This complexity makes modernisation a daunting task and explains why telcos often hesitate to replace or overhaul these systems.

Not only is it costly and time-consuming to swap out your BSS but it’s also risky. A failed migration isn’t just an IT problem, it’s a potential business crisis, affecting service, revenue and reputation.

Within the average BSS, each module is tightly integrated with others so even a small change can have ripple effects across critical operations.

But sticking with a legacy BSS can quietly constrain a telco’s growth, agility, and customer experience. While these systems might be stable, a legacy BSS often works too rigidly, limiting the operator’s ability to evolve as quickly as the competition.

Launching new products and offers can take months instead of weeks because an older BSS is often heavily customised and thus more difficult to modify without extensive testing and downstream changes. Where modern systems are built for agility and immediacy, a legacy BSS can’t support real-time interactions and omnichannel journeys.

Let’s imagine an enterprise client wants to open a sponsored account for specific employees. A legacy BSS will struggle to set this up because these platforms weren’t designed to handle multi-party billing, real-time usage tracking, or flexible limits and notifications, which are essential for sponsored accounts. Similarly, setting up self-service offerings, which empower customers to manage their accounts, services, and issues independently, is possible but incredibly difficult with a legacy BSS.

Innovation in the front, legacy in the back

Given these realities, a common strategy sees operators upgrading the front end of a BSS while keeping the backend intact. This approach makes it possible to improve the user interface and the customer experience without disrupting core billing, service assurance, or revenue critical systems.

By modernising and updating the customer facing portal, operators can unlock new capabilities without making a massive change on the backend. And customers immediately benefit from a more modern, attractive experience.

This strategy also avoids the high cost and potential risks associated with a BSS ‘rip and replace’. By adopting a modular, phased approach to BSS modernisation, telos can introduce new functionality incrementally.

In addition, front-end modernisation often involves API layers that can connect legacy BSS to new services, digital ecosystems, or partner platforms. This opens up opportunities for new revenue streams and digital partnerships without backend disruption.

For CTOs and CIOs, the message is clear: modernising your BSS doesn’t mean you have to tear everything down and start over.

Legacy systems, while rigid and complex, provide the stability and reliability needed to keep revenue flowing and critical operations running.

By layering new technology on top of your existing BSS, you can introduce innovation safely, one step at a time.

This approach allows you to roll out new customer experiences, self-service capabilities, or sponsored account features without risking downtime or revenue leakage. In essence, you’re renovating rather than rebuilding: keeping the strong foundations that work while adding flexibility, agility, and modern functionality where it counts.

According to PwC’s 2025 Customer Experience Survey, more than half (52%) of consumers have abandoned a brand due to a bad experience with its products or services, and nearly a third (29%) have done so because of poor customer experience, either online or in-person.

These numbers are especially relevant to South Africa’s telecommunications industry, which scores very poorly in terms of customer satisfaction and perception.

In fact, the telecoms industry has some of the lowest customer sentiment scores when compared with other major industries.

The findings of another PwC report – South African Telecommunications Sentiment Index – show that telecoms customers frequently encounter obstacles when trying to cancel services, query bills, or activate SIMs.

Traditional support channels, like call centres and physical branches, often fail to meet customer expectations and long wait times and inconsistent service are driving customers to churn.

And when they go online, digital experiences are also leaving much to be desired, adding to customer frustration and further driving cancellation intent.

So what can telcos do?

For too long, telcos have treated customer experience as a technology problem. Deploying a new CRM platform, chatbot, or mobile app on top of a fragmented and slow customer journey. But when you try to layer digital tools over legacy processes that were never designed for speed or simplicity, the results are typically disappointing. Research shows that the harder customers have to work, the more likely those customers are to leave.

Today, consumers are less focused on price and quality and more focused on how businesses deliver value on top of the basics. For modern telcos, one of the most effective ways to provide this value is by giving customers more control. Digital self-service offerings are digital platforms that empower customers to manage their accounts, services, and issues independently, without needing to contact call centres or visit stores.

Modern consumers benefit from being able to access account information and troubleshoot problems quickly.

These self-service platforms also let customers resolve issues on their own schedule, reducing frustration, building loyalty, and lowering churn.

And the benefits of digital self-service extend beyond the customer. For telco businesses, empowering customers to handle routine tasks on their own reduces the burden on call centres and in-store staff.

This allows telcos to reduce operational costs by reallocating human resources to complex or high-value interactions.

In addition, self-service portals offer strategic value for telecom brands by making it easier for customers to discover and purchase add-ons or upgrades, driving upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Because every interaction on a self-service platform generates data on customer behaviour and preferences, these insights can help telcos personalise offerings, anticipate issues, and proactively engage customers.

There is also a direct correlation between self-service maturity and customer lifetime value, particularly in the enterprise segment. Business customers expect visibility, control, and fast turnaround times.

Providers that offer robust self-service portals and APIs become easier to do business with, which translates into longer relationships and higher revenue.

Here, it’s important to highlight that“digital-first” does not mean “digital-only”. Telcos must recognise that customers want to be able to move fluidly between channels. A user might start on a mobile app, escalate to live chat, and finish with an agent on the phone.

If these channels are not tightly integrated, the experience quickly breaks down. True omnichannel engagement ensures context follows the customer, eliminating repetition and frustration.

In a market where connectivity alone is no longer a differentiator, experience becomes the product. Digital self-service is not about encouraging customers to forgo human support.

It’s about giving them choice, speed, and transparency and, in doing so, creating experiences that customers actively choose, even when competitors are only a click away.

Historically, Cell C has been the primary enabler of MVNOs in this country, leveraging its own spectrum but also using the physical network infrastructure of MTN and Vodacom through roaming agreements.

But as the MVNO market expands, other mobile network operators (MNOs) like MTN, Vodacom and Telkom have also entered this space, debuting their own MVNO enablement platforms and actively seeking more brands to partner up with.

This makes sense when you consider that the local MVNO market, which had a subscriber base of 3.8 million in 2024, according to a report from Africa Analysis, is expected to more than triple, reaching between 12.3 million and 15.9 million, by 2030.

For MNOs and Mobile Virtual Network Enablers (MVNEs) looking to capitalise on this massive market opportunity, it makes sense to offer potential MVNO partners a plug-and-play package that provides everything needed to launch a mobile network without building the technology from scratch.

Introducing MVNO-in-a-box

An “MVNO-in-a-box” is a pre-packaged, ready-to-deploy solution that brings together all the technology, tools, and operational components needed for a business to start and run an MVNO quickly and cost-effectively.

It’s essentially a turnkey MVNO platform, designed to simplify and speed up market entry.

When you consider that it can take up to two years to launch a traditional MVNO, a plug and play offering that can reduce this to a few months is essential for MNOs and MVNEs looking to sign and activate brands in less time..

So, what’s in the box?

A typical MVNO-in-a-box offering will bundle together all the core capabilities an operator needs, from OSS/BSS systems and integration frameworks to SIM provisioning interfaces and optional value-added services, and make everything available via a simple, self-service portal.

In an ideal scenario, a business wanting to launch an MVNO will be able to visit a web portal, plug in all the necessary details and their mobile network will be live the next day.

This approach makes strong strategic and commercial sense for both MNOs and MVNEs, especially in a market where MVNO competition is increasing. Below are three key benefits of MVNO-in-a-box.

Faster time-to-market

In a competitive landscape, speed is everything. Quite simply, more MVNO launches mean more wholesale revenue for MNOs and more platform fees for MVNEs.

Reduced operational burden for MNOs and MVNEs

Supporting MVNOs normally requires ongoing engineering work – think bespoke integrations, custom billing setups and system testing and provisioning.

With a plug-and-play MVNO platform, everything is standardised so MNOs and MVNEs no longer need to reinvent the wheel every time they onboard a new MVNO.

Lower setup costs, minimised risk

Traditionally, setting up an MVNO can be expensive for everyone involved. By offering things like prebuilt OSS/BSS, reusable APIs and automated provisioning, MVNO-in-a-box dramatically lowers the total cost per MVNO partner.

Additionally, MVNO-in-a-box offerings use proven, repeatable modules, which reduces risk. This makes it more viable for smaller, niche players to enter the market profitably.

An MVNO-in-a-box solution frees up new MVNOs so they don’t have to focus on backend complexity and can rather spend time ​​thinking about how to build their brand and grow their business.

At VAS-X, we want to help operators and brands to launch and run MVNO services without building the full stack themselves.

The goal is to help new entrants monetise connectivity as part of broader digital offerings as quickly and seamlessly as possible.