Cable, wireless and now the servers: C&W goes ASP

2000-03-03

There seem to be two options on the cards for telcos today: consolidate or specialise. These options are not mutually exclusive, particularly for companies with an interest in keeping abreast of the latest developments.

One such company is Cable and Wireless. Despite a fair reputation as a telecommunications carrier, the company has thus far failed to make much of an impression in the Internet space. This all looks set to change with the announcement that C&W are to set up “the largest Web hosting centre in Europe.” The centre, which is to be located in Swindon, “will have the capacity to host every Web site currently running in the UK.” Whether this will still be true when the site is complete is unlikely, but so is the chance that C&W will host all of the sites in the UK. It is clearly the company’s intention, however, to grab a sizeable share of the hosting market, both nationally and internat9ionally. Similar sites are being set up elsewhere in Europe, in the US and in Japan.

So – what’s it all about? Hosting is such a passive word, hardly doing justice to the potential of such sites. The current model is that companies can run their Web sites on C&W servers, paying for guarantees of service such as availability and performance. In the future, this model will become much more complex, with infrastructure service providers partnering with providers of commerce services, application services and business services in order to provide a one-stop service shop for the eBusinesses of the future. C&W know their strengths – with a telecommunications background, they are ideally placed to provide infrastructure services with the necessary service guarantees. Once established as a hosting company, partnerships will prove the key to C&W’s continued success. To quote one film, “build it and they will come.”

Cable and Wireless are now the seventh largest carrier of international traffic in the world. This is not to be sniffed at, but neither does it give the company a place at the top table. By moving into Web hosting, C&W are lining themselves up to catch the next wave – that of service provision. This specialisation is a logical step for a company which does not want to become an also-ran of the communications revolution. By doing so, C&W are making themselves an attractive proposition for the global content-and-delivery giants such as MCI WorldCom, Vodafone Mannesmann and AOL Time Warner. To specialise can also be to consolidate.

(First published 3 March 2000)