In order to regain competitiveness and enhance profitability, wireline and broadband service providers must quickly reinvent their business and leverage on existing infrastructure and customer relationships to provide attractive service offerings with superior quality, says Ericsson.

According to Hans Calminder, Ericsson’s Asia Pacific Head of Sales for Business Unit Systems, mobile substitution and churn, as well as slow broadband take-up, have long affected traditional wireline and broadband operators. The emergence of new players with a multitude of service offerings such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), IPTV and Interactive TV will further aggravate this situation if the operators continue to rely on traditional models, he adds.

He believes that new trends in the way people communicate, organise and manage their personal and professional lives will create a new home and enterprise phenomenon – the Connected Home and the Networked Enterprise.

At the same time, the continuous rise in PC usage, the advent of media servers, and the mass availability of network-enabled digital audio devices, cameras and video recorders in the enterprise and consumer markets will boost the interest and need for high performance broadband services. This has led to many operators exploring the potential of triple play – a converged service of voice (telephony), data (internet) and video (TV) from both enterprise and home users – as a strategy for future growth.

Addressing reporters in Cyberjaya today, Calminder elaborates: “Traditional wireline and broadband providers are well positioned to capture this new business opportunity. As long-time players, they have secured a strong foothold in the home and enterprise markets.

“It is critical that the operators are prepared and ready for convergence of services over the Internet Protocol (IP). Once the all-IP infrastructure is in place, they will be well positioned to provide the advanced high performance broadband services that are demanded by the consumers while staying one step ahead of the competitors. ”

Calminder also said that with high performance broadband in place, wireline and broadband providers can generate new revenue streams and profits by offering a new range of sophisticated services like IPTV, multimedia telephony, content sharing, real-time office collaboration and e-commerce with superior quality.

“This will supplement traditional revenues which are currently derived from services based on minutes-of-usage charges and subscriptions,” he adds.

President of Ericsson South East Asia and Country Manager or Ericsson Malaysia, Jan Signell, says: “Having attractive and value-added services bundled together will attract new broadband users, thereby increasing broadband penetration in Malaysia. This is in line with the government’s goal to grow the country’s broadband penetration from the current 1% to 40% by the year 2008.”

“Ericsson is fully committed to support Malaysian wireline incumbents in their drive to stimulate and capture the market. We will leverage on our technology leadership and global experience to assist operators in offering high-speed connectivity to their customers as well as value-added services,” adds Signell.

With leading solutions like Telephony Softswitch, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Ethernet DSL Access (EDA), Ericsson is at the forefront of high performance broadband, allowing operators to implement services beyond triple play, taking advantage of the growing demand for innovative and advanced services, and the evolution to all-IP networks.

As the world’s largest telecom services provider, Ericsson’s unique expertise is based on technology leadership, business understanding and extensive experience of managing telecoms-grade, carrier-class projects and multi-vendor networks. The current track record spans over 275 turnkey networks in 140 countries and over 400 multi-vendor network integration projects covering 25 different vendors. The full range of services include; business and technology consulting and optimisation, solutions analysis and design, solutions integration, data migration and multi-vendor verification, project management and ancillary support services ranging from product support to solutions and life cycle management.

Earlier this week, Ericsson announced that TIME dotCom has selected Ericsson’s IP-DSLAM Ethernet DSL Access (EDA) solution to upgrade its existing network to provide high performance broadband services to its customers in major commercial and business areas in Klang Valley, Northern and Southern parts of Malaysia. With the contract, TIME dotcom will become the first wireline and broadband service provider in Malaysia to introduce and offer advanced high performance broadband services.

Ericsson is shaping the future of Mobile and Broadband Internet communications through its continuous technology leadership. Providing innovative solutions in more than 140 countries, Ericsson is helping to create the most powerful communication companies in the world.

Read more at http://www.ericsson.com/press

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Azlyn Abd Rahman, Media Relations, Ericsson Malaysia
Phone: +60 3 8314 6066; Fax: +60 3 8314 6069