Source: Channel Guide for NGA 2011
It’s the provision and management of the internet service that uses this connectivity that really differentiates suppliers. Networks can be designed and engineered to deliver maximum reliability and performance however this comes at a cost that resellers and customers must value and be prepared to pay for.
Lee Broxson Head of Sales at Griffin says that the key thing to note here is the products from NGA suppliers may look the same but on closer inspection actually vary in reach, price, quality, contention and SLA.
“To serve customers effectively resellers will need seamless access to all of them. The whole issue of NGNs can be confusing for resellers. When a service provider says they’ve got an NGN, what they’re really saying is that they have a single packet based (IP or MPLS) core network over which they deliver all their services. By inference, the fact that the same network is carrying many different types of traffic means that QoS must be being used to guarantee service levels.
One major benefit of NGNs is that the same network can be used to carry voice, data and Internet traffic. This means that a service provider’s costs are reduced, leading to more competitive prices for all 3 services. This cost reduction is why BT are investing so much money into their 21CN project – the project to replace their legacy single purpose networks with a single converged IP/MPLS network. This cost reduction is also why you have seen voice rates from companies like Gamma and TalkTalk Business become ever more competitive.
The big thing that NGNs have enabled is lower cost, more flexible private networks. Known as MPLS VPNs or IP VPNs, demand for these services has never been greater. Some resellers are setting up an MPLS VPN and then using this for delivering quality assured VOIP services to all their customers. Other resellers are reselling MPLS networks to their customers and then perhaps taking some hosting space and delivering applications to these customers in a secure and quality assured way.
If you partner with an aggregator like Griffin that has all the products in the portfolio and a true NGN, then it is very simple to migrate a customer with an estate of standalone leased lines or broadband lines to MPLS at a later date because all the services are being delivered off the same underlying network, so there is no cease and re-provide.”
Lee Broxson Head of Sales at Griffin says the essential components that resellers need to be looking for are:
- Broadband with QoS / assured bandwidth
- Broadband with higher upstream bandwidth (Annexe M)
- Access to the BT IPStream Connect footprint to provide best coverage
- National Ethernet services
- MPLS VPN services
- The ability to migrate 1,2,3,4 or 5 seamlessly between being used for Internet access and being used for MPLS