Looking ahead, what are BT Global Telecom Markets’ priorities for its portfolio?

Cost efficiency and innovation. In a rapidly changing world, you need to remain agile. BT Global Telecom Markets (GTM) therefore continues to evolve its portfolio of products and services to help customers succeed in the competitive global marketplace.

BT GTM has already introduced several frameworks and propositions to help specific target groups achieve more innovation and cost efficiency.

The BT GTM roadmap helps lay out the approach for developing our portfolio and helps us drive its evolution.

Can you tell me more about the BT GTM roadmap?

Our roadmap shows our commitment both to implementing services to help customers leverage new wholesale capabilities and to continuing innovation to enhance our portfolio.

Three objectives drive the evolution of the GTM portfolio:

First, we aim to offer our customers a best-in-class cost base for traditional services, helping them consolidate their assets and services and maximise cost efficiency. Customers can then afford to invest in innovation and in targeting new markets.

Second, we want to help customers transform towards IP-based next-generation networks (including a consideration of business processes, portfolio and operational improvement) with a broad offer of consultancy and professional services.

Finally, GTM looks to offer a comprehensive range of IP-based wholesale services so that, when customers are ready, they can make a full migration towards IP. This includes enabling innovation and quick entry into new markets and segments to meet increasing customer demand.

IP-based communication continues to offer new opportunities to operators. How is BT GTM helping its customers exploit them?

One way we are helping our customers exploit the wealth of new IP-based business opportunities is our Interoperability framework. By enhancing connectivity among operators, it enables them to offer more value-added services and to enter new markets.

Our global IPX services enable communication providers to connect to each other, to connect their end users to other operators’ end users, and to pay and get paid for doing it. Because the IPX aims to enable true interworking between providers, the approach is independent of the technology, networks or devices used. Therefore it creates that seamless experience customers want when they use communications services.

What about traditional services such as voice – how do you see these developing?

To help businesses extend the functionality of their voice offerings, we’ve introduced Ribbit-based voice applications. Ribbit’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) allows carriers to innovate and derive new value from their current networks. Ribbit helps corporate customers drive more of their voice traffic via the web and integrated user experiences, thereby making the most of their voice network investment.

We intend to make Ribbit available to the wholesale market to enable all operators to compete head-on with companies delivering internet TV over the public internet (“OTT” -over-the-top- players), social networks, etc. Ribbit’s PaaS is similar to a cloud computing model.

So BT GTM is interested in cloud computing?

Yes, certainly – because cloud computing helps customers who want to cut costs, innovate faster and deploy services flexibly and without high up-front investments.

An example of a BT cloud application is our Virtual Data Centre service. VDC is a pre-provisioned, data centre-hosted infrastructure that delivers the next generation of data centre service. It enables you to create, deploy, monitor and manage your own Virtual Data Centre infrastructure through a secure self-service portal. Automated provision of storage, computing and access ensure maximum efficiency. VDC is rolled out in the UK and across Europe, with more international launches ahead.

Have you made changes in any other areas of your portfolio?

Yes, for example we’ve also made changes in our reseller and white-labelled portfolios.

Our services for resellers enable them to offer their customers attractive products based on BT infrastructure. One is our Switchless Reseller Service, which enables reseller and brand extender companies to offer voice communication services without setting up their own switches or interconnections to other operators. With our new Wholesale VoIP offerings we allow resellers to migrate to IP when and as they need it. So we can offer them an end-to-end portfolio maximising the potential of traditional and new-wave reseller voice platforms.

And we extended our white-labelled portfolio with Global Inbound Services. They help operators and communication providers to serve their corporate customers more efficiently on a more resilient and feature-rich platform. They also help those corporate customers reduce their costs (for example, BT offers several caller-pays options) and to meet increasing end-consumer demand for higher-quality service.

By making Global Inbound Services available as a white-labelled reselling solution, GTM helps operators boost their portfolio without the requirement to invest in the time, hardware and global capabilities required to sustain such an offer. Readers who want more information can read the article about Global Inbound Services in this issue of Global Telecom News.

With your focus on innovation, what is happening to BT GTM’s traditional portfolio?

We’ve also increased the pace of innovation in our traditional portfolio to offer new services such as Sigtrans for RoamConnect, which enables mobile network operators to offer their customers enhanced roaming. We also offer SMS Hubbing to simplify the delivery of SMS messages, avoiding the need for operators to have agreements with individual network operators around the world. SMS Hubbing also provides ensured delivery of SMS messages within 15 seconds to 75% of all destinations, with proof of delivery provided from the called party’s handset. This enhancement is generating a lot of interest; many operators have been waiting for it.

Is there anything you would like to say in closing?

Yes, I’d like to add that I’m always eager to listen to our customers who want to talk about their needs and how GTM can help them. We put customers at the heart of our portfolio. Their opinions are very valuable to me and help me ensure that customers stay at the centre of our business.

And of course they are welcome to call me or send me an email.