All you probably need to know is that BTW are retiring their central pipes in favour of Ethernet hand-offs to ISPs and at the local exchange level they are upgrading the equipment that connects subscribers to their network so that they can offer faster, better quality broadband.
We have had a number of calls from Partners and prospects that have been told that they should be buying network directly from BTW now they have launched IPStream Connect. To try and help them we have put together a spreadsheet that includes all the BTW costs for setting up an IPStream Connect redundant host link. You type in how much you are currently paying for bandwidth and the formula then calculates the break-even point, payback period and savings thereafter. Results vary but I have yet to see an example with average usage and under 1300 lines that ever breaks even.
True, set-up charges are lower than IPStream and you are only committing to 10Mb increments but with IPSC you are paying to rent the interconnect as well the bandwidth. Also you will need to apply for an AS number for your own IP numbers and organise peering and transit. At least one carrier-grade router will be required and you will then need to pay to host and maintain it.
Of course BTW want to sell you as much bandwidth as possible so they may not impress upon you the need to invest in traffic management. A single ADSL2+ broadband line that you may have sold for around £25 pcm will cost you over £1000 per month if used at full capacity by your customer. A few rogue customers and you could soon be out of business. Griffin has invested over £1m in Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and traffic management systems, without which we would not be able to operate an efficient and profitable business. These tools are also extended to those of our customers preferring to pay for broadband tails and bandwidth separately.
Of course there are other broadband network operators besides BTW and an aggregator will connect to all of them giving you a choice of products and prices as well as resilience options and the ability to move seamlessly between networks. Are you really going to invest in the infrastructure to connect to all of these networks and write the software that will enable you to order lines, manage your broadband estate and diagnose and fix faults?
Dealing directly with carriers is difficult but it could well still be the right thing for you. You may want to get some good advice before deciding on a course of action that could end up as a very expensive mistake.
Source: Comms Dealer February 2010.
Andrew Dickinson
