The promise of transporting high speed data, Internet access and voice over the existing wires already being used for data traffic has tremendous appeal. Service providers gain by providing new services, which helps them retain profitability in today's competitive marketplace. And customers enjoy reduced tariffs when subscribing to multiple services from the same service provider.An emerging market for such bundled services is multi-tenant building units (MTUs). In the U.S., a new breed of service provider (building local exchange carrier, or BLEC) has emerged in the last few years to serve this client base of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that reside in office buildings. This market niche offers a good business opportunity in Europe as well, where the concept is starting to take hold.
Multi-tenant buildings are wired by the landlord or service provider to offer broadband services to each suite over fiber or copper lines. All transmissions are concentrated in one aggregating device, usually placed in the basement or on the roof, which the service provider uses to send voice and data traffic to its central office over a single, large, fast pipe.
The MTU presents the service provider with a large customer base that requires very little overhead. Only one technician is required to service all customers, since they are at the same site. The service provider can support all services over a broadband access connection to its central office, which is much more cost-effective than running a separate line for each customer. This enables the service provider to potentially offer more bandwidth at a lower price to customers.
MTU service providers can add new customers very quickly and tend to enjoy better customer retention. Since they can offer bundled services at lower prices, churn is reduced. And they generate new revenue streams through new service offerings, which can be introduced very quickly.
SMEs benefit from the arrangement by receiving bundled services, including, for example, always-on Internet access and low cost voice services. They receive additional value-added services that they require, including Web hosting, application hosting, e-commerce, intranet, extranet and video services. One-stop shopping and unified billing also appeal to business customers. When moving to a new office, the SME does not have to invest in a PBX, yet can receive as many telephone lines as it requires.
There are several service models tailored to MTUs. One model is to bundle traffic at the customer premises. In this case, the customers' ISDN or POTS lines along with the corporate LAN are connected to an integrated access device (IAD), which transports the combined traffic to service provider aggregating equipment. In another model, voice and data traffic run separately to a multiservice access concentrator, also located in the basement or on the roof.
Several factors contribute to the viability of the MTU service provider business model:
· packaging services over a single access link, for cost-effective transmission;
· support of the building infrastructure, to eliminate the need to re-wire;
· connecting the building to the central office over any transport infrastructure, such as DSL, Ethernet, SDH, ATM or even wireless; and
· the ability to integrate services both at the office level and at the building level.RAD offers specially engineered access devices for the MTU service providers. These devices range from IADs supporting voice and data over DSL technologies, multiservice concentrators over ATM, multiservice concentrators over SDH and voice and data access over IP/Ethernet using new TDM over IP (TDMoIP) technology.
