For decades, wholesale telecommunications has operated much the same way. Enterprises and service providers requiring fibre, internet access, SD-WAN or VOIP services have traditionally navigated a fragmented procurement process – engaging multiple providers, awaiting feasibility assessments, comparing pricing across spreadsheets, negotiating contracts, manually placing orders and managing lengthy fulfilment cycles before services are activated.
“This is just a snapshot of what has to happen before you could get a man in a van to physically go and do an installation,” says Viron Christopher, product manager for data at Pindrop, a Centracom company.
While networks have become faster and more sophisticated, the operational processes supporting them have changed remarkably little.
This disconnect has become increasingly apparent as customer expectations evolve. Businesses now expect the same speed, transparency and responsiveness from connectivity providers that they experience across other digital services, whether consumer or professional. Manual processes, disconnected systems and fragmented communication are no longer operational inconveniences – they are strategic constraints. “In an on-demand economy, meeting customer expectations is a constant challenge. But being satisfied with the current status quo is dangerously complacent. Standing still means you’re not going forward. That’s a slippery slope to obsolescence.”
Despite the scale and complexity of the industry, our approach needs to evolve into smarter, more efficient ways to source and process information for more efficient outcomes.
APIs provide the foundation
The telecommunications industry has made steady progress in exposing network capabilities through APIs, allowing platforms to aggregate availability, pricing and product information from multiple carriers, however. “Automation exists as the exception in a largely imperfect ecosystem, from inception right through to fulfilment,” Christopher says. Aggregating data through API integrations can dramatically speed up these processes.
Pindrop’s core is bringing multiple network providers together in one place as a single connectivity discovery platform, and as a SaaS, it becomes possible to provide this as an enablement tool to service providers to reliably assess feasibility, delivering coverage as a service, so to speak. Taking it a step further, and dependent on the service provider’s OSS and BSS (operational and business support systems), linking coverage to product catalogues and rate cards is the beginning of automating the upstream sales process. “Knowing which product is available and at which price 'as the pin drops', and being able to select multiple services to facilitate solution architecture, is a mandatory function of our platform. But is it enough?”
The next evolution is intelligence
“The next generation will (and has to) add intelligence,” Christopher says. South Africa comprises dozens of fibre network operators, multiple wholesale carriers, increasing enterprise cloud adoption, growing SD-WAN deployments and rising demand for multi-carrier resilience. “While this diversity provides greater choice, it also increases complexity. Software as a service (SaaS) and artificial intelligence (AI) can turn this complexity into a competitive advantage by rapidly analysing options and identifying the best connectivity strategy for a business, MSP or ISP based on its unique requirements.”
The next generation of platforms will not simply aggregate networks – they will interpret them.
From network aggregation to workflow orchestration
In action, platforms could deliver an intelligent procurement assistant capable of comparing carriers, validating technical feasibility, negotiating commercial terms, generating contracts, placing orders, tracking installations, managing escalations, optimising billing and recommending upgrades with minimal human intervention.
Beyond selecting the right connectivity provider, AI will increasingly orchestrate the entire delivery process. A SaaS/AI-driven orchestration platform could consolidate interactions into a single omnichannel workflow, automatically co-ordinating tasks, tracking dependencies, escalating exceptions and providing real-time updates to every stakeholder. Rather than project managers spending hours chasing progress across disparate systems, intelligent orchestration can keep installations moving by identifying bottlenecks before they become delays.
The outcome is faster service activation, improved operational efficiency and a significantly improved customer experience.
The competitive market is changing
Beyond connectivity procurement, evidence-based decision-making – where technology evaluates technical capabilities, commercial considerations, operational performance and business priorities simultaneously, supported by seamless execution – will be the new ticket to the game.
Transforming operational complexity into customer simplicity and orchestrating the ecosystem intelligently, will be the competitive edge.
The future of wholesale telecommunications is about creating customer experiences that are as seamless as their connectivity.
Share
