“Today’s competitive broadband market requires providers to be creative in their product offering.” explains Entanet’s General Manager, Elsa Chen. “Broadband resellers who have grown their customer base to a few hundred connections and are currently reselling standard retail packages from their provider, should consider the potential commercial benefits of establishing a wholesale relationship. The ability to tailor their broadband packages to meet the specific needs of their target customer base is critical in winning and retaining business in this market. Traditionally, the required technical investment was a significant barrier to making the transition to wholesale provider, but this is no longer necessarily the case.”
Entanet’s wholesale broadband offering, EWCS (Entanet Wholesale Carrier Services) Broadband enables channel resellers to provide broadband services under their own brand and in their own range of packages using L2TP (Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol) technology, which enables the bulk delivery of ADSL and/or ADSL2+ connections over Entanet’s national next generation network.
ISPs that are already supplying their own channel of reseller partners using either IPStream Centrals or LLU partnerships can also benefit from Entanet’s EWCS Broadband. Entanet’s significant and pioneering involvement in BT’s 21st Century Network and expansion of its own fully resilient national next generation network, means that all partners can deliver the latest technologies whilst easily managing their bandwidth costs and requirements.
Entanet invested heavily in its national network by covering all 20 WBC (Wholesale Broadband Connect) nodes that form BT’s 21st Century Network. The fully-resilient Entanet network stretches from Glasgow to London with further connectivity into Europe. This enables Entanet and its partners to provide a range of high quality voice and data services and accept individual connections onto its own network in order to deliver flexible and innovative solutions. Through this commitment, Entanet has become known as a pioneer in the UK Internet industry and became the first provider to launch 21CN based ADSL2+ products and utilise IPStream Connect.
Chen adds: “With EWCS Broadband our partners can enjoy all of the benefits of becoming a wholesale provider whilst minimising the investment usually required. Entanet has made significant investment in developing its own national next generation network which means that our channel partners can make the transition to a wholesale model easily and cost-effectively without the need to make their own capital investments or take on any significant levels of risk.”
When developing its EWCS Broadband offering, Entanet recognised the varying technical, financial and operational requirements of its wholesale partners. Subsequently, Entanet developed two wholesale options, both available as a managed or unmanaged solution, to cater for varying levels of technical expertise. The Fixed Model provides partners with the lowest cost available per Mbps, regardless of the bandwidth commitment. A one-off setup fee and an annual management charge is required, with the benefit of a constant price for each Mbps of bandwidth consumed. Alternatively, the Flexi Model is available to partners wanting to avoid up-front capital expenditure and/or annual management fees with a per-Mbps bandwidth cost dependent on the level of commit. The higher the bandwidth commit, the lower the cost per Mbps. Both options are billed on a fair 95th percentile basis; provide competitive bandwidth pricing and low CAPEX options; they also provide two interconnect ports ensuring resiliency; and include a flexible three-month ‘settling in’ period.