Telecom Service Provider Go-to-Market Deployment Strategies for NGN Applications

Abstract:
The sustained value of a next generation network (NGN) application to customers depends critically upon how economically it is delivered. The application Go-to-Market (GTM) deployment strategy adopted by the service provider addresses the location and ownership of the application platform, as well as its financing. It ranges from hosting the applications through a third party for a fixed fee per subscriber, through pay-as-you-grow arrangements that involve varying degrees of revenue share, to outright purchase of the hardware and application platform. Each strategy offers a unique mix of returns and risk mitigation. This study investigates the dependence of the optimal GTM delivery strategy on the underlying marketing parameters – such as application adoption rate and time to market advantages, and operational factors – such as platform synergy and time to deliver. It constructs an overarching model to position the different GTM delivery strategies for the service provider as stages of the Application Delivery life cycle. This study also presents a paradigm to understand application-specific risk through market demand and supply uncertainties, and uses it to characterize the risk that the service provider is exposed to under various GTM delivery strategies.