CSP Survey: Long Connect Times Money-Losing Proposition for CarriersCSP Survey: Long Connect Times Money-Losing Proposition for Carriers

Virtually every organization has seen the demand for bandwidth increase exponentially over the past two years. The combination of new, data-intensive applications, a global pandemic that sent employees scattering across the globe, and the increasing number of devices connecting to networks add up to the fact that 1Gbit of connectivity is no longer enough for most enterprises, and 10 Gbit is rapidly running out of room as well.

To gain a better understanding of the trends and issues facing providers, RAD turned to Global Surveyz to poll 100 CSPs around the world, who shared their thoughts specifically as they relate to L2 business services.

The results of the study, fielded in the summer of 2021, had some surprising results in terms of how long it takes a carrier to connect a new customer. Over half the respondents – 56 percent – indicated that it takes them 60 days or more to connect a new customer location, sometimes as long as nine months. Long lag times such as these present two major problems for the CSP. First, every month a customer is not connected is a month that the CSP is not collecting revenue for that location. Second, and perhaps more importantly, long waits can put the carrier at risk of suffering churn from those customers who just cannot wait that long for their service. And chances are that if a customer switches to another carrier for one location, that customer could be lost for all future locations as well.

Another key finding related to the amount of bandwidth that customers are looking for today. The survey shows that 100Gbit L2 business services have now become totally mainstream. A full 98 percent of respondents either already offer 100 Gbit L2 services (64%) or plan to do so within the next 12 to 24 months (34%). Clearly, 100G is no longer just for large carrier-to-carrier services but is quickly becoming the norm for many organizations who are facing the demand for bandwidth from users, customers, devices, developers, and increased communications due to today’s hybrid, multi-cloud IT environments.

CSPs also indicated the increasing need for flexibility, for example knowing that with 5G rollouts on the way 71 percent said they will need future support for 5G xHaul, at least for uplink, or the ability to scale bandwidth for a given customer without the need to rip and replace EADs or other network infrastructure, since the chances are that a customer who may only need 1 Gbit today will definitely need more down the line.

The study also looked at the root cause of service calls received at the carrier customer care center. Surprisingly, most service providers have a very limited visibility of all the network segments that can have significant impact on the end user’s experience. The study found that less than 25 percent of root causes were related to the provider’s network. The largest amount – 39 percent – were related to third-party WAN connectivity, and another 35 percent related to the end user customer’s own LAN or Wi-Fi network. This highlights the need for end-to-end visibility to help speed MTTR when issues arise.

Industry experts see this as an opportunity for CSPs to get ahead of the curve. “Our ongoing engagement with CSPs indicate a growing interest in WAN modernization projects including upgrading underlying service assured L2 connectivity,” says Roy Chua, Principal Analyst at AvidThink. “Results from RAD’s survey demonstrate increasing bandwidth demands from enterprises and increasing rising interest in fixed-wireless access, both 4G LTE and 5G. Zero-touch, trouble-free, instant-on connectivity augmented by cellular definitely helps with time-to-value for both enterprises and CSP”, adds Chua.

To help CSPs meet these challenges and support customer needs today and into the future, RAD offers a complete portfolio of EAD and CSG products designed for the flexibility that CSPs and their customers demand. RAD offers cellular and broadband uplinks, automation for fast service set up and license-enabled, remote upgrades up to 100G. RAD’s strategy is to allow remote, on-the-fly upgrades to help avoid the need for truck rolls or equipment replacements to support the ever-changing networking environments and bandwidth that users demand.

Want to learn more? Click here to view the complete study. If you would like to learn more about RAD’s complete line of EAD and CSG products, visit the website at rad.com to see what they can do for you.

This content is sponsored by RAD.