BRINGING SMALL INDEPENDENTS INTO THE AIN MARKET:
RURAL TEXAS CARRIER BUILDS OWN CALLING NAME SYSTEM
SOURCE:
DATE: June 13, 1996
Vol. 6, No 12
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Although the cost of getting into AIN has steadily declined in the last two years, the smallest carriers still have remained on the sidelines. While small independent carriers tend to be attracted to the competitive possibilities of AIN services, their preferred strategy has been to resell services offered by their larger neighbors.
A variety of market forces have been hammering away at AIN entry barriers. Price points for infrastructure have declined, and the Telecom Act has made it easier for carriers to move into parallel lines of business while increasing the need to offer a wide range of services to keep customers. While only a handful of small carriers have so far taken the plunge into their own AIN infrastructure, they have not started the general stampede that AIN vendors would love to see.
Now one more small rural telco has decided to forego the resale route and has purchased its own infrastructure. Its experience may represent another new model for AIN in small markets and may provide the demonstration needed to encourage other small carriers to follow suit.
Brazoria Telephone Company, an independent carrier in Brazoria, Texas, with some 5,200 access lines served by two switches, has decided to offer its customers its own calling name delivery service rather than reselling access from another provider. Brazoria Telephone will use Stratus Computer Inc.'s Stratus Intelligent Network Applications Platform (SINAP) to host the application software, which was written by Dallas-based Telecom Consultants International Inc. (TCII).
Baton Rouge, La.-based Hart Engineers provided system consulting
for Brazoria Telephone. President Robert Hart describes the decision
to invest in AIN infrastructure as primarily about control. Rather
than running switch software that remains under the control of
the vendor, Brazoria Telephone decided to unbundle the call processing
functions. The company previously installed a pair of Tekelec
signal transfer points (STPs), and is now installing the Stratus
service control point (SCP). The company considered the investment
worthwhile, regardless of the ability to provide services, because
of those control issues.
"The question is where's the value to the telephone company going to be 10 years from now," said Hart, "and we think it's going to be in that service control point. [Competitors] can bypass our wire, and they can bypass our switch, but I'll be damned if they're going to bypass our data. Calling name delivery, we think, will be a very big success. We can do customized calling name on a per subscriber basis, but as far as the money aspect of it, we visualize it as just unbundling capabilities that we already have."
The market also may be opening up for telcos with a less aggressive outlook than Brazoria Telephone. TCII President Pat Laurie says his company is currently talking to six other small telcos about their own AIN platforms.
"With a single application and a quarter of a million dollars
and up on hardware and software for a small telephone company,
it's not cost-effective," said Laurie. "But when they
have this strategy to initially buy the platform -- and we've
made it very cost effective to get into the basic AIN platform
-- then they can begin to migrate other applications, and even
develop some themselves. I think these small phone companies are
definitely going to look to the future and have their own platforms,
because they want to maintain their independence." Laurie
believes that calling name delivery is serving as a breakthrough
application, opening a window into that independent market. The
service is so popular, particularly given the introduction of
interstate Caller ID and widespread name sharing agreements among
carriers, that it can significantly reduce the risk of buying
infrastructure.
Once the hardware is installed, carriers can then use it to explore
other service opportunities with the luxury of having a successful
service already in place. TCII is counting on this strategy as
well. The company previously had concentrated primarily on custom
development for major carriers, but Laurie decided that calling
name could offer it an entry into a new market for AIN services.
TCII began development of its application in the summer of 1995,
and had it ready for deployment by Dec. 1, the date the FCC's
interstate Caller ID rules were originally to go into effect.
With hardware costs going down -- especially for the small-scale installations of independent telcos that can use a small computer with an SS7 interface as a simple SCP -- and the ability to place a service before consumers with less risk, the long-anticipated independent AIN market may at last materialize. (Derrel Duplechin, Hart Engineers, 504/927-6815; Pat Laurie, TCII, 214/349-6585)
[06-13-96 at 18:00 EDT, Copyright 1996, Phillips Publishing, Inc., File: d0613000.0sd]