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The thing is, providers of TV services are perfectly capable of delivering a la carte services today. There isn’t anything in the network or set-tops that should prevent them from doing it. If they lack the service fulfillment or billing tools to deliver, there’s a clear business case for making an incremental investment in them. If they lack the process definitions and use case scenarios needed to accelerate such offerings to market, OSS suppliers have the knowledge they need. The big investments in network infrastructure have already been made.

The smart move in this resource-constrained environment is to hold off on more major capital investments. Instead, it’s a good time to make smaller investments in tools that help them generate more revenue, and deliver more value, from the major capital investments they’ve already made. The players that do this now can build a lead in the market that can provide modest advantages in the immediate future, and major dividends if and when the market takes off again and everyone else is playing catch up.

Battling for Business Markets
So far, major telcos and cable operators haven’t done much that’s exciting in small and medium business markets. Customers in these markets rely on communications to conduct business, but are desperate to squeeze every extraneous dollar out of their budgets. It’s also in their best interests to be loyal once they sign on with a communications provider. For these customers, voice and Internet lines are business lifelines to customers, suppliers, and revenue. Those competitive telcos that remain today do well in this space because they can provide personal attention and are able to tailor services to suit these businesses. The major telcos have never made these markets a focus, which means they’ve left a certain amount of revenue on the table. Cable operators are eyeing entry into these markets, but have a lot to learn to do it right.

retail shops and car dealerships to plumbers, electricians and exterminators—have different needs to which cable operators and telcos must cater.

Businesses such as auto glass and mirror shops, or any service company that has most of its folks out on the road, can’t afford to pay too many order takers these days. If folks on the road – like the manager who’s driving from car dealership to insurance agent to hold onto his business – can field overflow call volume during the midday busy hours from his cell phone, he’s not losing that order for the $500 windshield.

Similarly, consider the hospital that’s faced with laying off half its nursing staff because of skyrocketing costs and insurance companies w refuse to pay for common procedures. That hospital should be replacing its costly old CENTREX system with a lower cost, hosted, IP-based solution. It’s tough for the infrastructure manager to take that risk when the solution is only offered by a company its administrators have never encountered before.

Customers, like hospitals, fire departments, police forces, and schools in particular, need absolute reliability. They are likely to have requirements for redundancy and disaster recovery that any provider must meet in order