Last Mile Indigestion – Solving the Local Access Conundrum

Enterprises rely on their data centers to run business operations, service providers rely on their data centers to generate revenues by delivering network services, and content providers rely on their data centers to distribute revenue-producing content. And like their customers, data centers rely on networks. Networks are the essential part of any modern communications and they must deliver reliability, availability and high performance.  Access to these networks is where the rubber truly meets the road in the meaningful provisioning of telecom products and services. In order for telecommunications to work, networks must be accessible and provide a seamless connection, from me to you, across town, or across the globe.

Problem: Networks aren’t seamless. They aren’t always reliable and they aren’t always easily accessible. These realities are magnified when we consider local access networks – the spider web of local networks that bridge the communications interstate to the boulevard, avenue and final destination. They’re fragmented, one way, closed, too small, and often too expensive. They’re owned by multiple operators who may only control a fraction of the overall capacity. Often, they’re uncharted and unknown. This is the local access conundrum. Managing the procurement and provisioning of local access interconnections remains one of the biggest sources of indigestion in the industry today.

The result is that many network dependent industry players today look at their current service territory as the last frontier – the only potential growth market outside of M&A. They look to their current footprint and try to figure out how to sell to the customers that line their existing local access relationships or the central offices in which they are already interconnected, effectively closing their doors (and profit potential) to markets and geographies that aren’t proximate to existing service territories.  Not a particularly effective or efficient growth strategy and certainly not a competitive vote of confidence.

Filling the gap are a handful of companies that can leverage existing relationships and other access strategies to bring local access network operators and potential buyers together in a way that facilitates relatively efficient access network transparency and procurement solutions. Global Capacity, a company that specializes in access network delivery, for example, offers One Marketplace Access Exchange which is an access network solution platform that automates the design, quotation and provisioning of access networks, globally.  By creating a “marketplace” where customers and suppliers are connected by a common platform and interconnection, One Marketplace Access Exchange reduces the cost and simplifies the operation of access networks, providing transparency into access network pricing, capacity and availability across vendors and geographies. The company, however, can only provide this solution because they have so many facilities based carriers and clients, they can actually take principal position in creating access into markets that everyone seems to have difficulty with and just enable them to go there through a single interconnect.

Solving the Local Access Conundrum means addressing the fundamental issue of transparency, pulling back the covers so that, at the very least, available access is visible and accessible; capable of being defragmented, optimized and managed.  A successful solution means standardizing procurement and provisioning processes – automating a process that has traditionally been painstakingly manual, expensive, and ineffective.