By: Becky Bracken

You don’t have to be a multinational megacorporation to need a global communications network. You don’t need a bank account in Zurich to understand the immediate and real benefits of having easy access to a secure, reliable global banking network. From the everyday working stiff traveling to Bucharest to land a new account to FedEx tracking packages as they move around the world in real time, the communications service providers (CSPs) that are able to create and operate a truly global business will occupy some awfully high ground in the telecom market.

Over the past decade consumers (and devices) have radically altered their interaction with communications technology. In fact, despite the telephone having been around for almost 125 years, by 1999 fewer than one in six people worldwide had even limited access to phone service, according to IBM’s “Telco 2015” report (2010). But ten years later seven out of ten had access to mobile phones, and in 2013 voice communications is a saturated market in most developed countries, with over-the-top (OTT) players providing additional international presence online. CSPs that want to compete need to find ways to collaborate if they too hope to provide services on a global scale.

Aside from the actual network real estate that a global presence requires, the logistics surrounding regulation and standardization across geographic regions creates a formidable obstacle from the start. (If Europe and the US can’t even agree on electrical outlets, what chance do SIM-card specifications have?) To make matters more complicated, the service has to be mobile, and mobile broadband, no less. The GSMA’s “Mobile Economy 2013” report forecasts that global mobile-broadband connections, which totaled 1.6 billion in 2012, will climb 26 percent, to 5.1 billion, by 2017, and one in five of those connections will be on a 4G LTE network, the majority of which are just now coming online in earnest.

The growth of the global economy will depend significantly on the maturity of the mobile broadband ecosystem, which is predicted by the GSMA to contribute a cumulative $10.5 trillion to gross domestic product (GDP) and $2.6 trillion to public funding over the next five years while adding 1.5 million jobs.

Cloud-based UC

Cloud communication is one area where CSPs have gained traction in achieving a truly global presence. Orange Business Services recently announced that it will expand its offering to 3M, which has operations in close to 70 countries, to include Business Together as a Service in order to connect the multinational company’s various business entities.

“Business Together as a Service ... equips 3M with an agile, innovative and future-proof unified communications solution,” said Ernie Park, 3M’s chief information officer, in a recent news release. “This cloud-based solution is simple to implement and manage on a global basis, minimizes costs without any up-front investment and provides 3M the necessary scalability that allows us to adjust our IT services to reflect our business needs in a fast-changing economic environment.”

Orange Business Services was also recognized by Forrester Research in a recent analysis of managed global MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) service providers. Using a total of 55 evaluation criteria, the firm identified that Orange Business Services has “the leading managed global MPLS service offering of the 11 providers evaluated” as well as “the leading current offering,” plus “a very robust strategy for managed global MPLS services” and “a very strong market presence.”