Open Market LCR – Still crazy after all these years!

In the world of interconnect voice, despite the wild machinations that take the industry from one giant evolutionary step to another, seemingly headed for a crash where all voice traffic will be entirely free, there remains one area of the business that continues to defy expectations and still offers opportunity.

In the voice interconnect market there are three primary arenas that companies can compete in:

Traffic Swaps
Bi-Laterals
Open-Market LCR

Traffic Swaps and Bi-laterals always seem to consume the bulk of the attention, energy, and investment for medium and large carriers. These have complexities that impose certain functional and accounting needs on an organization. Contrast this with the “Open-Market LCR”. This arena is where carriers compete in a commodity like spot market that changes daily. Because it is a “spot” market and functions like any spot market, carriers who are leveraging the right tool sets can take advantage of these opportunities and leverage their scale, speed, and nimbleness and realize performance gains that exceed market averages by 20 or even 30 Percent.

The open market LCR domain of the interconnect voice business is a crazy business. You have arbitragers, you have large traditional carriers, you have next gen communication companies, and you have rapid, disruptive technology evolution, all combining to make the marketplace crazy…even after all these years. All the cycles of consolidation, the rapid declines in ARPM and AMPM, the cannibalization of voice messaging by texting apps and OTT players, the market is still here and can still be used as a top line revenue driver and for the facilities-based carrier provide valuable returns on network assets.

Yes, it’s difficult, yes it requires a lot of work, yes it seems like it’s always getting close to the end, but like most contrarian things, it survives, it persists, and it still offers opportunity. Crazy right?