Seven Key Hurdles to Ordering Wholesale Broadband Today, and How to Overcome Them

Many enterprises are implementing technologies such as cloud services, mobility, and edge computing. These technologies all place intense pressure on existing wide area networks. As a result, they’re moving towards Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) to deliver added capacity, greater agility, and improved application performance and security. In fact, the global Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) market size is expected to grow from USD 3.4 billion in 2022 to USD 13.7 billion by 2027, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 31.9%.

Communications service providers (CSPs) are feeling the ripple effect and looking for ways to change the way they deliver services. As the industry experiences more software-controlled service chains, networks will become even more complicated, extending beyond networks-as-a-service to slices of service. If buying and supplying individual connections is challenging, consider the impact of purchasing end-to-end slices from dozens of networks.

It all comes down to wholesale broadband

All this new technology is underpinned by broadband. Traditionally, businesses have relied upon Ethernet for network connectivity, and the switch to broadband has created some real challenges for carriers who support these customers. The demand is huge, but providing broadband isn’t as easy as it should be.

To meet current and future demand, providers must be able to buy and supply wholesale broadband connectivity quickly and profitably. According to our service provider survey, 92% of respondents said having a streamlined and automated system for ordering wholesale broadband is vital to help decrease network deployment times and protect margins. TransUnion Universal Order Connect (UOC) is an integrated, cloud-based platform that helps virtually eliminate manual activities involved in the buying and selling of broadband circuits.

Read the eBook: Decrease SD-WAN Deployment Time Frames and Protect Margins

Broadband ordering challenges

Enterprise customers are used to dealing with cloud providers and expect instant access to connectivity and services, but it’s generally not possible for a service provider network to cover every location. As a result, CSPs must work with other providers to meet the needs of delivering broadband to all their enterprise customer locations.

Extending broadband coverage over several different site geographies is complicated when service is needed outside a provider’s network footprint. The more sites to be connected, the more labor-intensive and unwieldy the process becomes.

For example, if a service provider has an enterprise customer with many hundreds of locations –there might be 50, 100, 200, or more that fall outside of their network footprint–the provider may have to deal with dozens of wholesale broadband suppliers to serve these off-network locations.

Legacy systems and processes often create huge bottlenecks and delays. It can take over seven weeks for service to be delivered, with 15% of orders canceled due to missing or inaccurate data because the process is so inefficient.

Just finding which providers serve the right locations with the right services at the right price can be an enormous challenge. And, when it comes time to place an order, each supplier has its own unique set of standards, terminology, order formats, delivery schedules, and procedures, making the process highly complex and time-consuming.  

7 Key Hurdles to Ordering Wholesale Broadband Today

1. Finding the right option in a market of more than 2,300 fixed in-ground, and 1,900 fixed-wireless suppliers
2. Reviewing quotes and maintaining terms, services, and pricing for every supplier
3. Turning quotes into orders in a format that the supplier understands
4. Chasing down suppliers through phone calls and emails to determine the status of each order
5. Managing and overseeing trouble tickets - and analyzing whether suppliers are complying with contracted terms
6. Tracking circuit inventory and monitoring critical dates once an order is complete
7. Working in separate systems - swiveling from one to the next

According to the Telecoms.com 2023 annual survey, the top three telecom priority investment areas in 2024 include, according to respondents were:

• AI  (44%)
• IoT (35%)
• Digital transformation (40%)

It's critical that the process for buying and selling wholesale connectivity is part of that digital transformation.

Solutions for transforming broadband ordering

To address this growing issue, we created a solution that helps overcome the challenges involved in the buying and selling of wholesale broadband. Universal Order Connect (UOC) enables service providers to:   

• Find ideal suppliers with a click of a button
• Centrally manage all partners and serviceable locations
• Support all wholesale access technologies and order types from one platform
• Obtain supplier quotes near-instantly and helps eliminate delays leading to lost business  
• Reduce duplication and order entry errors
• Speed order submission by auto-populating standard data fields
• Increase order visibility and tracking
• Connect to other systems through Open APIs / REST interface  
• Improve decision making with advanced analytics and reporting

Learn more about how Universal Order Connect (UOC) helps transform wholesale broadband ordering, and read the eBook: Decrease SD-WAN Deployment Time Frames and Protect Margins