Videotron’s disruptive all-digital brand, Fizz, goes from concept to launch in 10 months

• Who: Fizz Mobile
• What: Rolled out a 100% digital mobile service brand, complete with social media platform
• How: Virtualized service provider model based on the Etiya Digital Business Platform utilizing TM Forum’s Open Digital Framework, which includes business process and information frameworks and Open APIs
• Results: Fizz went from concept to launch (including network rollouts) in 10 months, with a core team of less than 30 people, many with no telecoms background

We hear all the time about how telcos need to digitally transform themselves to compete with agile pure-play digital service providers, but for many operators it’s tough to digitalize decades worth of legacy gear, processes and business models. Quebec’s Videotron opted for another way to go digital – create a digital brand that operates independently from the parent company.

On the surface, that brand – Fizz – looks ostensibly like a standard mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) play, leasing a long term evolution (LTE) network to provide mobile and home broadband services. But look beneath the hood and you’ll find that there’s far more to Fizz than that. For one thing, a typical MVNO strategy requires upfront capital expenditure investments in business support systems (BSS), core network and applications platforms, and computing infrastructure. Videotron skipped all that in favor of a virtualized service provider (VSP) business model, using virtualized software running on a public cloud to provide the entire business and network infrastructure. Also, Fizz isn’t simply renting an existing network, explains Pierre Bonin, CIO of Videotron. “All the infrastructure was put in place to run the business, including fast rollout of a separate mobile network – home location registers, service control points, packet gateways, etc – for the mobile services, and integration into Videotron’s existing network for the broadband services,” Bonin says. “In addition, a new call center was set up, a new 24x7 network operations center for surveillance and alarming, OSS, BSS, and managed services to run the business.” Moreover, the Fizz business model is entirely digital to the point that it’s less like a mobile operator and more like a social media platform that just happens to offer mobile services.

Members in control

Fizz was designed from scratch as a 100% online experience. There are no retail storefronts or pre-bundled packages – just go to the website, register with Fizz and assemble the plan you want. SIMs are delivered within a few hours, and activation occurs immediately. Excess data can be gifted to others or rolled over. The project goal was to have a very simple experience where a member can do 100% of their transactions themselves, including self-management their services. The idea is to keep interaction with customer service representatives to an absolute minimum – if all goes well, members shouldn’t have to interact with a customer service rep at all. But Fizz’s online presence isn’t just an e-commerce website for service signups, account management and FAQs – it’s also a social community hub. Indeed, Fizz refers to subscribers as ‘members’ of the Fizz community, not as customers. In fact, you don’t even have to subscribe to an active service to join the community – members can explore the brand without any commitment. Members can log in using their Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon or Twitch accounts. Fizz says it is built around the concepts of community, loyalty and brand ambassadors, in which customer retention is predicated on sticky loyalty, not churn prevention. The member experience is built on gamification and collaboration with other members. Every member action is part of the game’s points system. Points are awarded for staying with Fizz, participating in the Community Hub, purchasing add-ons, gifting spare data to a friend, etc. This is an arguably risky approach – after all, social media platforms by nature invite public criticism that can range from genuine customer complaints to snarky comments and the inevitable trolls. Worse still, what if no one bothers to use it? So far, however, the social media strategy is paying off handsomely, says Bonin, with plenty of signups and engagement.

TM Forum provides common language

At the heart of Fizz’s operations is the Etiya Digital Business Platform, which is built in full conformance to TM Forum’s Information Framework (also called SID) and Business Process Framework (also called eTOM), both part of TM Forum’s Open Digital Framework. Everything from the product catalog to business interactions to customer and service orders are designed following the Information Framework guidelines. Open API standards are followed thoroughly across all domains. The platform’s front end communicates with the backend through a full set of Open APIs. The inventory systems’ integrations use Resource APIs. The platform also follows the TM Forum Customer Experience Management Lifecycle Model to encapsulate the digital journeys and feed into the gamification engine to drive the overall member experience. All transactions are captured and every process parameterized, enabling Fizz to create highly dynamic scenarios. Fizz’s utilization of TM Forum standards is a testament to the fact that TM Forum frameworks provide a common language that simplifies communication and reduces misunderstandings. In other words, you don’t need a telecoms background to understand what they do and how to implement them. Which worked out great for Fizz because – to be blunt – it's not a telco.

A new style of operator

It may be owned by a telco, but for all intents and purposes, Fizz is a Videotron-funded start-up with completely separate offices and a team of less than 30 people – most of whom have digital backgrounds and expertise but know nothing about OSS/BSS or really anything about the traditional telecoms business. Evidence of the total lack of legacy telco mindset can be found in the fact that Fizz launched in beta mode. The team didn’t wait to define all the service requirements first – instead, it relied on focus groups and surveys before building the products to determine what the customers wanted. Then it launched the service in beta and fine-tuned the details as it went along, taking feedback from members and incorporating it into the service. This is literally the opposite of the traditional telco approach of spending months, or even years, building and trying to perfect a new product before launching it to see if users want it. By contrast, Fizz went from concept to launch (including the aforementioned network rollouts) in just 10 months. The team’s focus was on agility and speed, so many of the requirements were developed on the fly as a joint Fizz/Etiya team,” says Bonin. “It was quite a feat to launch the company in its entirety in 10 months – and to do so with fewer than 30 core people.”