Operator Options: Service Provider or Service Facilitator?

On the other hand, by setting up information and infrastructure sharing agreements with third-party service providers, allowing outsiders to dip into subscriber information and QoS guarantees, operators can tap a rich vein of revenue that requires others to do most of the heavy lifting. Becoming a services facilitator, however, is not without its share of complexities and costs. Operators will still need to adopt SDP functionality to safely open access to its infrastructure and databases and will have to extend life cycle management operations to third-party services and partners. Perhaps the biggest risk associated with the facilitator role, however, is the possibility of empowering competitors to take over the richest asset a carrier possesses: its subscriber base.

While most operators are likely to try to split the difference by offering a catalog of homegrown and third-party services, that scenario is likely to make the lines between competitors and partners even blurrier. At some point, operators are going to have to make a fundamental choice about the disposition of their natural assets: should they lease them to the highest bidder or exploit them internally. Operators have never been particularly good at playing Solomon. That the next couple of years are likely to be marked by an economic downturn, just makes the stakes that much higher.