Qwest

NSN professional services a plus for carrier procurement zone strategy

The head of NSN’s North America operation said the company would be an LTE leader in North America, and said it rather emphatically, to be sure. The comments came at NSN’s analyst event this week, which was a parade of optimism on NSN’s prospects in the market, not only in North America but elsewhere.

NSN’s greatest strength is its professional services business, and second on the list comes its credibility with operators in multi-vendor integration. The company also has a strong service-layer story, though that story is built on tools used by its consulting and professional services staff to create one-off solutions for operators and not productized (at least for now).

The value of professionals services in the U.S. today is based on the procurement zone trend, already formally in place at AT&T, and in process (we’re told) at both Verizon and Qwest, and being considered even by Sprint. This program creates what’s effectively a mandatory systems integration position in each zone, which in turn means that those with strong capabilities in that area can expect to get a prime vendor position.

Qwest to go for delivery conduit, not content broker

Qwest suggested during its second-quarter earnings call that the company would be pursuing a video strategy that would make it less a content broker and more a delivery conduit. Just what the technology might be like is still up in the air.

We’re hearing that there are two approaches being considered. One would rely on a partnership with a satellite player (Qwest has a DirecTV deal now) for broadcast channels and use the Qwest network for video on demand (VoD). The other would be a pure play on OTT-like video based on Qwest CDN assets and local priority content distribution to the access network. We don’t think these two options are very far apart, and thus we believe something CDN-ish is going to happen at Qwest.