Spring in your step in telecommunications

Warmer weather for business means telecommunications providers can move ahead

Annette: The communications landscape is changing

Spring is upon us, and finally the economy is showing some new shoots of growth. Although recovery is patchy, many pundits are claiming the recession is behind us. If, like many companies in our industry, your future plans had been put on the back burner, now is the time to put them back towards the top of the pile.

Planning for the future is essential for good business. In an industry that changes at breakneck speed, our customers demand the bigger market picture and timescales for our product developments as we all begin taking bets on the speed of economic recovery.

We are continuing to invest in new products and services for our customers. Our newly launched website puts our future plans and product roadmaps in one place to help facilitate forward planning.

Changing communications landscape
As we look towards 2012 and the London Olympic games, I realise how different the communications landscape will look by then. We recently declared ourselves open for business for wholesale fibre services, and by December this year fibre-based broadband will be in reach of over one million homes and businesses.

Ten million are set to benefit by the time the first javelin is thrown somewhere near Greenwich at the 2012 Summer Games.

Faster broadband does and will shift our life and workstyle patterns, but the most important change will be in the potential services the channel will be able to provide.

There are many ways to create service propositions around both fibre and ADSL2+ broadband services. If you throw mobile and other access technologies into the mix, you create a new mixed economy for broadband that offers the potential for some really exciting new services for customers.

Cloudy weather encouraging growth
For businesses, we will see an explosion of hosted applications, accelerating the shift of storage and processing into the cloud. Quality voice and vi deoconferencing benefits both businesses and consumers, and will change the way we consume broadband forever. It has never been more important to have a diverse access portfolio ready to meet customer needs.

We should not neglect the role that Ethernet has to play in all this. I predict that it will be a big year for Ethernet services. The traditional time-division multiplexing (TDM) market is apparently declining 10 per cent a year. So we can’t expect the move to Ethernet to happen in a hurry, although its growth is inevitable.

Improved diagnostics, performance testing, alarm handling and automated intrusive tests, and other service enhancements may help the channel, as we recognise the role ethernet has in becoming the preferred choice for wide-area data connectivity for organisations of all sizes.

While we are all looking towards the future, it is important not to forget the here and now. There are many things resellers and channel partners can do to help get on the path to future growth. This is particularly pertinent for those in the SME sector who may still be wearing the bruises from a bumpy ride through the recession.

The government has introduced various initiatives that I believe can benefit SME customers and channel businesses. Examples include ‘grid for learning’ funding and assistive-technologies funding for disabled employees. Take some time to do the research and keep an open mind – assistive technologies funding even covers mild disabilities that require nothing more drastic than the wearing of glasses.

These are all examples of how you can drive value into your business right now. But I want to reiterate that this isn’t just relevant in house, in channel businesses. All too often, I hear resellers criticised for not paying enough attention to their customers. So pointing out these initiatives can surely help you enhance your customers’ experiences and provides another opportunity to communicate with them.

Combining this proactivity with a forward plan and a supplier that can offer you a wide portfolio, minimal capital expenditure and enough margin for sell-through will offer your business a head-start on the road to future growth.

Colin Annette is director of the communications service provider group at BT Wholesale