Chan adds that cloud-based platforms are key for mobile operators to improve agility and speed to market. “Carrier infrastructure such as IPX can play a great role in providing cloud-based solutions.”
Meanwhile, he observes, with the global ecosystem becoming increasingly interconnected, telecom operator assets are playing a central role. “For wholesale carriers, this means there is a huge opportunity to connect the telecom companies with the rest of the world, providing what we call telco APIs. SMS A2P is one example but there are many more.”
Interestingly, BICS is also leveraging voice/data convergence to shore up its voice business via value added services, Chan says. “The Voice side on the business continues to be stable with our value-added services. For example, Fraud Management / Revenue Assurance solutions are gaining a lot of traction in the area, as more and more operators see the great value of our own hosted fraud platform, in their efforts to fight and prevent telecom fraud.”
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Competitive edge
As the focus in wholesale shifts away from the commodity model, wholesale carriers are finding new metrics for differentiating themselves, such as a serious customer-centric focus, says Telstra’s Ellie Sweeney.
“Delivering customer service excellence, customer service that is so good your customers become your advocates in the market place, is a key to success,” she says.
However, the real competitive differentiator remains the network itself, she adds. “As digital services and access to the internet grows ever more central to the lives of businesses and consumers, the connectivity that sits behind this also grows in importance. This means reliability and robust networks and systems will be key differentiators in the wholesale market.”
Bill Barney of Reliance Communications/GCX agrees. “As data centers fill up, networks are becoming more important and the ability to switch between locations is becoming more important. So fiber ownership is very critical going forward, and it’s largely because of shifting demand and the movement of the data centers.”
Another key factor, says Sweeney, is the ability of the network to respond to volatile demand for bandwidth between data centers in different locations, driven by cloud computing, remote backup facilities, disaster recovery and enterprise mobility. Telstra’s PEN service does just that, leveraging SDN to offer sliceable, pay-as-you-go bandwidth on demand.
“Until recently, this kind of flexibility was not available - bandwidth had to be acquired on long term contracts, provisioned manually and took days to activate. SDN changes all that and companies are increasingly taking advantage of it,” she says. “We are able to achieve these with our ability to understand customer demands from a company level rather than the wholesale level, and go into partnerships that bring values to our customers.”
It’s all good
With all that on the table, the wholesale telecoms space looks a lot more promising. Bill Barney of Reliance/GCX agrees that the wholesale outlook is fairly optimistic when you look at the data side rather than voice. “It’s not the go-go days of 2000-2001, but it’s better than 2008-2010. The market is still solid.”
That said, BT Global’s Donazzolo advises that the future is brighter for wholesalers who roll with the changes rather than resist them, or fail to adapt to them.
“Changes across the wholesale sector in Asia-Pacific are inevitable and irreversible, with many established wholesalers revisiting their product and service strategies to take into account the competitive and evolving nature of domestic and regional consumer and enterprise segments served by both fixed and mobile operators,” he says. “The successful and profitable wholesalers of tomorrow in this region will have gone beyond traditional voice and data services to evolve into more complex service distribution platforms that address a variety of customer needs, being these for mobile roaming solutions, media and broadcasting networks or resell models for connectivity and ICT bundles.”
This article was first published in Telecom Asia Wholesales Insights November 2015 edition