6:10 AM -- It's clear the battle is on among the major telecom vendors to be regarded as the "thought leaders" in customer experience management (CEM).

We reported recently how Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) has increased its focus on CEM issues, but it's not the only one. (See Ericsson Shines a Light on CEM.)

Along with its product and services push, dubbed Motive CXS, Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) has added a blog to its website entitled "Turning a vision of fulfilling customer expectations into a reality". This highlights some of the operational and human resources challenges in implementing CEM strategy. (See AlcaLu Gets Motivated About CEM.)

Over at Nokia Networks , which has been developing its CEM capabilities and operator relationships for some time now, the latest focus is on customer insights, the collection and analysis of customer and services data.

It's encouraging to see such major players highlighting CEM in their marketing: Now we need the operators to step up and pay CEM more than just lip service. Some service providers have made more progress on this than others, of course, and we expect to be hearing from some of the operators with CEM high on their day-to-day agendas during the upcoming Mobile World Congress 2012. (You can get all the pre-MWC news, as well as reports from Barcelona during the event, at our Mobile World Congress Show Site.)

For more on CEM:

• CEM Set for Center Stage
  
• Barcelona's New Battleground
  
• NSN Gives Facebook a New Status
  
• Time for a New Experience
  
• Turf Wars Threaten Telco CEM Initiatives

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading