Source: Comms Business October
Most of the NGNs will offer the following features;
- More downstream bandwidth (ADSL up to 24Mbit/s thanks to ADSL2+)
- More upstream bandwidth (ADSL up to 2Mbit/s thanks to Annex M)
- QoS (Ability to prioritise one application over another)
- Assured Rate (Ability to guarantee an amount of bandwidth)
Broadband is now much faster upstream and downstream and suitable for carrying more sensitive traffic like voice, video or applications.
There are three main challenges:
- Limited footprint - even BT's new 21CN is years away from 100% coverage and the alternative operators like Tiscali, C&W, Orange and Opal will never achieve it
- Every operator has different service offerings, different capabilities and a different approach to the channel
- All operators are reliant on BT Openreach Standard Care or Enhanced Care service levels
With no single NGN carrier providing the perfect solution and propositions changing all the time, this is a difficult question. It is also very expensive to interconnect with multiple NGNs and takes specialist skills to integrate and manage networks to allow efficient ordering and management of services purchased. Resellers have realised the benefit of building their own brands and reputations and are keen to white label products and add their own service wraps. They are not keen to promote a potential competitor's brand or invest in products that only make up part of their portfolio.
Most Resellers will partner with a service provider that interconnects with a number of NGNs with ordering, billing and fault management through a single self-service portal. Griffin has built its own Next Generation Aggregation Network (NGAN) to take full advantage of the technical capabilities of all of the major NGN operators, whilst making it easy for Resellers to market, sell and support new products from multiple suppliers under their own brand. This is our area of expertise and we have the resources and specialist skills in-house to fill the gap between the carriers and the Resellers to help deliver products to end users in a cost effective and profitable manner.
Resellers can provide the most appropriate circuit to their customers whilst only having to deal with one provisioning system, one set of fault management tools and one helpdesk. They will also only have one bill to reconcile. An additional benefit is that because some customers will not be happy with standard broadband fault fix times, working with an aggregator like Griffin means that Resellers can install lines from multiple operators whilst having a single username, password and IP address range. In this way the customer doesn't suffer downtime if there is a line fault or an incident on any operator's network.
Another benefit is that the aggregator will often be a very big customer of the carriers and consequently they will be able to negotiate better rates and terms than individual Resellers. A well established, ambitious and financially stable aggregator will be continually investing in their network and bringing out new products that take advantage of faster more reliable broadband, improve ARPU and reduce churn.