Around the world, markets are economically fluctuating. This fact certainly rings true for the European market. Enterprises across all markets are strategizing ways to prevail during these difficult times. Despite the rollercoaster trends of the current European market, one company in the telecommunications industry is fully prepared. Simon Vye, Regional Director for Western Europe at TeliaSonera International Carrier, a leading global IP carrier that operates a wholly owned fiber optic network connecting 200 Point of Presence (PoPs) across Europe, North America and Asia, recently sat down for an interview with Capacity TV to discuss the challenges of operating in today’s European market.
To watch the complete interview, click here.
Challenges of Operating in a Fluctuating European Environment
(Moderator: Kavit Majithia of Capacity Magazine):
Today on Capacity TV, we have Simon Vye, Regional Director Western Europe at TeliaSonera International Carrier. Simon, welcome to Capacity TV.
What do you believe are the present challenges of operating Europe considering its fluctuating economic climate?
It’s always difficult times for us it seems in Europe for the moment. Certainly the pricing pressures that we have and the margin pressures that we have are ever increasing. But that said we do see a doubling of bandwidth requirements from the Nordics right down across the region to Spain. That doubling is every 12 to 18 months. As well as that, we are constantly trying to find new and innovative services, and certainly some of our customers have been looking to us to provide broader, greater services such as Total Network Outsourcing. We have done a few pieces of businesses this year; Facebook and Ross Telecom come to mind, where they have outsourced their infrastructure to us and up into the Nordics.
How do you believe European operators can address the issues of saturation in the market?
Well for TeliaSonera, saturation is a little bit of a double edged sword. With 17 to 18 million eyeballs and end-users on our networks worldwide at a group level, saturation is a good thing; it drives growth for us. But at the international level, saturation means increased competition. So we have to constantly strive to differentiate ourselves. So, we are constantly looking to be the most attractive partner for content providers, mobile operators, and fixed carriers. We combine that with innovative services, but also award-winning customer care, service management, and after sales in general.
In keeping with the theme of differentiation, what developments will you be making over the next year?
Well, its busy times at TeliaSonera right now. Yesterday, we launched our 100 gig network offering across the US. We are striving very hard and are busy at the moment to roll that out across Europe. So pretty quickly we are going towards 100 gig on our backbone. We are constantly developing products; we have a new Ethernet offering coming out shortly. We are involved in a lot of work with IPX. We are constantly rolling out new points of presence in Europe. So it is really everything from the network, to the products, to the infrastructure that it all sits on.
As one of the most developed next generation markets in Europe, how is TeliaSonera addressing day-to-day demands in the Nordics?
You’re right the Nordics is a very advanced telecommunications environment. Indeed, TeliaSonera was the first world-wide to launch 4G services. Also, across the Nordics, Fiber to the Home is a very advanced and commonplace technology used these days. The amount of investment that goes into the infrastructure in the Nordics is quite phenomenal. Another interesting fact that is happening at the moment is that companies like Facebook and Ross Telecom are choosing the Nordics for their data center; so the Nordics is also becoming a quite a data center destination.
To learn more about TeliaSonera International Carrier, visit www.teliasoneraic.com.