CSPs have been trying to profitably accommodate OTT providers and find new services for themselves for years, but it’s only when you go to a conference packed by CSPs and the major networking suppliers that you know they’re barely anywhere further on.
At September’s NetEvents IT Symposium in Portugal the executives from the industry met to discuss all things cloud and SDN, and improving on the OSS systems that could enable CSPs to increase their profits in an increasingly on-demand services market.
It was startling to hear from Juniper Networks that CSPs were typically taking up to two years to launch new services for their customers, and that in some cases they were simply giving up launching them because it was taking too long to do so. They were simply being out-footed by nimbler OTT players.
On the other hand, the European head of Australian national CSP Telstra outlined how his company was simply buying or taking stakes in OTT players to help Telstra compete and generate more revenue. That’s hardly rocket science, and of course can sometimes make sense, but in a gradually improving world economic situation, it will be increasingly too expensive for many players to do it. Surely a technical approach should be the answer?
There was much talk at the conference of CSPs boosting their product launching performance with the help of improved OSS systems – basically adding extra layers of technology to the already expensive OSS platforms they had in place, to cope with the vast patchwork of network architectures that new services have to go over.
It got me wondering why CSPs had to spend all this money to modify their systems when they had already paid for very expensive OSS. CSP CFOs would be tearing their hair out about having to spend money on something which should already support the introduction of new services, and which should be able to be modified cost effectively by the existing OSS supplier, if required.
This is something I put to one of the software suppliers looking to enhance OSS with their own extra technology layer at the conference. All he could really say about the requirement to pay more was that the expanding mixture of networks serving customers was now too complicated to allow CSPs to deploy new services and support customers effectively. CSPs should now be carefully perusing OSS contracts and asking pertinent questions of their OSS supplier about this.
But when it comes to rolling out new services to help deliver much needed extra revenue, the pain doesn’t stop there. At NetEvents, the Father of the Ethernet and 3Com executive Bob Metcalfe helped the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) launch what was described as The Third Network.
The MEF has the support of the main CSPs and networking suppliers in the delivery of Carrier Ethernet services, and it wants the Third Network to be a true combination of the easy connectivity (although less reliability) of the internet and the extra reliability usually possible through more expensive dedicated business lines (like using Carrier Ethernet).
Such a solution would effectively mean sectioning off slices of the internet and marrying them to business networks, and offering the solution to users who were prepared to pay extra to benefit from this new toll road superhighway, to benefit from instant higher reserved data speeds from any location, using a patchwork of signed up telcos. Such a service would be aimed at road warriors, flexible and remote workers, among others.
The only problem with this is that it will draw out the campaigners for net neutrality – the principle that internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform or application.
Proponents of net neutrality see it as an important component of an open internet, where policies such as equal treatment of data and open web standards allow those on the internet to easily communicate and conduct business without interference.
The Third Network could be seen as a closed internet, where corporations favour certain uses and degrade some services. Subscribers of basic packaged internet services do not want to see those services deteriorate or become more expensive, even when they are always streaming or downloading video services over the internet.
Other users paying more to their telco for a faster service over the shared internet will be seen by some as chipping away at net neutrality.
With the internet seemingly struggling to keep up with the data services now being demanded by users –such as video on demand and HD content – there may be trouble on the horizon for those CSPs wanting to make an honest buck by taking advantage of the Third Network.
This was something which was admitted by Orange Business Services – an MEF member –at NetEvents, where it said that up to now the Third Network had only involved MEF members “socialising” the idea among the ranks.
Get ready for the fall out when “treacherous” CSPs are slammed for “short-changing” the majority of internet users, when all they want to do is remain profitable and get back a little of the power seceded to OTT providers.
