Major opportunities knock on the door for
Virtual Network Operators as the traditional barriers to entry in the
satellite market space are significantly re-defined for today's
communication needs
Removing the barriers to entry
WWWT offers a variety of services directly to end customers.
However, at times there are those who want to host their own private
service in order to deliver Internet access and/or business connectivity
to their own clients. The reasons for this are varied and include:
Security, control and management for their own sites by their own IT staff.
Delivery of a service that is outside of the standard commercial
services, perhaps to support smaller antenna and transmission equipment
at remote sites, or larger carriers, or features such as mesh support
that are not part of the standard commercial service.
Organizations may want to run and operate their own commercial VSAT
service and isolate it from BusinessCom’s commercial services – perhaps
to target a particular market for which they offer a value-add.
Launching a new VSAT service can be a daunting affair. There are
considerations for high speed redundant backbone connectivity with
different Tier 1 Internet providers. There is all the expensive earth
station equipment – very large antennas and transmitters as well as
redundant components, power backup and support staff. These issues
could make private networks rather expensive to implement and
unrealistic for many, if not most clients. Space segment is expensive,
particularly when you don’t have existing relationships with the
satellite providers and volume discounts as a result of existing
commercial services. On-site staffing is required to manage and monitor
the system, with tasks that range from replacing failed components, to
sweeping snow off the earth station antennas.
Less financial outlay
The iDirect system is designed in a modular fashion such that a
client can set up a VNO (Virtual Network Operator) without incurring all
the startup expense of the Host Network Operator (HNO). A VNO customer
may purchase a VNO license and line cards for one or more slots in the
HNO’s iDirect Hub in order to run their own private network that is
completely isolated from the HNO’s network(s). The financial outlay for
this is much less since the client leverages the existing infrastructure
In most cases, the HNO provides the space segment (satellite
capacity) for the VNO, in addition to making the hub real estate and
teleport infrastructure available. WWWT deploys VNOs for a
variety of applications. In some cases the client may privately and
remotely manage their own VNO after sending their technicians to iDirect
for training, and in other cases, WWWT will provide VNO
management services so the client does not have to acquire technical
expertise which may be outside the scope of their primary business
model.
Utilizing configuration tools provided by iDirect, BusinessCom will
work with the VNO prospective client to help them determine how much
capacity they need to deliver a particular service based on criteria
such as carrier sizes, hardware sizes, service quality (oversubscription
ratios), type of traffic (voice, video, data) and budget.