What is quad-play for the business market?

19 May 2015

[caption id="attachment_135" align="alignleft" width="128"]

Paul Heritage-Redpath, Product Manager[/caption]

We’ve all heard of quad-play with regards to the consumer market right, where phone, broadband, TV/content and mobile all come from a single provider? The high-profile mergers and acquisitions currently taking place within the mobile market – between BT and EE and also Three and O2 – are expected to be followed by a major push to encourage quad-play uptake by home users. But what about the business market? Is there a market for quad-play there and, if there is, what would the bundle look like? Traditionally, the consumer market always followed the business market with regards to adoption of the latest technologies and trends. But that’s changed over recent years and now it’s often the other way around. Consumers use a device, service or application at home, become familiar with it and then advocate its use in the workplace; that’s how BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) started and we’ve seen countless examples of it over recent years – VoIP, cloud computing, tablets and smart phones are just a few.

Where does quad-play come in? Quad-play in the consumer market is set to be big, especially as the structure of the mobile market will change completely following the proposed mergers or acquisitions of several key players, namely BT’s proposed purchase of EE and Three’s purchase of O2 UK from Telefonica. Consumer demand for ‘converged’ services from a single supplier is booming and it is good business sense for the carriers, as they benefit from a fundamentally more ‘sticky’ customer that is often tied into longer term contracts. We think quad-play for business could be equally important, but what would a quad-play for business include? Why would it appeal to customers and what would be the benefits of offering such a service for the reseller?? We have produced an eBook to explain how we think business quad-play will comprise of fixed connectivity, mobile, voice (traditional or IP) and IT infrastructure and how the reseller channel can take full advantage of this shift towards converged services from a single supplier.