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In order to increase ARPU and lower churn, carriers are looking to introduce compelling new service offerings and bundle them with their existing revenue-generating voice applications.  However, that can be a tricky proposition, given that evolving network technology — specifically converging wireline, wireless and IP networks — can make service creation and application rollouts quite a challenge.

 

At CTIA (News - Alert), it was confirmed that a consortium of vendors is teaming up to solve this problem and jointly promote a solution for application and service rollouts on converged networks via an brand-new product category: Service Brokers.

 

The Service Broker Forum will be a coalition of vendors whose goal is to help operators understand how they can leverage application deployments in both legacy and next-generation environments to increase ARPU. The focus of the Service Broker Forum is aimed at evangelizing and educating the industry on the service broker market space through the sharing of ideas, opinions, and knowledge.

 

The formation of the forum is long overdue because the need to manage the convergence of the network layer in parallel with the services layer continues to grow. Historically, service providers have been forced to replicate services across multiple network domains instead of leveraging these services across multiple network domains and ensuring that all applications are available to all subscribers regardless of which network they are on. Next-gen application delivery needs the flexibility to interwork with yesterday’s, today’s and tomorrow’s networks and services. Over the past two years, multiple telecom infrastructure vendors have introduced unique disparate solutions to help bridge the converging network, however, changing market have triggered the creation of a standalone network element that specifically addresses the issue, the Service Broker.

 

Service broker vendors have capitalized on this opportunity to broaden the discussion around the notion of the SCIM component within the IMS architecture and the need to connect applications to the underlying network in a flexible and efficient way.  Today, start-up companies such as AppTrigger and Convergin are leading the way to provide stand-alone purpose-built service broker solutions to the marketplace. Other companies offering solutions in this emerging service broker market space include vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent, Aepona and Tekelec. We have seen these vendors introduce their own solutions over the last couple of years which offer various benefits and implementation models. 

 

“The service broker resides at the services layer and sits between the services layer and the network in order to manage connectivity to the evolving network,” according to Patrick Fitzgerald (News - Alert), Vice President of Marketing for AppTrigger, who is spearheading the formation of the Service Broker Forum and whose Application Session Controller was one of the first purpose-built service brokers available on the market. “This, in turn, enables service providers to re-purpose existing legacy applications instead of being forced to re-write or re-purchase applications for NGN deployments. By using this model, the CAPEX and OPEX (News - Alert) savings as well as the time-to-market benefits are tremendous.”

 

The real advantage of service brokers is their ability to enable carriers to monetize the network by not only deploying new services, but leveraging existing application investments as well. According to Fitzgerald, current application deployment models limit the opportunity to fully leverage this asset because of ongoing use of stand-alone proprietary solutions, application silos and continued network convergence. Service brokers offer a solution that increases the reach of existing voice services and opens up NGN and IMS applications to a wider audience of existing subscribers on existing networks. As networks continue to achieve convergence, service brokers empower carriers to grow the application servers and legacy applications while simultaneously providing all of the necessary application connectivity.

 

For the most part, carriers have embraced horizontal “IMS-like” architected networks as a solution to introduce innovative applications quickly and cost-effectively. However, carriers are finding that to make this model work, they must also invest in infrastructure and applications that aren’t in line with that vision. As a result, service providers spend tremendous time and money on new applications riding new networks with the potential promise of ARPU and market opportunity. However, these investments are risky and fail to address the potential of revenue-generating applications and services residing on existing networks.

 

Service Brokers offer a compelling solution to handle new and legacy service deployment over converging networks, and the efforts of this soon to-be-announced Service Broker Forum are worth keeping an eye on.