Wholesaling telephony minutes is big business but the model unique service bundles; i.e. shop around is moving on. VoIP has driven prices down to the floor and bro- the wholesalers and integrate the indi- ken the link between access and service. This brings advanced vidual purchases. This is not a trivial task services into the equation along with a new player–the service so in most cases, as illustrated in figure integrator. 1, they will need a third-party service integrator.
Service retailers buy voice minutes ferent wholesalers. Edmond Osstyn, Director of Portfolio
and broadband access and resell them at Retailers such as ISPs are looking for Management, Alcatel fixed NGN Sol-
a lower price than that of the wholesaler, a flexible and powerful communication utions, says: “Service integrators excel in
with whom they are in competition. It’s complement to their broadband access Java experience so they prefer to use this
a somewhat precarious business, but the service. In the new world of VoIP, they as basis for the integration. Real-time tel-
retailer does not have to invest in an ac- can simply shop around and look for the ecom is not Java-based as a rule. The solu-
cess network so overheads are low and best deal. And the sky is the limit. tion relies on capability exposure, where-
they can therefore undercut the retail There is an obvious need for new by the capabilities wholesalers want to sell
price charged by their supplier. And it’s services: it’s been there for years, but cre- are supplied to service integrators in the
profitable for wholesalers because they ating, implementing and marketing these Java format.”
have spare capacity that they sell without services usedto be costly andtake-up when To make this model work, wholesalers
incurring sales or marketing costs. launched could be slow. Wholesaling is have to start offering basic capability sets
That’s the way things used to work. therefore an attractive option: it opens using a Java/SOAP format; e.g. enterprise
VoIP changes everything and introduc- up more channels and the smaller players Java Beans. This will minimize the cost
es a new dynamic. Now the lock between are nimbler and better equipped to mar- of integration and enable the creation of
access and service is broken: they’re de- ket the offer. differentiated offers.
coupled. Voice services can come using Now we come full circle. Wholesalers
the IP stream of any infrastructure, which Real Service Differentiation own significant service facilities: now
means that the retailer can buy different If the retailers are serious about differen- they can add value to their offer and gen-
service components and access from dif- tiating their offer then they need to create erate additional revenue via those capa-
bility sets. And at the same time they con-
tinue with their traditional business.
Edmond Osstyn remarks: “A leader in
this space is British Telecom. They have
a well-defined range of capabilities they
intend to share with service retailers.”
The QoS capability set, for example, is
available now and it allows retailers to re-
quest temporary “bandwidth upgrades”
on their broadband access line. These are
charged on a ‘pay as you go basis’. And
that leads us nicely into the second part
of this European Innovations article.
Figure 1. The emerging service delivery model, which adds service integrators to the traditional wholesale / retail way of doing business.
Client-Server QoS
You can never have too much bandwidth, but it costs. Will consumers move up
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