There’s nothing wrong with being a bit different

It doesn’t matter how old you are or how long your business has been around, we are all millennials now. By that, we mean we all have to become digital natives, such is the scale of change we are facing. Telecommunications services are now starting to touch everything around us, every industry. We are increasingly used to seeing this in the home, with digital TV, remote controlled heating and a growing range of internet-enabled devices. According to research from Deloitte, 92% of the population own a smartphone. Broadband is becoming a necessity. According to Ofcom, the total number of fixed broadband connections increased by 2.2% to 25.3 million in 2016, driven by growth in the number of fibre and cable broadband lines.

All this growth and shift to cloud-based digital services has already changed the way we live and communicate and it’s going to keep accelerating. In the telecommunications industry we have been aware of change for many years now, initially triggered by voice and data convergence. With the internet of things (IoT) and increased machine-to-machine communication this change is dramatic. Telecommunications services are becoming the most critical piece of infrastructure on the planet, as organisations of all shapes and sizes increasingly rely on data from devices to make decisions, or even save lives.

This is why we have invested heavily in R&D, developing solutions that help customers develop, deploy and manage services that take advantage of new technologies. Whether it’s working in smart city development or logistics, we have evolved into a business that can not only provide the backbone, the traditional voice and data services that partners and customers have relied upon for years, but also new technologies and forward-thinking innovation.

We are supporting customers on their own transformational journeys, helping them cope with the insatiable demand for bandwidth but also working as an outsource partner, where they can take advantage of our ability to scale, our range of wholesale and hosted products and services and of course our resilient network and on-going innovation.

Our professional services can help resellers navigate the challenges of modern business, helping them invest in areas which will have the maximum impact, with BT Wholesale there as a guide and product and service support partner.

Clearly part of this support is providing the latest technologies that can help resellers’ and their customers transition smoothly to products and services that will enhance their own businesses. Technologies such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) are changing the way in which businesses of all sizes access fundamental voice and data services. By developing an evolution from traditional and expensive hardware to more virtualized infrastructures, BT Wholesale is at the cutting edge of modern business.

NFV in particular will prove to be a real game changer. While SDN offers businesses fluid and dynamic data and bandwidth management, NFV removes the cost and complexity of hardware at the edge of a network, such as voice boxes, firewall and so on, and puts it in the cloud. We offer those customers the intelligence of all those at the edge services in one, hosted server.

These cutting edge technologies are not just nice-to-haves either. The on-demand economy is changing the face of modern business, so we have to develop infrastructures that cannot just cope but can help businesses thrive. The whole ICT ecosystem is changing. It’s no longer about just voice and data. There is convergence within infrastructures, which can be complex and challenging and expensive if you get it wrong.

This is why BT Wholesale is evolving, innovating, solving problems and developing new ideas that will help our partners flourish. We are different, more so than ever before and that’s a strength. Given our scale, our incredible range of products and services, our depth of knowledge of fixed and mobile networks and our ability to continually innovate, we believe we are the partner of choice.