise 5G Monetization eBook.

These are just four ways a Core SaaS solution can free up CSPs to put their business needs first without having to worry about how to implement and operate the underlying core network. It’s a message that is being well received by many of the CSP executives that I talk to because they can see how it helps them meet their challenges.

Discover more by visiting our core SaaS webinar here.