The European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA) will next week announce a quality of service competition open to members offering services in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, which it hopes will raise awareness QoS issues in Europe’s carrier’s carrier sector. The competition will require entrants to apply QoS measurement systems supplied by London, UK-based Monnet UK Ltd, which claims to be able to mirror the real end to end experience of telecoms service users.
Since deregulation Europe’s long distance leased line market has been invaded by a plethora of companies offering often massively discounted rates for international routes, either over their own network infrastructure, as in the cases Global One, Equant and MCI WorldCom, or via a series of interconnect agreements with incumbents, carriers’ carriers or smaller local operators. Whether the operators are primarily on network suppliers, or interconnect operators, according to Monnet chief operating officer Simon Slater, each has an interest in highlighting the QoS status of their services.
For the on network suppliers such as WorldCom, which already uses Monnet monitoring systems, being able to offer an audited measure of QoS, covering aspects of both subjective quality (line echo and clarity issues) and network performance (such as call set up time) is a defensive opportunity, and a means of differentiating their higher rate services from the more deeply discounted offerings of smaller carriers. For the smaller players, being able to point at comparative quality performance should help them bid for higher rates, or at least identify parts of their service where quality may be an issue which you don’t actually find out about until someone complains said Slater.
ECTA and Monnet are charging all entrants a fee of 5,000 pounds ($8,071) per switch installation, and expect to attract between five and ten entrants in each country. The results of the competition will not be freely published, but entrants will have access to an indices of comparative QoS performance over specific routes, offering them the opportunity to publish their own ranking if it casts them in a good competitive light.
The competition will close on January 31 2000, and the results will be announced at an ECTA event in the spring.
