Every year for the past 11 years Lambdanet hosts the Lambdanet Forum where Carriers and Vendors exchange ideas, present forward-looking concepts, business strategies and cutting edge technologies. In its infancy this was a casual get-together, but now the Forum is a German institution. Today I braved the -11 Celsius temperature, hopped on a train and took part in the seminar.
The unintended overall theme of the Forum was the hard decisions facing Carriers today. Bandwidth usage is exploding. That bandwidth forces carriers to invest but the business models are broken. The content driving the bandwidth usage is high-value to everyone but the Carriers. The Carriers are expected to shoulder the network investment and lose out on monetizing the high-margin services. This forces an optimization in the network, technically and commercially. But, where to start?
One thing is clear, Carriers cannot continue with the business models refined in the last decade. There are a number of paths to choose and they all necessitate a radical change in strategy. We have known this for years. One of today’s presentations given by a carrier discussed the situation in detail and discussed possible models for success. More on this in a later post 
A discussion about the “Open Access Network Model” generated a lot of buzz and murmur in the audience. Advocates of the model such as the Board Member of Lambdanet on one side and detractors such as the Vice President of the German regulatory authority on the other. There was spirited debate ignited by pointed questions out of the audience.
Each of these topics will be discussed, in depth, in further posts this and next week.
