Two decades on from the late 80’s, businesses are keener than ever to simplify and minimise their telecoms supplier relationships but there’s been a massive shift in the way complex solutions are delivered.

‘From Soup to Nuts’ – the complete feast - was the proud boast of major suppliers who claimed to have control of all solutions elements and a full range of delivery skills within their own ranks.  Only by virtue of this ‘vertical integration’, they argued, could customers be assured of a consistently high service performance.  This appealed to large enterprises in those pre-Internet days as they searched for suppliers who could deliver the complete network and also take care of supply chain transactions, messaging services and, increasingly, their core IT systems. 

In reality few of the ‘Soup to Nuts’ brigade delivered much more than basic ‘lowest common denominator’ services and most of the suppliers only managed to sustain their commitments by ‘laying off ‘ the bets onto an ever growing army of specialist sub-contractors.  The essential solutions provider skill was to be proficient as conductors of large multi-talented orchestras. 

But twenty years on, even that last remaining veneer of polished performance management is losing its ‘value added’ sheen.  The massive progress in interface and transaction standards, HTML, XML’s, IP, Internet email, Gateways, broadband capacity and the entire Open Source movement is delivering high levels of interoperability without much hassle.   This does not mean that enterprises are tempted back towards DIY but it does change their expectations of the larger service providers. 

Businesses enterprise customers do not now expect a single Telco, ISP or Systems Integrator to own and operate all elements of a solution.  Nor do they even expect Telco’s to be the infrastructure investors of last resort.   They do however expect complete interoperability and are increasingly uncomfortable with service lock-in and solutions that cannot be unbundled.  There’s a price to pay for this flexibility but such is the pace of change that enterprises increasingly prefer to keep their options open and take advantage of service enhancements from wherever these originate. 

These ‘Open Access’ and ‘Carrier Neutral’ attitudes are turning out to be very healthy options.  It’s obvious that a higher level of service competition benefits enterprise customers.  And with a little lateral thinking it’s clear that disaggregation of distribution networks from the services that run over them provides new opportunities for funding modernisation.    

If good sense prevails, fibre to the home and premises will not need to be unbundled because, in the emergent Open Access, Carrier Neutral, gatewayed world, they need never be bundled in the first place.  Municipal authorities tempted to pour money into WiFi lamppost infrastructures with uncertain economic sustainability might well ponder whether correcting market failure in provision of essential fibre distribution for all citizens and businesses might be a far better focus for public priorities.    

The linkages between the mixed vegetable solutions soup and the nuts is no longer valid.  In the USA major Telco’s have petitioned to be protected from future unbundling in order not to jeopardise their fibre roll-out investment plans.  Viewed from here that looks more like an argument for relieving Telco’s of their age-old distribution rights or expectations and switch the regulatory focus from Universal Service towards Universal Access Obligations.

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First published in NetworkingPlus Jan 2007