By
Tim Young
Let us consider the state of the contemporary communications service provider (CSP).
After decades of being the go-to sources for specialized services (voice from telcos, video from cablecos, etc.), CSPs are in a place of being expected to do more (triple-play options and beyond) or, in many cases, not do much of anything at all.
The rise of the over-the-top provider has created, as we all well know, a situation in which traditional revenue lines are shrinking for CSPs, and those same providers are expecting to carry the bits and bytes of the Hulus and Vonages and Googles of the world.
That’s a potentially serious problem for the CSP bottom line.
However, where some see problems, others see opportunities. CSPs are in a position (albeit an uncomfortable one, for many) to capitalize upon a wide variety of revenue streams that reside in a realm somewhat outside of their traditional wheelhouse. These strategies for alternative monetization may, in fact, represent the next stage of the evolution of the modern CSP.
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CSPs are in a position to capitalize upon a wide variety of revenue streams that reside in a realm somewhat outside of their traditional wheelhouse. |
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by 2012, 40% of all voice traffic in Russia will be carried by VoIP. That sort of massive customer defection is enough to lead an unprepared CSP down a path to collapse.
(The specific FT article Downey mentioned also called attention to the fact that many within the Russian business community are calling for Skype, Icq, and other programs that offer free VoIP calls be regulated as a threat to national
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Background:
So why, first of all, is it necessary for service providers to develop alternative strategies at all? “The urgency we are seeing around alternative lines of revenue is being driven by two factors,” said Jonathan Downey, director of product marketing at Openet, a vendor that provides CSPs with cutting-edge transactional intelligence solutions. The first, he said, is survival. “Regulatory action and the advent of broadband has seen operator environments become much more open and competitive, reducing operators’ ability to control and monetize end-to-end service.” Downey draws particular attention to a recent Financial Times article that stated that
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security. That tells us all something about the stakes many CSPs have in this discussion.)
“The market is fundamentally shifting, and simple communications of moving bits from place to place is currently commoditizing,” said Grant Lenahan, Vice President, Chief Strategy Office, for Telcordia. “There are multiple players for voice and for data, and there will be more as technologies mature and build-outs occur.” Lenahan points out that FiOS and U-Verse and broadband wireless technologies have yet to be fully rolled out, so there’s a whole horizon of competitive reality that’s yet to be crested. “It’s going to get worse, not better,” said Lenahan.
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