Is broadband success a partner-or-perish proposition?

Broadband service providers need to get past their current mindset of doing everything themselves and consider the advantages of partnering with innovative service developers and offering broadband services on a wholesale basis, according to Yankee Group senior analyst Benoit Felten. Partnering to develop new services would speed up the relatively slow pace of new revenue-generating options today, while offering wholesale services increases the service penetration rate of high-cost fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks much faster than retailing alone will ever be able to do, said Felten. Many service providers in the US have made what Felten calls "dangerous technology bets that will haunt them for years," and of major service providers, only Verizon is pushing FTTH.