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. These new platforms make it easier for service providers to quickly activate specific services to specific customers across shared networks. By simplifying service activation, these new platforms will also open the way for customer self-provisioning.