CSPs look to grow SMB market share with affordable, technology-agnostic SLAs

Commercial context

The growing availability and sophistication of digital services mean businesses have growing demands for assurance of the reliability and bandwidth of their connectivity. While large enterprises can afford top-of-line solutions such as SD-WAN and Dynamic Multi-Path Optimization (DPMO), small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) rarely have the option due to their high costs and complexity.

With the SMB market currently predicted to grow to US$800B by 2027, the need for reliable and assured services that suit their business demands will only increase. Supporting this prediction, Claro forecasts a 62% increase in such demand when CSPs can provide these services at more affordable prices. The opportunity is there for CSPs to improve customer experience in a market competitive manner – it’s just a question of how.

The solution

The Converged access with ODA - Phase II Catalyst is addressing the need by building on the foundations and cost reductions (30%) created in the first phase of this award-winning project. Phase II adds cloud-native technology and closed-loop assurance to demonstrate how CSPs can achieve technology-agnostic service assurance - even at times of unpredictable network bandwidth.

The Catalyst tests this with a scenario where a video service maintains service continuity, even when an impairment and congestion is introduced through the usage of a Universal CPE with dual-access technologies. The end result is the ability to dynamically switch the video service from fiber to a 5G network slice, and in doing so avoid a drop in video quality. To achieve this in dynamic and rapidly changing network conditions, the Catalyst uses TM Forum Open APIs at the service level, which interact with BBF, 3GPP, ETSI and ITU APIs at the technology level. The Catalyst is a pioneering example of how the TM Forum SLA/SLM Open APIs can add value and be applied at scale much more easily than vendor-specific performance APIs.

Applications and wider value

This Catalyst paves the way for customer experience-based SLAs, demonstrating the reliability, and arrival, of a much-needed service continuity solution at affordable prices. Having been successfully applied to video service application, this concept can be developed for any service covered by an SLA, and in a technology-agnostic manner, transparent to the customer. This will allow CSPs to provide service continuity solutions that are highly reliable, guaranteed, with an assured level of bandwidth – and more importantly at competitive prices to SMBs.

“We are delighted to continue our contribution to the next phase of this last-year awarded Catalyst to unlock the true potential of the ODA-based converged access model in providing a new affordable service continuity solution with SLA guaranteed connectivity for SMB customers,” explains Dr. Dang Dinh Trang, Director of the VNPT R&D Center at VNPT Group. This solution provides a cost-effective alternative to more complex and expensive solutions that exist today and should enable CSPs to grow their SMB market share.