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Voice ready broadband is geared up towards larger customers and is ideally suited to the reseller selling into the heart of the SME space.

Andrew Dickinson of Griffin Internet, “There is a huge opportunity for resellers to replace ISDN circuits. Voice ready broadband will now support up to 10 voice channels per broadband circuit – all with guaranteed carrier-class voice quality. With Tiscali able to deliver these services to approaching 90% of the business community through its own equipment in unbundled exchanges and its Datastream network beyond this and with most manufacturers offering IP-enabled PBX systems, the market for these services is finally set to grow very rapidly.

Richard Bligh, Marketing Director at Gamma Telecom, “In everything we do Gamma aims to be the market leader and SIP trunks, a flagship product for our company, allows the delivery of the voice channels over the broadband connection. Voice ready broadband and the ability to deliver well featured voice services over voice ready broadband makes eminent sense.”

Dickinson is building a portfolio of new Engineered Broadband products at Griffin around the Tiscali proposition to support Gamma’s offerings, whilst Bligh adds that his company are doing all the necessary interoperability testing with PBX vendors and Stephen Fletcher confirms the ISDN replacement opportunity for the channel.

Richard Bligh is keen to put meat on the SIP trunk gravy when he states the fact that SIP trunks can be installed in typically 5-10 days – far quicker than ISDN trunks, “The resellers achieving the greatest successes are those that possess a clear picture of who they are going to sell to and have developed a complete bundle of services ready for those customers. With regards to SIP trunks it is fair to say that we are still in the early adopter stage of the market but we are now clearly and rapidly approaching the ramp-up time. The fact that so many lines have been unbundled means that economies of scale of alternatives to BT can come into play.”

Andrew Dickinson draws upon the experience of Griffin when he says that certain niche markets are really taking off.

“The underlying new cost structures of this alternative to BT are starting to drive a surge in say the small end retail market. However it is essential that the suppliers provide a full service to the channel – how to sell voice ready broadband and not talk technobabble. It is also important that the channel understands the service levels that come with voice ready broadband.”

Lance Spencer, “Fix times in failure situations are key, as more applications are put onto broadband lines. The standard service level for broadband is a target of 40 hours to fix but the Tiscali solution comes with an enhanced service with a target repair time of 20 hours and an average fix time of around 10 hours. Is that good enough? Well maybe not compared to the five hours for PSTN but the good news is that Tiscali is continuing to work with the industry and its suppliers and is expecting to offer significantly improved levels in early 2008.

Dickinson sums up the potential for voice ready broadband at the small end of the market when he says that to make the best of this opportunity for smaller users we must ensure that services are combined together to make the service productive and cost-effective for the end-user.

“Convergence over the same pipe requires more intelligence at the edge of the network and here we provide a managed wrap to achieve this. If you look at potential users, say a pub for example, they need a line for voice, chip & pin, EPOS systems and fax. Installing one broadband circuit will save them money and provide more features. There are currently more than one million chip & pin lines on analogue circuits that need changing out over the next few years and voice ready broadband will be a great solution. In addition for retailers and businesses such as this the fact that voice ready broadband will significantly reduce the transaction times and these real-time transactions should reduce the opportunities for fraud.”

Deborah Collins sees an education issue for the channel, “Suppliers generally talk tech speak and often imply many applications are a black art. Too often conversations centre on technology rather than the delivery of working solutions we need to ensure that we get the right messages across. In this case the message is that the SME base is still predominantly served by BT both directly and indirectly and hence there is a tremendous opportunity. The channel needs to see the margin opportunity in these services which will allow them to go to market and successfully gain new customers and retain existing clients.

Source: Comms Business October.