• Understand Your Requirements: Service providers planning to deploy broadband equipment for their network should first decide whether they plan to do the deployment on their own or they plan to take the help of the vendor. Second, they should be clear as to what to deploy, as vague requirements can lead to additional costs, thereby increasing the capital expenditure.
• Total Cost of Ownership: Service providers opting for broadband solution should opt for a product that can lead to lower cost of ownership rather than opting for a product where the initial cost is low but one has to pay more when the complete solution is commissioned. One also has to see that when they deploy new product or services in the future, they are not charged premium by the vendors. One should also look at different kinds of upgrades that the company is working on and their timeframe of deployment.
• Long-term Commitment: With technology moving at a faster pace, lot of companies come up focusing on specific niches. But companies also disappear at the same pace as they do not keep pace with technology. So, service providers have to be very careful while finalizing a deal. Service providers should opt for a vendor that has a long-term commitment for the product and has a strong base in the country in terms of marketing, sales, engineering, and customer care.

It is better if the service providers can work with the vendor as a partner as it helps in deploying new products or application as and when the product is ready and it also helps in customization of the product according to the country’s requirement so that it is successful in the long run. Even service providers should be aware about the technology roadmap of the vendor.

• Application Suite: The broadband equipment vendor should support all kinds of applications in the triple play menu—voice, data, and video. All this will help service provider to mix and match services by lowering the initial cost of ownership for the user. The equipment should support multicast multicast group, layer 2 and layer 3 processing, quality of service, and prioritizing for different kinds of services. The broadband content has to be matched with delivery mechanism so that one can utilize the existing infrastructure thereby fully utilizing the initial investment.

• End-to-end Network Management: With networks becoming more complicated with the coming of triple play—voice, video, and data—service providers are finding it extremely difficult to manage the network due to different applications and increase in number of interfaces. Vendors who can provide end-to-end management have an advantage as one need not worry about the interface with other elements. One should see whether vendors can provide element management or complete network management. Also see whether billing-related things are also taken care as different customers will opt for a mix and match of services and one has to satisfy everybody.

• Scalability and Modularity: With subscribers and traffic increasing at a fast pace one should see whether the existing system is scalable and modular to meet the future demand. It should not only be scalable in terms of number of subscribers and traffic but also in terms of different applications that carriers plan to deploy in the future.

• Broadband Content: It seems service providers are focusing more on the equipment but less on the content. In order to get a high ARPU, the service providers should create an ecosystem, which will help in creating content that is applicable for that specific country.

Content should be a mix of serious and entertainment stuff. One can also have Internet based content. Service providers should join hands with content developers in working out a commercial agreement so that there is no problem of creative content, once the broadband is deployed is deployed by the service provider.