In the heat of the development of the collaborative economy, neutral or open access networks are gaining more and more space at the decision tables of service providers. This happens because they combine strong benefits that can allow them to start business processes much earlier than with their own deployment, with the consequent impact on cash flow.
Lucas Samyn, Product and Application Engineering for Southern Cone of Furukawa, explained in a workshop dedicated to this topic that “open access networks separate and segment physically and logically differentiated services and the owner of the network is not exactly a service provider . Even in the open access commercial model, the exhaustive participation or ownership of a state entity is not required, but they can be private networks and can operate privately under an open network model in a collaborative economy”.
Samyn observed that "a network owner provides local transportation to multiple service providers and each provider can offer its services at competitive prices, which greatly accelerates the strategies to reach the customer faster versus network deployment".
He also pointed out that the benefits of working with an open access network are many. "They can be seen at capex, at opex, and without the need for such a high investment, it is possible to start to develop networks, commercialize services very quickly and have an early subscription from users".
Neutral networks can also drive the development of smart cities, IoT and 5G. "Working on the concept of converged networks in parallel with that of neutral networks will bring added value when making these developments", stressed Samyn and added: "A neutral network is a smart investment, it is a network ready and prepared to support the market demand, greatly reducing ownership costs and arriving much faster and increasing business possibilities”.
Regarding some of the most outstanding characteristics of a neutral network, he said: "The network must always be multiservice, prepared to support point-to-point and point-multipoint connections". He also pointed out that in a neutral network three levels of planning should be focused: how will the operation of the network be, especially in the day-to-day operation scheme; what will the network technology be; what is going to be used in terms of network assets, how the passive network is going to work; and where will be the flexibility to give advantage to the different services that will be transported without losing speed and with low latency.