Global wholesale carriers are under pressure to accelerate the rollout of new services, reduce exposure to voice and migrate to new agile business models. Voice is being commoditized, bandwidth capacity requirements are becoming more complex even as demand continues to grow, and network and managed services have become vital to the outlook of the wholesale business. Wholesale providers also face changes in the nature of services demand with traditional customers’ requirements rising in complexity and with the advent of new sources of demand from OTTs, cloud providers, and MNCs.

Global wholesalers are seeking strategic M&A opportunities to expand solutions portfolio beyond voice, towards networks & managed services and VAS. M&As are also used as a tool for scaling up quickly and driving cost and sales synergies. Furthermore, M&As can allow access to an expanded geographical footprint, new network assets, and product capabilities.

An alternative strategy to M&As or building capabilities internally, resides in joining open ecosystem initiatives. These help wholesale providers access innovative capabilities in an agile and flexible plug & play mode and use them to power new digital end-user services.

Alongside traditional wholesale players’ transformation, global Internet players have entered the ecosystem, turning into their own wholesale providers to meet the rising international bandwidth requirements. Investing in their own undersea cable capacity is helping them reduce costs and gain greater control over the Internet traffic value chain.