Three Ireland looks to a 5G future and a simplified experience

Three Ireland’s chief information officer, Stephen Reidy, believes the Irish mobile market has become even more competitive despite the fact that the number of operators has reduced from four to three.

"There are only so many people out there and mobile saturation in Ireland is now at 120 per cent," he says. "You have to innovate and excite customers to be successful. Growing the business is a real challenge in this environment."

He sees his role as providing the technological capability for the company to meet that challenge. “As CIO my main task is to ensure that the technology enables the business to grow and be successful. I engage with colleagues to understand what capabilities they need to grow the business.”

A key element of his role at the moment is overseeing the digital transformation the company is undergoing. Although upgrades to technological infrastructure would have been necessary at some point anyway, added urgency was injected by the acquisition by Three of O2 in 2014. This left the enlarged company with two very different technology systems, which had to be brought together.

“We had two sets of customers on two different technology platforms,” says Reidy. “We want to treat all of our customers equally and offer them the same services and opportunities. Our three-year digital transformation programme is aimed at driving down costs and reducing complexity for Three as a company and for our customers. We are about halfway through the programme now.”

The most visible impact of the programme for customers will come in how they deal with Three. “When a customer interacts with us in a store, online, on their phone, on a PC or on a tablet, they will have a consistent experience,” he says. “Regardless of how they touch Three, the experience will be the same. Whenever and wherever a customer has a conversation with us, whether digital or in a store, they will never have to repeat that conversation. There will be a seamless handover between the different channels from end to end.”

This will be valuable given the varied ways in which customers interact with the company. “For example, many customers still want to go into a store to touch and feel a phone before they buy it, but having made their choice there might want to complete the purchase online. On the other hand, we have customers who will do almost everything online or on the telephone but at the end of the process want to go into a store so that an agent can help them set up the handset and make sure everything is working as it should. Customers will be able to do these things without ever having to explain something twice. The agent, whether in a store or in a contact centre, will have all their details available to them. It’s all about making people’s connected lives as simple and easy as possible.”

New services

That’s just the beginning, says Reidy. “Part of the digital transformation programme is a step change in how we interact with our customers, but the journey doesn’t stop there. It will enable us to keep up to date with customers’ needs and provide them with the new services they want, when they want them. We have been looking at our time to market with new services very closely. When we had two separate systems internally it took a lot of time to introduce changes and test new services. With the single platform we will be able to get out there and meet our customers’ expectations much faster.

“People can look forward to innovative new services from Three,” he adds. “This will not just be confined to bytes and minutes on phones. We will also be rewarding our customers through offerings based on our partnerships in areas like sport and entertainment.”

Looking to the future, he points out that the current investment programme is also preparing the company for 5G services, which will offer dramatically increased speeds and capacity to mobile network users. It will also facilitate much greater use of technologies such as the internet of things and support the introduction of driverless cars to Ireland. “It is very early days, but the Three network will be ready to deploy 5G when it arrives,” says Reidy. “This is very exciting and we will be able to support the full range of innovative new services which will become available to customers in the coming years.”