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Operators must resist the temptation to rush new technologies to market without ensuring that they have a resilient monetisation plan in place
Network owners and operators must devise new strategies to monetise their networks and services, as the UK moves towards a gigabit society, according to ADTRAN’s chief technology officer, Ronan Kelly.
Speaking at The Great Telco Debate on Thursday, Kelly warned of the dangers of rushing out improved services without a sound business case behind them.
“What we need to be thinking about now, as we begin marching towards that gigabit society, is what do we do with that gigabit when we get it out there? Do we give it all away, creating a race to the bottom, by providing faster and faster pipes for cheaper and cheaper prices,” he asked.
The implementation of gigabit capable networks will represent a 100 fold increase in capacity compared with recent times, but Kelly warned operators not to get carried away with rushing out bigger and bigger capacity, arguing that the demand for it is not yet pressing.
“It’s going to take time for the applications to catch up with that and consume that capacity. So, do we race it out there with headline speed offerings and then have no opportunity to pull it back in or monetise it later? We need to try and think about different monetisation models,” he explained.
Kelly argued that the key to striking the right balance between bringing the product to market and adequately monetising it to achieve sufficient return on investment was collaboration between the key players.
“As we go forward we need to think about all the applications, which will ultimately be served out of the cloud… There is a huge opportunity for the telco community to collaborate with these cloud based service providers or over the top (OTT) service providers,” he added.
ADTRAN has recently announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Italian telco TIM. The MoU relates to ADTRAN’s SDNFV technologies and platforms for network automation in the access network segment.
Under the terms of the MoU, TIM will evaluate ADTRAN’s SD-Access solution within its analysis of the advantages and the flexibility offered by SDN architectures applied to its ultra-broadband fibre access network.
