A Virtual Network Operator (VNO) is a provider of management services and a reseller of network services from other telecommunications suppliers that does not own the telecommunication infrastructure. These network providers are categorized as virtual because they provide network services to customers without owning the underlying network. A VNO typically leases bandwidth at the wholesale rates from various telecom providers in order to provide solutions to their customers. The VNO concept is relatively new in the North American market when compared to the European and Asian markets.
Fully virtual VNO does not have any technical facilities or technical support, instead they rely on support delivered by infrastructure providers. VNO concept has received a lot of traction in the wireless industry as cost of infrastructure is substantial. Recently pressure on margins caused many wireline operators to consider going with VNO model and cut capital expenditures as well as staffing requirements to maintain and upgrade the infrastructure.
As the global networks have become more complex, an emerging field of telecommunications "Logistics" providers has developed. These companies assist in the management of large networks which span across multiple carriers much in the same way that the Virtual Network Operators had, but this new breed of services providers have been willing to build their own networks and own infrastructure.
Read more about Virtual Network Operator: See Also
Famous quotes containing the words virtual and/or network:
“Neither dead nor alive, the hostage is suspended by an incalculable outcome. It is not his destiny that awaits for him, nor his own death, but anonymous chance, which can only seem to him something absolutely arbitrary.... He is in a state of radical emergency, of virtual extermination.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)