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This aligns with my experience working at IBM. I knew Vodafone was a big customer, but I found the extent of that relationship peculiar; in presentations given

by krona 6y ago

This aligns with my experience working at IBM. I knew Vodafone was a big customer, but I found the extent of that relationship peculiar; in presentations given by senior engineers it came across that IBM seemed to running the core parts of their network. That can sometimes mean Vodafone engineers are barely allowed to touch anything without an IBM contractor on site. It got me thinking; who and what is really running these telecom networks and are they not much more than a branding exercise.

g_p 6y ago
This is more common than many think. Once a managed provider steps in, they want to "own" the configuration. You end up with the operator itself actually having to raise tickets with the MSP to change things on their own network. All this becomes a huge issue if there's a major outage, as the MSP might not have enough access to actually get in and do anything. Most telecoms networks are run (to some significant extent) by a managed service provider, in my experience. When O2 UK had a major core outage due to an Ericsson certificate expiry inside the core, it wasn't O2 engineers that found and fixed the issue; it was Ericsson engineers. The margins as an operator don't make it easy to keep around the deep technical skills to be an expert in the network you own.
- taurath 6y ago
  Operator margins in the US are enough to pay billions for media companies, at least. But maybe more competition is allowed in Europe.
  - g_p 6y ago
    There's definitely a "side of the pond" aspect to this - US operators pay for media companies, but they likely do so to raise their margins, and I presume they're borrowing the funds from institutional investors to do this, rather than bootstrapping their acquisitions with profits. In Europe you'll likely see far lower per-user pricing due to competition. You'll typically have 3 or 4 operators with physical networks, and a number of virtual operators providing white labelled service over the underlying networks. A standard target ARPU (average revenue per user) would probably be around 15 GBP per user per month. You'll likely get to that via contract users who you try to get on 22 GBP per month or thereabouts, and pay as you go users whose ARPU is far lower (maybe 8 or 10?) Compared with the US, consumer prices paid are incredibly cheap - expect unlimited calls and SMS, and many gigabytes of data. If you shop around you'll get even cheaper still. In the UK you'd be able to get unlimited 4G or 5G data for 25 GBP per month. Clearly the US has a much larger geography to cover, but there's definitely more competition leading to downward price pressure in Europe, in my view.
    - sbarre 6y ago
      Canada's average ARPU for mobile customers is like 60-70$ I think.
  - ixfo 6y ago
    More than allowed - in the EU at least, telecoms (wireline at least) is heavily regulated, and monopoly infrastructure providers (i.e. wire owners) are required to provide wholesale services and operate on those services for their own retail arms. Mobile operators have slightly less regulation in the way of competitition but there are similar requirements for vMNOS etc. So yeah, overall margins tend to be smaller and there's healthier competition overall, but telecoms is still flush with cash in general.
- johnchristopher 6y ago
  > You end up with the operator itself actually having to raise tickets with the MSP to change things on their own network. Once, I found out a contractor was so used to opening and closing tickets for themselves that they were actually gaming the system and using it as a way to correct payements for their services. Each payement went through at least two accounting services and yet it worked. Interesting discussions followed :-). They are still there.
pram 6y ago
If you’ve worked at an MSP, you realize this is the case with a lot of companies. I worked on the infra of a pretty major publisher and their full time staff literally didn’t know anything about their platform. All the websites had been written by contractors, and then the maintenance was handled by us. It’s actually insane.
- kazen44 6y ago
  Bert hubert has another great article that is referenced[0] [0]https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/ This article hits the nail on its head, and i can see it happening all around us, not only in the telcom/tech world. Boeing is a prime example for instance, but also the general death of manufacturing in the western world has resulted in this.
wil421 6y ago
I worked with Vodafone and AT&T for projects in Europe. It was a large company to that did some work with SDNs and were a MSP. Can confirm the endless chain of subcontractors when dealing with large Telcos. Europe in general has a fetish with subcontracting IT to the point where only the contractor’s can do it. Sometimes it’s the contractors’s contractor’s contractor who is the only one who can do anything.
- kazen44 6y ago
  this fetishization of contracting everything out to subcontractors has to do with the fact that most business schools teach one principle and one principle only. risk taking is a sin that will hurt your bottom line. subcontracting delegates that risk to someone else while leaving your company with little to no real staff that can do the innovation. in the short term this does not matter, because the company stays profitable, but long term this is resulting in a system in which no one has complete ownership and responsibility of their systems, which makes doing changes and innovating nearly impossible.
  - wil421 6y ago
    The US doesn’t do it quite as much. I was shocked how much some of the larger known European telcos and companies contract out. As in the entirety of their networking and most of their IT functions were outside.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      The US does it quite a bit. I think it depends on what sort of company you're working in. For instance, when I worked in US govt, best as I could tell all the real work was done by contractors and the govt employees sat around on their asses all day.
  - mindentropy 6y ago
    I have seen many European companies love big monopolistic giants like IBM or Microsoft. There is literally no respect for smaller innovative companies.
rcarmo 6y ago
IBM won a major outsourcing contract in the early 2000s for Southern Europe (I know, I was there). I can assure you that they did not run the network because of a) sheer literal incompetence (they did not have the skills, in multiple regards) and b) the deal was solely for IT workloads and on an exclusive basis, and that did prevent many Vodafone staffers from actually fixing the messes IBM created. (EDS won the northen countries, BTW, and I think things were marginally better with them, but either way, things soon reverted back to a more flexible arrangement because product development was severely hampered and most OpCos ended up rebuilding their IT systems)
- rcarmo 6y ago
  This is factual information, so why the downvote?
Spooky23 6y ago
Which is hilarious, as IBM outsources its own network to at least two entities as well. The IBM guy is probably connecting to Vodaphone through some AT&T managed tunnel.

by krona 6y ago

g_p 6y ago

This is more common than many think. Once a managed provider steps in, they want to "own" the configuration. You end up with the operator itself actually having to raise tickets with the MSP to change things on their own network. All this becomes a huge issue if there's a major outage, as the MSP might not have enough access to actually get in and do anything. Most telecoms networks are run (to some significant extent) by a managed service provider, in my experience. When O2 UK had a major core outage due to an Ericsson certificate expiry inside the core, it wasn't O2 engineers that found and fixed the issue; it was Ericsson engineers. The margins as an operator don't make it easy to keep around the deep technical skills to be an expert in the network you own.

taurath 6y ago
Operator margins in the US are enough to pay billions for media companies, at least. But maybe more competition is allowed in Europe.
- g_p 6y ago
  There's definitely a "side of the pond" aspect to this - US operators pay for media companies, but they likely do so to raise their margins, and I presume they're borrowing the funds from institutional investors to do this, rather than bootstrapping their acquisitions with profits. In Europe you'll likely see far lower per-user pricing due to competition. You'll typically have 3 or 4 operators with physical networks, and a number of virtual operators providing white labelled service over the underlying networks. A standard target ARPU (average revenue per user) would probably be around 15 GBP per user per month. You'll likely get to that via contract users who you try to get on 22 GBP per month or thereabouts, and pay as you go users whose ARPU is far lower (maybe 8 or 10?) Compared with the US, consumer prices paid are incredibly cheap - expect unlimited calls and SMS, and many gigabytes of data. If you shop around you'll get even cheaper still. In the UK you'd be able to get unlimited 4G or 5G data for 25 GBP per month. Clearly the US has a much larger geography to cover, but there's definitely more competition leading to downward price pressure in Europe, in my view.
  - sbarre 6y ago
    Canada's average ARPU for mobile customers is like 60-70$ I think.
- ixfo 6y ago
  More than allowed - in the EU at least, telecoms (wireline at least) is heavily regulated, and monopoly infrastructure providers (i.e. wire owners) are required to provide wholesale services and operate on those services for their own retail arms. Mobile operators have slightly less regulation in the way of competitition but there are similar requirements for vMNOS etc. So yeah, overall margins tend to be smaller and there's healthier competition overall, but telecoms is still flush with cash in general.
johnchristopher 6y ago
> You end up with the operator itself actually having to raise tickets with the MSP to change things on their own network. Once, I found out a contractor was so used to opening and closing tickets for themselves that they were actually gaming the system and using it as a way to correct payements for their services. Each payement went through at least two accounting services and yet it worked. Interesting discussions followed :-). They are still there.

pram 6y ago

If you’ve worked at an MSP, you realize this is the case with a lot of companies. I worked on the infra of a pretty major publisher and their full time staff literally didn’t know anything about their platform. All the websites had been written by contractors, and then the maintenance was handled by us. It’s actually insane.

kazen44 6y ago
Bert hubert has another great article that is referenced[0] [0]https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/ This article hits the nail on its head, and i can see it happening all around us, not only in the telcom/tech world. Boeing is a prime example for instance, but also the general death of manufacturing in the western world has resulted in this.

wil421 6y ago

I worked with Vodafone and AT&T for projects in Europe. It was a large company to that did some work with SDNs and were a MSP. Can confirm the endless chain of subcontractors when dealing with large Telcos. Europe in general has a fetish with subcontracting IT to the point where only the contractor’s can do it. Sometimes it’s the contractors’s contractor’s contractor who is the only one who can do anything.

kazen44 6y ago
this fetishization of contracting everything out to subcontractors has to do with the fact that most business schools teach one principle and one principle only. risk taking is a sin that will hurt your bottom line. subcontracting delegates that risk to someone else while leaving your company with little to no real staff that can do the innovation. in the short term this does not matter, because the company stays profitable, but long term this is resulting in a system in which no one has complete ownership and responsibility of their systems, which makes doing changes and innovating nearly impossible.
- wil421 6y ago
  The US doesn’t do it quite as much. I was shocked how much some of the larger known European telcos and companies contract out. As in the entirety of their networking and most of their IT functions were outside.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    The US does it quite a bit. I think it depends on what sort of company you're working in. For instance, when I worked in US govt, best as I could tell all the real work was done by contractors and the govt employees sat around on their asses all day.
- mindentropy 6y ago
  I have seen many European companies love big monopolistic giants like IBM or Microsoft. There is literally no respect for smaller innovative companies.

rcarmo 6y ago

IBM won a major outsourcing contract in the early 2000s for Southern Europe (I know, I was there). I can assure you that they did not run the network because of a) sheer literal incompetence (they did not have the skills, in multiple regards) and b) the deal was solely for IT workloads and on an exclusive basis, and that did prevent many Vodafone staffers from actually fixing the messes IBM created. (EDS won the northen countries, BTW, and I think things were marginally better with them, but either way, things soon reverted back to a more flexible arrangement because product development was severely hampered and most OpCos ended up rebuilding their IT systems)

rcarmo 6y ago
This is factual information, so why the downvote?

Spooky23 6y ago

Which is hilarious, as IBM outsources its own network to at least two entities as well. The IBM guy is probably connecting to Vodaphone through some AT&T managed tunnel.