UK FTTP: Consolidation and driving uptake

This post originally appeared on June 16 on my LinkedIn feed, which is now my main platform for both short posts and longer-form articles. It can be found here, along with the comment stream. Please follow / connect to me on LinkedIn, to receive regular updates (about 1-3 / week)

Last week I attended the ISPA UK Business Models event, primarily about #FTTP build & adoption.

Two themes dominated:

- Consolidation patterns. The UK has >150 ISPs building #FTTX networks, with a patchwork mix of small/large, urban/rural & vertical/wholesale-only. As interest rates rise & consumer spending is inflation-limited, not all can stay viable.
- How can uptake be accelerated? While many homes are "passed" by fibre, comparatively few are actually signing up for FTTP access services. The lack of revenue for new #AltNets exacerbates the first issue.

Not discussed: data traffic volumes or so-called #fairshare. All the investment is going into initial builds, not capacity upgrades. Streaming and >500GB/mo is actually good news, not a cause for lobbyist handwringing.

The consolidation pathway is complex. There are 3 elements:

- Distress: companies running out of cash, unable to raise fresh capital, and selling assets or the whole business to deeper-pocketed consolidators willing to take a long view of the market.
- Proximity: Mergers or perhaps wholesale/sharing deals between geographic neighbouring ISPs, for scale efficiencies.
- Strategic: larger "mega-mergers" perhaps between wholesalers and integrated telcos, or between B2B and B2C specialists.

There are plenty of challenges. M&A means blending FTTP providers with different vendors, maybe different network engineering qualities, different back-office systems (perhaps proprietary) etc. There may be significant integration costs and practical headaches. Another issue to resolve is competing "overbuilt" fibre grids in urban areas, especially as OpenReach gets to more locations and offers cheap "Equinox2" wholesale.

The uptake question is also thorny. A few speakers pointed out that the UK's FTTC / VDSL broadband mostly proved itself "good enough" during the pandemic, so convincing people they need FTTP or gigabit speeds is a tough sell, especially given cost-of-living issues.

Unless they currently have really terrible connectivity, few people really want to take a day off work to wait for an engineer, risk a day or two without Internet if the switch doesn't work straight away, or pay more and sign up for a new longterm contract.

For some, futureproofing can wait until the future, it seems.

I can think of a number of ways that uptake could be incentivised:

- Trumpet fibre's uses, reliability & maybe impact on property values
- Subsidise an overlap of the old service with the new FTTP, so customers' old connection wouldn't be switched off before it was fully live
- Offer funding to connect homes that are "passed" as long as the connection is fully open-access / wholesale-ready
- Measure, monitor and incentivise B2B use of fibre as well as residential (retail, schools, small offices, home-workers etc)
- Better mapping to find and deal with "exceptions"

All would be enhanced by a consistent view (or scenarios) for the UK #fibre "end state". At the moment that is too amorphous.

A critical enabler for broadband competition - Marketplaces for buying and selling open access FTTP

This post originally appeared on Apr 18 on my LinkedIn feed, which is now my main platform for both short posts and longer-form articles. It can be found here, along with the comment stream. Please follow / subscribe to receive regular updates (about 1-3 / week)

Following yesterday's post on mobile #neutralhost operators as aggregators for wholesale access to municipality-level #smallcells and assets/permits, I think something roughly similar is happening in #FTTP.

An aggregation & marketplace tier for #ISPs, #AltNets and #infracos is emerging, among the UK fixed #broadband market's various groups:

- Incumbents with wholesale & retail units, although in theory separated - BT Retail & OpenReach, and VMO2 (Virgin) with its new wholesale JV Nexfibre (with Liberty Global & Infravia)
- AltNets with their own FTTP infrastructure solely for their own ISP retail services, eg Hyperoptic
- AltNets with FTTP for both inhouse ISP retail and wholesale to others
- Wholesale-only FTTP providers such as CityFibre
- Retail-only ISPs, such as Zen & TalkTalk, which buy wholesale fibre (and historically copper / FTTC)

The wholesale market is expanding rapidly, with infracos still building, Openreach accelerating (and trying to discount with its contentious Equinox 2 plan) and existing AltNets looking to supplement slow conversion of homes-passed to homes-connected by offering access to other ISPs.

But the patchwork quilt of wholesale FTTP is very messy. There is growing overbuild, lots of "passed" homes that need extra work to get to individual buildings (or inside them to flats), a mishmash of vendors and construction practices, variable-quality networks and processes - and ongoing consolidation and possible financial woes.

This brings a need for aggregation & simplification. There is both a "buy" and a "sell" side here.

Retail ISPs want access to well-defined and standardised wholesale fibre access, across multiple FTPP owners - both major players like Openreach and AltNets. They want to sell consistent products to end-customers, with promises on provisioning "live next Tuesday at 11am" or ways to deal with faults. They don't want 50 integration projects - but they do want good pricing.

The AltNets, meanwhile, want to be able to sell to those ISPs, even if they've built IT systems and processes that weren't originally designed for wholesale. They also need to conform to Ofcom's new one-touch-switching rules.

Maybe I'll think of a snappier term, but given that the #ConnectedNorth conference took place in Manchester, the term Open Access Solution as a Service, or #OASaaS, seems rather fitting...

There are already a number of OASaaS contenders. Some AltNets formed the Common Wholesale Platform | CWP in 2020. CityFibre is working on its own ecosystem, with Toob as its first partner. There's also The Fibre Café, Vitrifi & BroadbandHub - as well as TOTSCo which is purely focused on the one-touch switching process. Not all seem to focus equally on buy and sell sides.

I wonder if agreed standards or specs (or even regulation) are needed. Perhaps an equivalent to JOTS (Joint Operator Technical Specification) for shared/mobile infrastructure such as neutral host systems? We don't want OASaaS to look back in anger...

 

3rd Neutral Host Workshop + OpenRAN for shared networks. Early bird still available

NOTE: Owing to uncertainty around the impact of Coronavirus on travel, event attendance, company policies & venues, this workshop has been postponed from 31st March until 7th July. We have contacted existing registered attendees to discuss the options

On March 31st  July 7th I'll be running my 3rd public workshop on Neutral Host Networks in central London, together with colleague Peter Curnow-Ford.

As well as covering the basics of new wholesale/sharing models for MNOs, both with and without dedicated spectrum, we will also be looking more closely at the fit between NHNs and new virtualised vRAN / OpenRAN technologies. 

We'll cover all the various use-cases: metro-area network densification, indoor systems for various venues, road/rail coverage, rural wholesale models, FWA and more. 

The links (and differences) between neutral-host and private LTE/5G will be discussed, as well as alternative models such as multi-MNO sharing or national roaming. (see this post for some previous thoughts on this)

Different countries' competitive, regulatory and spectrum positions will be covered, to assess how that will impact the evolution of NHNs. 
 
Early bird pricing is available before June 7th.

Full details and registration are available here

Neutral Host Networks for 4G & 5G - latest learnings

On July 9th, I ran my first whole-day workshop in London on the emerging sector of Neutral Host Networks (NHNs), together with Peter Curnow-Ford of Viatec Associates. The event backgrounder is here (link).

It covered an important new addition to the mobile industry landscape. Along with pure private networks and "thick" MVNOs, NHNs are extending the 4G/5G marketplace, to many more stakeholders than today's handful of cellcos in each country.

Definition: An NHN is 3rd-party cellular network providing wholesale, commercial mobile localised coverage solutions to national mobile network operators (MNOs) or other communications service providers (CSPs). That access can be either paid or unpaid, and in dedicated NHN-owned spectrum, unlicenced/shared or the MNO's own bands. NHNs typically use small cells, but not always.

Podcast: An accompanying audio track for this post is now available at: https://soundcloud.com/user-521594836/neutralhost



NHN uses & types

NHNs have many possible use-cases, and several business and technical archictecture models. 

The main common theme is wholesale enablement of 4G/5G, in areas with poor coverage, reflecting difficult economics or tricky accessibility. A secondary motivation is a desire by venue/property owners for more control of wireless usage - and ideally monetisation.

The key uses for NHN deployment are:

• Rural / remote areas
• Metropolitan centres needing 4G/5G densification with small cells
• In-building, especially for large sites such as offices, stadiums and hotels
• Road and railtrack coverage (and potentially in-vehicle)
• Industrial sites and large transport hubs
• Temporary sites and events (eg festivals, major construction projects)
• Some classes of residential and SME commercial venue

There are several types of NHN model emerging, plus a number of other similar or overlapping approaches, as well as hybrids. The two most important versions of NHN are:

• Multi-Operator Small Cell as a Service (SCaaS), without the NHN having spectrum of its own. This can either use multiple small cells clustered together (eg one per MNO) & sharing backhaul, or a single small cell capable of virtualisation and with radios supporting multiple MNOs' frequency bands.
• Spectrum-based NHNs, where the provider is a full local MNO in its own right, with its own radio resources (shared or dedicated) and network, hosting other MNOs & SPs as tenants or roaming partners.

An additional model is the use of some form of cloud/virtualised RAN, with shared fibre / antennas linked back to different MNOs' signal sources and core networks. One more option is for "pure" private 4G/5G networks, run by an enterprise, to also offer NHN capabilities as a secondary function - for instance for a 5G-enabled factory where the  network is mostly for the robots, but can also support employees & visitors' smartphones.

We considered NHN to be different to a few other alternatives such as national roaming, network-sharing, or government-run/funded wholesale cellular networks. 

There are several SCaaS players already in the market, and many more being trialled or discussed. Some are TowerCo's expanding to new markets, some are indoor specialists, and others are starting with metro deals with local authorities, or street-furniture assets.

As yet, we were unaware of any of the spectrum-based NHN offers being fully commercialised yet, although that should change in the next 12 months, either in the US with CBRS spectrum, or in a number of other markets such as UK, Germany, Ireland, NZ and elsewhere with early trials ongoing, with new spectrum owners or lessors.

The workshop discussed which model is the best-fit for each use case, summarised in the chart below. This may evolve over time, and there are certainly nuances and exceptions, but for now, this is a unique mapping of the overall opportunity space. Rural coverage in particular has many options - and while NHNs have opportunity, there is also a chance that the existing MNOs may collaborate, if allowed (or encouraged or forced) by regulatory authorities.

Challenges and Opportunities

The workshop discussed a whole range of NHN enablers and components, such as suitable spectrum bands and cloud-based core networks, and perhaps eSIM. I'll cover those in other posts or presentations.

There are numerous technical and operational challenges to getting NHNs to work properly, especially where dedicated spectrum and core networks are involved. The workshop discussed these, and while some of the detailed discussion will remain private, it's worth highlighting a few interesting outputs of the day:

• The biggest variable is how to get operators to sign up to use NHN capacity, especially where they have to pay for it. Sometimes access will be free to the MNOs (perhaps beyond providing backhaul or core-network interconnect), and paid for by a venue. But even in those cases, there are substantial contractual and organisational challenges.
• There is a lack of appropriate tools and back-end software. Planning and design tools are not yet focused on NHN deployments, especially if they use different spectrum bands, or have other constraints. There is also a gap around NHN-friendly billing and charging software, although perhaps existing wholesale billing platforms can be customised.
• Security was raised as an issue - can NHN deployments be fully trusted by MNOs, which may be using them as local partners? How is security - at many levels from physical access to small cells to authentication and fraud-management - managed? This could well be an obstacle to uptake (or an excuse for inaction)
• For 5G, can NHNs and MNOs inter-operate their mechanisms for QoS and network-slicing? How can an MNO offer a premium service & SLA to a developer or content provider, when the final delivery is on someone else's infrastructure?
• Skills - are there enough engineers and installers who understand how to make this work? Especially where 5G small cells are involved, perhaps with mmWave and MIMO radios - there simply isn't a deep pool of trained and certified personnel to deploy them for NHNs in-building or wide rural areas.
• How can efficient marketplaces for spectrum resale/leasing or wholesale access be developed? What does a future NHN "dashboard" or aggregation play look like, and are there APIs being implemented to enable them?
• Backhaul and fibre - is it in the right place, either indoors or outdoors? This is problematic in rural areas in particular, but also for enterprise deployment, particularly where landlords may have different investment priorities to their tenants.

Some of the key opportunities in the next 24 months will be in solving these problems, as well as the early pioneers rolling out NHN services themselves. 

We will also see numerous "adjacencies" for NHN that tie in with it. There is a strong overlap with open-access wholesale fibre deployments, as well as some interesting NHN/edge computing scenarios such as combining multi-operator SCaaS with multi-operator (and enterprise) edge cloud facilities.

One possible rival technology is better Wi-Fi, especially Wi-Fi 6 for indoor and industrial use. If it gets deployed quickly, and if easier access with the new OpenRoaming concept gets adopted by enterprises, it is possible that the opportunity space for NHNs may shrink in some locations.


Conclusions and next steps

There's a huge amount of interest in the NHN space. Numerous countries are releasing new spectrum bands, and many stakeholders (such as infrastructure owners, venues, enterprises and local goverment authority bodies) are keenly interested in experimenting. Trials, testbeds and prototypes are attracting attention and investment.

While a limiting factor might be getting the big MNOs on board, there is a chance that they may get pre-empted by other NHN tenants that nudge them into action. Cable operators, MVNOs, cloud players and others might exploit NHNs - especially the spectrum-based ones - to launch their own 4G/5G services at lower cost than solo deployments. One enterprise I spoke to recently even suggested launching venue-specific MVNOs themselves, on their own core-network platform. We can expect a whirlwind of innovation around NHNs, and also the wider class of "non-public networks" (NPNs) for 4G and 5G.


If you're interested in more detail about Peter & my work on NHN models, please drop me a line at information at disruptive-analysis dot com. We're intending to run additional public workshops later in the year, in London and elsewhere. Potentially, we're interested in partners to help market the events, or assist with with logistic in other geo's. In addition, if you want a private under-NDA workshop for your organisation, we can adapt to meet your specific needs. We also work with investors, enterprises, venue-owners and solution vendors to craft strategies around the NHN sector. 

Podcast accompanying this blog post
 

Neutral Host Networks - Announcing July 9th Workshop on a key industry trend

One of the most interesting trends at present is the reinvention of "wholesale" in various parts of the telecoms and computing industry. Often rebranded as multi-tenant or open-access, there are growing parallels between a whole set of areas I'm following:

• Neutral Host Mobile networks (more on this below)
• Open-access fibre (longhaul & metro)
• Shared spectrum bands
• 3rd-party cell tower providers (and also ducts and poles)
• Colocation data-centres
• Public cloud PaaS / IaaS
• Multi-tenant NFV platforms
• 4G / 5G MVNOs & network-slicing
• Hosted telephony, UCaaS & cPaaS
• eSIM and multi-IMSI SIM cards

In other words, the technology world is getting much smarter about sharing assets and access, while maintaining - or improving - competition. Telcos, IT companies and enterprises often cannot justify the risk and capital involved in having dedicated - and possibly replicated - facilities. There is no point in every business having its own datacentre, or every mobile operator building its own tower on a given hilltop. 

Sharing - and some form of neutral / open / wholesale intermediary service provider - often makes more sense. Regulators are recognising this in many domains as well.

I've written & spoken about the mobile angles on this for a while - I've covered MVNOs in the 5G era (link), shared spectrum for private mobile networks (link) and open-access fibre for backhaul (link). I've also watched the evolution of small cells and related business models for many years - I first met ip.access in 2001.

Neutral Host Mobile (NHN) fits directly into all of these trends. I'm seeing huge interest in organisations building multi-tenant mobile networks in locations that the normal MNOs cannot address for economic or practicality reasons. In-building, metro densification, rural and road/rail-side use are prominent examples. 

The idea is that an NHN builds a network (with or without its own local spectrum), and the other companies either roam onto it, or used its shared facilities for their own radios.

This has got huge attention, especially with the rise of CBRS in the US, and the realisation that 5G will need lots of small cells, especially in cities. Sharing some or all of the infrastructure makes sense, at least theoretically. It also ties in with edge-computing, MVNOs and various of the other wholesale/hosting models I mention above.

So I'm running one of my periodic small-group workshops on NHNs, on July 9th in Central London. As usual, I'm doing it with a colleague - this time Peter Curnow-Ford of Viatec Consulting.

(I've previously run workshops on the Future of Voice, Telco-OTT Services, Private Cellular, AI for Telecoms, Blockchain for Telecoms, and 5G+MVNOs)

If you're interested in attending the public session, the full details are on this page (link)

Alternatively, if you are interested in a private workshop or deeper advisory engagement, please drop a message to information  at disruptive-analysis  dot com

 

 

Quick thoughts on 5G

I've been doing a lot of work - and events - on 5G recently. 

I've noticed a few recent shifts in perception and focus amongst vendors, regulators and operators. Some quick take-outs (a few more than appear on my similar LinkedIn post, as I'm not limited to 1300 characters!)

• 5G smartphones launch in 2019, but will be low-volume until 2020/21. Expect the first 5G iPhone towards the end of 2020
• Fixed-wireless use cases for 5G are high on the agenda in some markets (eg US, S Korea, Turkey, Germany), but seemingly almost absent in others.
• Commercial, large-scale, automated network slicing only becomes real from around 2023 onwards. A few "hand-carved" slices will be sooner, for example for internal use by MNOs' own business units, or perhaps public safety
• URLLC (ultra-reliable low latency) use-cases seem to have shifted from sci-fi fantasies around automated vehicles and surgical robots, to industrial IoT and factory automation... 
• ... but industrial use will often be controlled by industry itself, via one of several forms of private network, either using shared spectrum, private cores or private slices / enterprise MVNOs. MNOs' role may be minor
• Some claim that NB-IoT is the 5G version for "massive IoT", despite it being developed as a 4G variant. This is revisionist nonsense; if it was true then DT, VF and others would have been putting out PR 2+ years ago, claiming to be first to launch 5G
• 3.5GHz should be OK-ish outdoors but will struggle with outdoor-to-indoor coverage. mmWave will be worse. Beware of demos showing good indoor performance - ask about uplink from inside-out, or whether signals penetrate double-glazing, or at oblique angles to walls/windows. In any case, #WiFi will continue to dominate in the home.
• There will be some small-cells and neutral-host deployments for 3.5GHz (and similar bands) in enterprises and other large buildings, but this will take a long time to become widespread. 
• Existing in-building DAS systems will need some serious upgrades to support higher 5G frequency bands - most of today's top out at 2.6GHz and can't handle MIMO very well.
• Despite it not being an "official" 5G candidate band, 28GHz seems to be the most popular option, at least for test networks. This is partly because of chipset support, notably Qualcomm's X50. The European-proposed 26GHz hasn't seen much action yet
• Two of the largest 5G "verticals" associations, for Automotive (5GAA) and Industrial (5GACIA) seem to be heavily driven by German companies - and the German regulator looks like it's going to award 100MHz of spectrum to verticals directly (not 100% certain but getting clearer). In other countries apart from the US (CBRS) and China (Huawei's enterprise LTE), there doesn't seem to be as much action from large firms knocking on the regulator/governments doors.
• The 5G New Core is getting a lot of discussion and attention... but given that some of the existing NFV deployments have been slow, and the cost-savings somewhat illusory, I don't expect much near-term action on this.
• Some of the visions for 5G seem to lean heavily on automation and AI back-office for optimising radio, core, user-plane etc. Yet those are also still at an early stage - and few telcos have many skilled engineers -  so could act as a brake. There are also some emerging questions on security of network AI, and whether the algorithms might be single points of failure, especially when used for networks used for critical national infrastructure. 
• Connected-car companies are interested in 5G, but not as enthusiastic as some might imagine. One told me "it's a nice-to-have" - especially as vehicles will need to be able to work offline, and have prodigous on-board compute capabilities.
• I'm more positive about some of the discussion around Cloud RAN for 5G. In many ways, it's going to be necessary, given the complexity of NR. That said, there's some serious practical challenges about the radio, such as the size/weight/cost of the massive-MIMO antennas.
• There's lots of talk about network-slicing for 5G, but nobody has really thought about whether today's MNO wholesale departments are up to the task of selling "slice as a service". Speaking to some of today's MVNOs, it seems like they will have to do a lot of homework before they can become effective slicemongers.

That's a quick list of things off the top of my head. Plenty more observations and comments to come, or on my Twitter feed from various events I've attended.

If you'd like me to give an unvarnished presentation at an event, on "5G opportunities, realities & myths", please get in touch via:  information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com

And if you're interested in my last point, on 5G+MVNOs+Slicing+Wholesale, please look at my upcoming workshop doing a deep-dive on this (link)

Book now! MVNOs + 5G + Network-Slicing: Small-group Seminar & Workshop, London, 4th December

NEW: 5G, MVNOs, Mobile Wholesale & Network-Slicing Workshop

On December 4th 2018, Dean Bubley will run a small-group workshop in London, covering one of the most interesting topics in telecoms technology and mobile business models: 

What does 5G, NFV & Network-Slicing mean for MVNOs & other wholesale models? 

The day will have a maximum of 25 attendees to ensure a high level of discussion and interaction. 

Expect a diverse mix of telcos, MVNO/E/As, network vendors, software developers, regulators and other interested parties such as enterprises, IoT specialists, investors and consultants. It is suitable for C-level executives, strategists, product management, marketing functions, CTO office, analysts and regulatory affairs specialists.

The event is being run together with partners Mobilise Consulting (link)

The workshop will run under Chatham House rules (link), to allow candid & confidential discussion, without external attribution of comments to individuals or their employers.

It will cover:

• Technology, including 5G New Radio, New Core, network-slicing and NFV/cloud
• Business models, spanning consumer, enterprise & IoT markets
• Regulatory and economic aspects of both 5G and MVNO domains

We'll be highlighting our current thinking - and outstanding questions - on topics such as: 

• When should MVNOs expect 5G networks to launch & become important? What  changes, compared to 4G?
• What needs to be done NOW to align with future 5G/NFV wholesale models?
• Can existing "full" MVNOs with 4G cores upgrade and integrate easily?
• What's happening with 5G smartphones & IoT devices? What new / different relationships are needed with OEMs?
• Is “network slicing” really an evolution of today’s wholesale and MVNO model? 
• What 5G use-cases hold the most promise for wholesale: fixed access, mobile broadband, massive IoT or low-latency / ultra-reliable?
• Are 5G standards bodies, regulators & vendors giving enough (any?) thought to the needs of MVNOs? 
• Will we move from a 2-tier MNO/MVNO model, to a 3-tier Infrastructure / Network Service / Tenant model? How would that change the role of today’s full MVNOs and MVNE/As?
• Will 5G mean more enterprise, IoT and vertical MVNOs? 
• What are the impacts of changing 5G spectrum & wholesale regulations? What new areas that policymakers should consider?
• Will we see hybrid MNO/MVNO/WiFi operators? 
• What are the main consumer 5G use cases for MVNXs? Will it enable more video streaming, AR/VR, gaming or other applications? Or just more data?
• Will the new 5G core network architecture make a difference?
• What changes to service provision, billing and QoS will impact MVNOs with 5G?
• Where do neutral-host networks (eg for in-building or rural coverage) & private 5G networks fit in to the story?
• Along with 5G, what does NFV, SDN, cloud-native, eSIM and edge-computing mean for MVNOs?
• Will we see new charging/rating models with 5G or will it be much the same as 4G?
• Will it be possible to be a 5G-only MVNO?

It is probably too early to give definitive answers to all these questions - but the workshop will cover all these areas, and certainly outline the gaps in today's knowledge, wholesale enablers and regulation. 
The workshop will take place at the Westbury Hotel in Mayfair, central London [link]. It will run from 9am-5pm, with plenty of time for networking and interactive discussion. Come prepared to think and talk, as well as listen – this is a “lean-forward” day. Coffee and a nice lunch are included. A full agenda will be circulated nearer the time. 

The workshop facilitators will be Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis, plus Hamish White & Amr Houssein of Mobilise.


Booking & Payment

There are PayPal Buy Now buttons below, which can accept card payments as well as PayPal transfers. Alternatively, contact information at disruptive-analysis dot com if you want to be invoiced directly, and use purchase-order & bank-transfer. Payment can also be made in EUR or USD.

Pricing for attendance:

• Early bird £499+VAT booked before Nov 1 (now expired)
• £699+VAT after Nov 1
• 15% discount for 2 attendees booked at the same time (max 2 from any one company)
• (UK VAT @20% must be charged to attendees from any country, as the service is delivered in the UK. There are two separate payment options below, as PayPal only automatically adds VAT for UK accounts

UK Payments:

1 Attendee £699.00 GBP 2 Attendees (-15%) £1,188.30 GBP

Non-UK Payments:

1 Attendee inc VAT £838.80 GBP 2 Attendees inc VAT (-15%) £1,425.96 GBP

The rise of Managed Voice Infrastructure... or perhaps VIaaS or UCaaSaaS ?

Over the last year or so, I've watched the emergence of a new category of communication service - but it's quite hard to define a decent name for the trend.

In essence, it's where telcos/SPs offer some form of VoIP, either for consumer telephony or enterprise UC/hosted-PBX... but don't actually manage the infrastructure internally themselves. Instead, a vendor manages and delivers the capability via its own software/cloud-based platform. The SP sells (perhaps customising / integrating / bundling) the "outsourced" service to final end-users. It's not really the same as a straightforward channel play (eg resale of SaaS applications), because there's typically various network and OSS integration aspects, such as the need for SBCs, link with numbering and perhaps QoS, coupling with emerging NFV strategies etc.

The most prominent providers are probably:

• BroadSoft BroadCloud
• GenBand Nuvia
• Alianza Cloud Voice Platform
• Metaswitch MetaSphere Cloud Services

In addition to these, there are probably more that I'm not fully aware of. Alongside this, various other vendors are offering managed/hosted VoLTE, API/PaaS platforms and other applications (yes, even Jibe's hosted-RCS, now owned by Google) also intended to be offered through SP channels.

But for me, the main event here is service providers outsourcing their "core" telephony functions - including business-oriented comms which typically go beyond just voice - to vendor-controlled cloud platforms.

If you take the view that it's too difficult for SPs to develop their own innovative and differentiated consumer-voice or UCaaS platforms, then the next question is whether they really add any value by deploying their own servers for somebody else's application either. This is especially true for "vanilla" applications like PSTN telephony, SIP trunking and basic hosted-PBX functionality.

The answer is probably one of scale, risk-appetite, and the ability and willingness to attract software developers - as well as the target audience of end-users that a given SP faces. Larger operators ought to be able to have the resources to develop unique and well-customised propositions, even if they are based on a vendor's application platform or straightforward standardised telephony functions. 

Smaller providers - especially in rural areas - may find the idea of such hosted/wholesale offers more intriguing, especially as the cost-models may allow then to phase in such products over time without heavy upfront investmentment. 

In developing countries, the initial user-base for UCaaS might be very low as well - especially if broadband infrastructure is still being built-out and adopted by small businesses. Again, a wholesale offer might make sense, assuming the data-centres are close enough and long-haul links suitable.

There may also be a fixed/mobile divide here - it could be argued that residential fixed/cable operators have better things to focus on than infrastructure for delivering a commodity telephone service that few people use. Or, perhaps, mobile-centric operators may not have the ability and willingness to deal with the hybrid fixed/mobile nature of most UCaaS.

I think we're still at early stages here. Vendors are mostly being quite cautious, to avoid looking as if they compete with their SP customers, or are taking too much of the available profit-pool in that sector. Yet as NFV matures, both telephony and UCaaS do start to look a bit more like today's other SaaS offers - which can be hosted in telcos' own data-centres, but are more often anchored in Microsoft's or Amazon's.

It's also hard to come up with a pleasing category-name for this. Some people have suggested "wholesale telephony", but that's too closely-similar to various other traditional bits of the wholesale/transit market. "White-label voice & UC" is another option, but I've spoken to some people who recoil from that. "Cloud voice" can apply to about a dozen separate intersections of communications and cloud, so is too vague in my view. For the business side, I quite like UCaaSaaS but that's too much of a mouthful, although it looks fun on screen.

Maybe "VIaaS"? Voice-Infrastructure as a Service? Or my current favourite: MVI, Managed Voice Infrastructure? Some will grumble that it makes the video and messaging/collaboration bits look like second-class citizens, but I think it perhaps captures the essence of what's occurring - and it also spans both consumer VoIP telephony and UCaaS.