Can Carriers Position Themselves To Be More Than Dumb Pipe Providers?

The marriage of voice and the Internet in telephony applications can make the basic phone a dumb terminal on a very smart network.  That 15 year-old phone on your desk is now a conduit for so much more than just simple POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) transmissions. Service providers and enterprises can now code their own voice-enhanced business processes that let users communicate instinctively and intuitively in whatever medium they prefer.
By building applications for the enterprise that connect the phone to the web, that once-dumb land line phone can link up an infinite universe of callers and call recipients to perform a vast number of voice-and-data-integration functions. Smart telecoms will see the enormous business potential of the phone-as-terminal and adapt to expand their palette of offerings for their enterprise customers.
Now, the old-phone-as-dumb-terminal can be part of a platform on which service providers—and their customers- can write code to enable network customers to communicate instinctively and intuitively through the telephony applications to which they’ve become accustomed. There are all sorts of possibilities for enhancing business processes by converging voice/data/video with business processes via Internet Protocol. The potential cost-savings and sources of efficiency are staggering—both for the enterprise AND the carrier.
Fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) extends these opportunities further, and makes the pipe over which the communication travels, smarter still. Developers are taking up the challenge to create their own devices and/or software applications that utilize SIP-based Voice 2.0 technologies to route calls and messages in the most direct and economical ways.
Telecoms can avoid being relegated to the status of “just dumb pipe providers” if they can deliver platforms that meet the connectivity and customization demands of their enterprise and consumer customers. This is achieved through providing scalable platforms that allow the development of custom applications for the carrier’s enterprise customers. To be competitive, carriers must provide professional services on the platform that enable custom integration of voice, video, data and wireless services. That custom development offering becomes the value-added proposition which will differentiate the offering from traditional triple-play packages. More importantly, carriers can decide if they want to offer professional application development services—or just the platform itself.
In a world where IP is becoming the locus for all data transmission, telephone numbers and the circuits connecting the calls between them are simply raw materials for multiple manufactured solutions that any phone can deploy. One way XO Communications melds numbers and circuits is in a platform that can be accessed through their website. It deploys the numbers on a real-time basis to locations where they’re needed to shore up any parts of the network that have gone down. Another imaginative carrier use of the dumb phone – where we provide switching support – is Sprint’s in-cloud ACD call-center application for enterprise customers. Level 3 also is doing an in-cloud IVR app, for USAN.com.
The point is, there is substantial opportunity for private-network service providers and large carriers to turn those old land-line phones into smart phones. All they’ll need are a scalable platform and people with solid web development skills who possess a keen understanding of their target customer’s business logic.  They’ll be able to enhance business processes with well-known voice conventions for maximum control/management of inbound and outbound communications. The real challenge for carriers is to drop the mindset of exclusively promoting the strength of their networks in favor of a commitment to develop and market the kind of highly customizable, highly-scalable IP telephony apps that Voice 2.0 enables. After all, that’s what their enterprise customers are going to expect.
Telcos must embrace the network-plus-services model to cater to businesses planning to move into VoIP. Businesses generally can’t or don’t want to run VoIP themselves. It’s just too complex for them, but telcos that offer them a managed VoIP solution can meet their VoIP needs.
Service providers and carriers have the know-how and resources to gather and analyze information on their business customers. The trick is to translate that information into a set of development platform services and applications that generate demonstrable ROI. And, as new communications networks emerge with an expanded selection of sophisticated features, the providers have a much better chance at new revenue line from hosting solutions for businesses that don’t want to have internal networks to manage.
Ideally, the best way for service providers to thrive in the evolving telephony environment is to have a comprehensive, high-bandwidth network, a native subscriber base, and a services portfolio that is fluid rather than static and responds nimbly to market conditions and changes. Using a managed-services stance to do this effectively combines voice, video, data, and wireless into an integrated experience – one that telecom customers will increasingly prefer.
It’s pretty clear that the content-sales strategy is limited for carriers.  Selling mobile apps, music, and video for example, appears to be more successful for Apple than for AT&T.  Still, carriers can partner with developers while providing the platform on which those new enterprise applications are built. Bundling new Voice 2.0 applications that differentiate the carrier from their competition creates a win-win-win – for themselves, their application development partners, and their customers.