A Study On State Of Operation Assessment For Telecom Operators In The Early Stage Of Network Upgrades:Method Research And Empirical Evidence

In recent years,with the rapid development of mobile Internet,the traditional services(such as voice,SMS,etc.)of telecom operators have been affected.On the other hand,the upgrading of communication network technologies(such as 3G,4G,5G,etc.)has promoted mobile data services development.It has expanded the application scenarios of telecommunication services and provided new opportunities for telecom operators.In the early stage of the network upgrades,telecom operators often have to deal with the challenges of multi-dimensional business transformation from the network side,business side and operation side.How to assess their state of operation comprehensively and accurately,which is helping to adjust their development strategies timely and complete their network construction and business transformation quickly,is essential for telecom operators and has attracted extensive attentions.Most existing studies are mostly based on the balanced scorecard,and the commonly used models mainly include data envelopment analysis(DEA),structural equation modeling(SEM),etc.However,due to the variety of industry environment and their own business forms,it still exists a large premium growth potential for further research on the existing assessment methods in terms of indicator dimension,quantitative analysis and dynamic assessment.In addition,existing researches tend to pay more attention to the principles of systematization and coordination,and the in-depth discussion and research on the principles of timeliness(including the maturity of the industrial chain,the stage of business development and evaluation cycle)are relatively lacking.In view of the current research gaps and deficiencies,our study considers the early stage of network upgrades,and puts forward performance measurement for the key issues concerned by telecom operators from the three dimensions of the Balanced Scorecard theory(financial,customer and internal operation).Compared with previous research results,the above methods have advantages in timeliness,dimensions of performance indicators,quantitative analysis and dynamic assessment.In addition,we also conduct empirical research based on one China telecom operators,and puts forward effective suggestions for multi-dimensional management,helping operators adjust their business strategies in a timely manner.The main conclusions and implications of this study are as follows:In aspect of network investment,to guarantee the new generation telecom services running smoothly,provincial companies should pay more attention to the wireless access and transmission network investment during the initial launch phase,and the wireless access network investment should be mainly focused on the prophase of the new service.We can divide the all provincial companies into two groups depending on their TE,such as Group A and Group B(TE of Group A are higher than Group B).Due to the larger number of users and better foundation of market,Group A is more urgent for the new wireless access network.The transmission network investment should be based on the development of the new service.By the weakness of original transmission network,the investment demand of Group B is higher.Supporting network investment should be increased gradually with the new service promotion,avoiding with up-front investment lower investment performance.With the better foundation of the market,Group A innovates the product range and business model of the new service at first,and the demand of service network investment could be driven.In the initial launch phase of the new services,the construction is the lowest-priority investment compared to the basic network.In aspect of data services development,we found that the investment,networks construction and user size are important influence factors of the new generation mobile data services in the initial launch phase.But in practice,a large majority of telecom operators focus more on traffic volume and revenue of the services.Rapid and complete network coverage is more important than the reliability in the beginning of the new networks construction.Compared with service side networks,the push for new services of the capability side is much stronger.In the preparation stage of the new generation mobile data services,keeping the user size is the most important task,and the investment on the new services should be strengthen.In the window stage,telecom operators ought to get hold of the opportunity to construct the new generation networks rapidly,and the traffic volumes as the most immediate measure of the users experience is also deserved more attention.When the competition stage is coming,a specific focus needs to be set on the network investment,meanwhile the user size and market share should be concerned.In the aspect of operational performance,the performance of the networks which bearer new services and the revenue of the provincial company change in the same direction,it shows that the performance of these networks is the core competitiveness of telecom operators in the initial launch phase.The revenue of provincial companies has an inverse relationship with traditional data services(such as WLAN).In other words,the development of the traditional data services may reduce the revenue of telecom operators.Therefore,the growth of these services should be slow down in this stage.In the early stage of network upgrades,although new services developed rapidly,the revenue was not improved significantly.The revenue could be driven by new services,when they returned to steady growth.Accordingly,the assessment of revenue should be moderated in this stage.The revenue of telecom operators begin to decline significantly when the rollover data launched.Additionally,rollover data services have little influence on the telecom operators with more high-end users.Thus,this kind of marketing activities should be planned combined with own actual situation.The main contributions and innovations of this paper are as follows:First,in the aspect of network investment efficiency assessment method,we construct a new performance indicators system from five dimensions based on the characteristics of network upgrading,and proposes a method based on dynamic DEA model and sensitivity analysis.Second,in the aspect of data services development assessment method,this paper innovatively proposes MDDI Index.On the one hand,we introduce the network investment and network reliability indicators into the performance indicators system,enriching the original assessment dimension;on the other hand,through theoretical research and empirical study,we prove the rationality of introducing external indicator and relationship among the sub-indices into the model.Third,in the aspect of operational performance assessment method,based on clustering migration technology,we innovatively propose a dynamic method,and studies from two dimensions of migration mode and trajectory mode.The research on migration mode focuses on the analysis of operational performance migration behavior in the short term;trajectory mode can describe the dynamic change process of the operation performance migration in a long period,and predict the future trend.