Many mobile operators are reassessing their 5G monetisation strategies and personalised 5G is looking a hot option.

With the initial commercialisation period now in the past, these strategies need to make good on the significant 5G infrastructure and spectrum investments, with more ahead to effect standalone 5G, and then 6G beyond that.

5G Monetisation: Ripe for change

But the old 5G marketing strategy of incentivising customers to upgrade to faster and larger GB data packages towards ‘unlimited data’ products has led to a monetisation dead-end. Many operators are now ready to consider an alternative approach, and a handful are shifting their 5G product development and marketing focus towards network experience personalisation.

AIS Living Network is today one of the most promising new case studies in this area. Launched one year ago, it allows customers to shape their 5G network experience with various upgrade booster packages for prioritised access in congested areas, stable gaming, flawless live broadcasting and more. With each booster transaction representing an approximate 23% of AIS’ blended mobile ARPU (GlobalData Thailand Mobile Broadband Forecast), and 180,000 transactions in the first 11 months of commercial availability, AIS Living Network provides an interesting case study.

In developing the AIS Living Network, the operator sought to both align its own 5G monetisation strategy with its customers’ increasingly high digital experience expectations.

Firstly, AIS studied standard user mobile network experience pain-points and discovered a growing awareness of best effort network deficiencies, and a real appetite for on-demand, self-customisable tools to self-customise network experiences.

AIS then looked to other service industries and saw that digital self-provisioning behaviours have quickly evolved in virtually all consumer sectors, from banking to retail, gastronomy, and transport.

Resultingly, AIS developed its Living Network to align with its users’ self-serviced, digital behaviours and network experience pain-points, at the same time seeking to accelerate its ambition to evolve into a smart connected experience provider, to better compete in an increasingly digital services environment.

AIS living network: a personalised 5G network experience case study

Today, the AIS Living Network features three key ‘5G Modes’: Boost Mode, Game Mode and Live Mode. The flagship ‘Boost Mode’ allows customers to upgrade their standard 5G network performance for an enhanced, full speed 5G experience for HD movie viewing or social media access in congested areas.

The second ‘Game Mode’ option allows mobile gamers to upgrade to a gamer-optimised low latency 5G experience.

The third ‘Live Mode’ option targets the influencer generation with requirements for seamless live video streaming on popular apps such as Facebook, Instagram or TikTok. Each 5G Mode is offered at the same, predictable bolt-on price: Bt49 ($1.47) for a three-hour session, up to 5GB of data usage.

Best practices in action: AIS living network

To be sure, 5G performance boosters are not unique to Thailand. But in understanding the success of this service, it’s important to consider the fuller AIS Living Network feature set, positioning, marketing, and pricing strategy.

One best practice feature of this service is the AIS Living Network Interactive Map, built-into its myAIS e-care app. This map essentially allows users real-time visibility into their current signal quality and network strength. It’s arguably unique among global operators, but also a game-changer in the personalised 5G network experience market, essentially encouraging more accurate 5G Mode upgrade decision-making choices.

This map reflects a new realism in 5G marketing. 5G networks are evolving all the time, but any user’s experience is subject to an array of situational variables, from location and cell distance to peak-time network congestion and more. Most mobile users are aware of these real-life performance limitations and increasingly frustrated by them in the light of ATL marketing campaigns boasting 5G nationwide coverage and speed promises. But most operators have been reluctant to allow consumers real-time visibility into their actual network performance, fearing a negative impact to their brand profile.

However, the AIS Living Network goes further, offering users an array of reporting tools and benefits which were, until recently, unheard of in the best-effort 5G market.

For example, the ‘Fix and Trace Cases’ feature can track and notify customers of usage limitations and resolutions – another example of the pragmaticism of today’s 5G operator go-to-market approach.

During 2024, AIS sought to broaden the appeal of AIS Living Network to the widest-possible subset of its customer base. It added QR codes and USSD provisioning channels to its flagship myAIS app access options and opened the service up to all customers using a 5G device, whether they be prepaid or postpaid. Lastly, AIS standardised all 5G Mode options to the same Bt49 price, for three-hours of prioritised access up to 5GB data transfer, regardless of mode, use case or customer type.

A marketing education challenge

However, the very novelty of the service also represented a marketing education challenge. To help expose Thai customers to the service’s value, the operator underwent several campaigns, both online and offline.

Social media campaigning, in some cases influencers to build on pre-existing peer-group audiences, proved to be an important marketing aid. But offline campaigning was also utilised. Over the Christmas and New Year period, AIS set up educational booths with representatives and leaflets in busy regional hotspots, such as the Bangkok shopping plaza CentralWorld and Thailand’s largest clothing district, the Pratunam Market.

During the summer, AIS also sought to encourage 5G Mode experimentation among its own customer base by aligning the AIS Living Network with its key loyalty credit redemption program AIS Points. In July 2024, AIS users could test the Boost Mode with a nominal one AIS Point redemption.

Taking 5G beyond ‘best effort’ – towards personalised 5G network experiences

In 2025, we will see more mobile operators make the shift beyond generic ‘best effort’ 5G performance promises towards personalised network experiences, to better meet the requirements of the app-first generation. Such best of breed personalisation services are likely to offer new levels of transparency into users’ actual signal strength, as well as an easy, app-first end-user experience upgrade journey.

Going forward, personalised network experiences will become more powerful and predictive with new AI-driven use cases – and AI Personalised network experiences will allow telcos to reinvent their brands and achieve their techco ambitions.