.1 GENERAL This chapter is more task and target oriented than the previous general chapters. It inte- grates the three corners dealt with in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. Services are the merchandise of the telecom market. The end users consume and pay, the actors provide and sell and the network is the tool. The main goal of this chapter is to support the revenue side of the ROCE (return on capital employed) equation. Return is specified as revenue minus cost. This chapter is linked to Chapter 4 by means of Figure 4.31 (see also Figure 5.2), where revenue is represented by a consumer service list, an enterprise service list and possible additional Charging, affordability Chapter 5 Telecom business actor 2 End-user 1 Roles Business plan segments Identify Processes revenue Technical plans oppor- tunities Services Security Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 4 Elaborate service plan 7 Implement service 5 Identify Crucial for user solutions 6 Implement perception infrastructure Network Figure 5.1 Position of the chapter Understanding Changing Telecommunications - Building a Successful Telecom Business. Edited by A. Olsson © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd ISBN: 0-470-86851-1 Understanding Changing Telecommunications - Building a Successful Telecom Business Income enabler: services Consumer list Enterprise list Servers OPEX/ CAPEX Capital employed = Telecom network platform investments Figure 5.2 The importance of services as revenue generators in the ROCE equation income from servers to other actors. At the end of the chapter we will also connect the service plan to the network, since services may be prohibitively expensive when the network does not easily match the service requirements. Service-related cost effi- ciency is included, various ways of reducing the bandwidth requirement are explored. This type of feature, such as coding standards, can be regarded as 'economy of service' (EoS). (The overall EoS includes for example aggregation and concentrating devices as well.) EoS functions can often be regarded as a kind of middleware.