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By
Gary
Kim
To what extent are sales of “long haul capacity”
products important for channel partners? Arriving at
a clear answer is harder than you might think, for
all sorts of reasons.
Among those reasons, modern communica-
tions increasingly are cloud and Internet based,
and enterprise requirements therefore are for
high-capacity but local connections. At the same
time, much long haul capacity now is removed
from the “public market,” and where long haul is
necessary, prices have tumbled. Meanwhile, there
is less enterprise demand for long haul capacity
to support voice and data, and some charges now
are indirect (capacity is built into the cost of buy-
ing other services).
For all those reasons, wholesale and retail long
haul markets arguably are smaller than they used
to be, even if more traffic is carried.
Decades ago, enterprises purchased long haul
services such as T1s and DS3s, both to support
their data and voice operations. Today, enterprises
are more likely to buy dedicated Internet access or
ports. In other words, businesses these days are
more likely to buy “local access” service to an Inter-
net point of presence, and less likely to buy dedi-
cated bandwidth services “across the Internet.”
A
re U.S. businesses spending more – or less – on
“telecommunications” services such as wholesale
or retail long haul capacity?
What’s
happened
to long haul?
Zettabytes
Channel
Vision
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March - April, 2017
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