With Your Service Provider Easy-on network services are tempting, but beware their downside. This month's column will consider service providers' current business decisions about their next-generation network platforms and market offerings. And, as in June's column, I'll look at how those decisions are likely to affect you. Right now, service provider executives are obsessed with issues like competitive differentiation and adding value. That's why we call them service providers, rather than carriers.
Carriers just carry traffic.
If your business model is only about delivering bandwidth, however, you'll find yourself with razor-thin margins and very little marketing ammunition. Service providers are also interested in content. Corporate customers in all markets are increasingly dependent on their service providers for the technologies that enable e-business. So they want those service providers to be able to quickly activate new services, as required. As things stand, there are just too many separate steps required to configure the various devices through which these services must pass-particularly at the network edge, and even on the customer premises.