The trend for Communication Service Providers towards Digital Service Providers (CSPs to DSPs)
This article was first published on as a linked in article on 14th December.
Last week I attended the rather excellent & unique Great Telco Debate event, organised and orchestrated by TelecomTV and Lewis Insight , the premise of the event being a set of motions that are presented, discussed by a panel of experts and then voted on by the audience in attendance. Not a single corporate PowerPoint presentation in sight, the interaction is therefore lively and the debate is engaging.
Read more: The Debate: CSP to DSP Transformation.The first of these motions was the Telco to DSP migration is still a pipe dream, (I won’t disclose how the motion was voted on, you can watch that for yourself on TelecomTV website), which prompted discussion and soul searching from the industry to decide whether this is really happening or not or indeed whether telcos can be successful in the migration. The key drivers towards becoming a DSP are basically
- to move up the value chain away from just connectivity services towards the traditional telco enterprise customers,
- the need to improve at delivering services to the enterprise customer and,
- help in customers automation and digitalisation journeys.
As a new greenfield “telco” on the block, ConnectiviTree (CTree) is somewhat bucking the trend of this laboured and honestly to date less than successful move away from pure connectivity to digital services. Instead focussing on creating value within the connectivity layer, specifically international, cross border high capacity, low latency and secure data transport for the telco industry. This value is created through automating that process and delivery, making it simple to consume and providing global scale, allowing Telcos to focus on enhancing their service offering to the enterprise market and enabling that transition to a DSP.
During the discussion in London, it was noted that in order to succeed in this migration to becoming a DSP, the CSP needs to be omnipresent, whereas at present, telco is fixed to a geography with their product and service offerings and providing the global scale for their enterprise customers is challenging and time consuming, far from automated and often a manual bespoke process. Our focus at CTree is purely on that international data transport, we are intentionally keeping the service offering to the telco & partner sector simple and focused at that connectivity layer to address the pain points in that journey from CSP to DSP.
As Chris Lewis quipped during the debate, maybe the right term is not DSP but ESP, Enabling Service Provider, I do like to think of us at CTree as enabling the telco, carrier, CSP or DSP, (however they wish to identify) to make that journey of providing to their enterprise customers the “as a service” experience that they need.
Thanks to Chris Lewis & Graham Wilde for positioning the motions of the day, to Ray Le Maistre & Guy Daniels who led the discussions and panels.
Congratulations to the TelecomTV team for an excellent day of conversation and engagement.