Consumers today want, and often expect, things to ‘just work’. They look for simple, hassle-free, seamless experiences. Businesses need to meet this expectation to be successful.

According to the Global Brand Simplicity Index 2017, a survey of 14,000 consumers, providing simple experiences offers big returns on brand loyalty and share of wallet, with 64% of consumers willing to pay more for simpler experiences and 61% more likely to recommend a brand because it’s simple.

Businesses also seek simplicity. Streamlining operations means organisations can become more agile, reduce costs and dedicate more time to meeting their customers’ needs. These can all be critical advantages in a competitive market, such as broadband and voice service provision, where service providers need to stand out from the crowd.

At Telstra Wholesale, we have an important role in helping our customers grow their internet and voice businesses by enabling them to offer simpler, better nbn™experiences to their end users. This is where our combination of underlying technology and network services comes into play.

Since 2012, we have offered a Layer 3 broadband solution for our retail service provider customers. With Layer 3 architecture, we provide our customers with an end-to-end solution, in which we manage the network infrastructure and work with customers to create compelling voice and data plans. Customers adopting a Layer 2 architecture will use our underlying infrastructure but manage all the other elements of the services themselves.

In comparison to Layer 2, our Layer 3 architecture is operating more at an IT level.  

For many of our customers, a layer 3 architecture has several significant advantages. Here are three of the most important ones:
 

Layer 3 essentially gives our customers the ability to pair the expertise they have in their respective fields, with our experience in building and maintaining Australia’s network. 

A smoother end user experience

Today, many businesses compete primarily on the experience they offer customers. In fact, research by Gartner found that 89 per cent of businesses expect customer experience to be their primary differentiator. For those operating in a market like residential internet or voice, that experience starts with the setup of their service. This period often defines the end user’s overall perceptions of the provider. Layer 3 technologies enable internet and voice service providers to offer 'plug and play' setup. It is a fast, simple way for users to get connected. By minimising friction and customer pain points, it can help to build brand loyalty, word of mouth recommendation and repeat custom.

Simpler network management

By taking away the need to manage the network connectivity infrastructure, a Layer 3 network architecture enables businesses to spend more time creating and promoting their offerings and delivering great customer service. Layer 3 based services, such as our nbn™ resale solution, also make it quicker and easier to scale nationally because the core connectivity is already in place. Our customers using Layer 3 architectures also have the choice of providing their end users with their own CPE* (customer premises equipment) or having us provide the end user with a white-labelled gateway device. This can be particularly advantageous for businesses that don’t want to spend time and resources managing physical assets.

We have also offered national aggregation since we introduced our nbn™ resale solution to market in 2012, offering our customer the option to connect to aggregated nbn™ (and ADSL) services at a single point of presence.

Peace of mind built in

Allied to simpler operational management is the reassurance customers get from knowing that their offerings are underpinned by a fast, robust and reliable network. When we work with customers to provide them with Layer 3 architected solutions, they know that they are supported by a team of experts with decades of experience. Our network has been designed with future multimedia applications in mind, and our voice services today are delivered on a carrier-grade platform using nbn™ Traffic Class 1.

We have been helping businesses architect successful Layer 3 solutions for many years now and we've seen customers such as VirtuTel grow rapidly on the foundation of this proven technology.