Operators have a lot on their plate when it comes to planning network architectures as the pace of growing demand and technological evolution put pressure on legacy operations, business models and revenue margins
At the inaugural Telco IT summit in Hong Kong last month, a panel of experts sat down to discuss the challenges operators face in planning their architectural roadmaps. Four main themes emerged from the discussion.
The first is that CEOs should stop listening to vendors. At least exclusively, says StarHub CIO David Skinner when addressing the question of how much infrastructure investment decisions are driven by vendors.
"If it wasn't for the vendors talking to the CEO, our lives would be a lot simpler," he said. "They come in and sell concepts and ideas, and then you have to think about how to subtly tell [the CEO] if it's not a good idea? You have to spend a lot of time downloading data and research and subtly pass that along. It burns up a lot of time."
Jayesh Easwaramony, VP of the ICT practice at Frost & Sullivan, pointed out that operators typically have two ways of approaching their architecture planning.
"One set acknowledges the need for transformation and they have some kind of strategy, at least on paper. The other set of operators has a sea of issues, and solving those issues becomes the strategy," he said. "The genesis of all this starts off with a smart-pipe strategy that the CEO wants to go forward with, then you have various elements of that which are done by the strategy team, and the marketing team validates it."