Three bolsters wholesale ambitions with Pareteum partnership

Three UK has announced a new partnership with Platform-as-a-Service provider Pareteum as it searches for new revenues in the wholesale segment.

The multi-year partnership with Pareteum will see the telco push further into the wholesale world, with the ambition to attract new mobile and IOT services onto the new network. For a company which is almost exclusively known for consumer operations, the growing appetite for connectivity in every aspect and element of today’s society is an attractive prospect to grow revenues.

“We are really excited about the opportunity that this partnership delivers,” said Darren King Head of Wholesale Business Development. “We have significant growth ambition in the IoT and Enterprise Communications markets and Pareteum brings global scale and proven capabilities.”

To provide some context, whole connections currently account for roughly 12% of the traffic which is currently traversing over the Three network. Considering the telco believes capacity on its network could increase by 28X over the coming years, there is an opportunity for Three to bag additional profits.

Across the Three business, there has been a push into new areas. Perhaps the source of these ambitions can be linked back to the connectivity landscape; the smartphone market has exceeded 100% of the UK population and consumers want to see their monthly bills come down, while expecting more from the tariffs. It is becoming increasingly difficult to make money if you are a business which is purely focused on the mobile segment.

While this does not create the most comfortable of pictures for MNOs, the Three management team have set high expectations over the next few years; the business is expected to double in size. This means double the connections on the network, double the number of subscribers, double the annual and double EBITDA.

To meet these expectations enterprise is an area of growth, the UK Broadband team is working hard in the campus network space, fixed-wireless access takes it into the broadband arena, there are already 800,000 subscribers, and King’s efforts here will bolster efforts in the wholesale segment. If Three is to meet the monstrous objectives, all of these ventures will have to be on-point.

And while it is still early days, there is progress being made. There is currently a dedicated team of 40, working alongside other employees in the wider Three business, while numerous partnerships are already in place. In search of growth in the enterprise IOT world, Three Wholesale currently has partnerships in place with the likes of Gamma, ARM, Wireless Logic and AT&T.

However, it is in the consumer MVNO segment which the Pareteum partnership enables. The current relationship with SuperDrug is an excellent example. This is an organization which has ambitions to offer connectivity orientated products to its customers, but it doesn’t have the know-how. Pareteum can provide the platform, Three the network and both can aid with the business.

For Three, the challenge here will be to enter into a market which is already incredibly competitive. It is coming late to the party, though there are certainly some interesting elements to the Three business. The team constantly talks about the advantages of its contiguous spectrum assets and a nationwide footprint of 20 datacentres enable the team to create edge solutions closer to the customer. With low latency soon to become a demand of customers, this could certainly add some muscle to the Three network.

With 5G on the horizon, and the IOT segment continuing to gather steam, connectivity is forcing its way into almost every business model and product design. Three has certainly outlined some bold ambitions, and the only way it can live up to these promises is through the business diversification which is gathering momentum.