We’d like to give you the chance meet key members of the KPN International team. This time we talk to Kees Boer, the Market Manager for our Wholesale market.

Kees is focused on the needs of KPN International’s carrier and ISP clients and has been in his current role for around 18 months. With 20 years in telecommunications and a real talent for finding solutions, Kees is highly valued by our clients.

His personal passion for telecommunications started young: as a child, Kees dialled around the world just to hear the operators speak!

You can also download the interview as a pdf-file at the bottom of this page.

Kees, what can you tell us about wholesale market focus at KPN International?
KPN International’s business is divided between wholesale and corporate markets. Our wholesale customers are mostly carriers and ISPs. We are a European player, focussed mainly on customers operating within the region but also serving organisations from outside Europe who need local connectivity.

Who are your clients?
Altogether we serve around 200 wholesale customers. It’s no surprise that KPN itself is a major client. Telefonica and Orange also account for a significant proportion of our business.

Business relationships are increasingly dynamic for all of us. You can work with KPN International as a partner or client in some countries, and as a competitor in others! It’s because this gets so complicated, that straight talking and reputation are important.

I am proud of the reputation KPN International has built as being a fair and reasonable company to do business with, and I do see this working in our favour in all our business dealings.

What is at the top of your clients’ list of priorities?
Cost. It’s not an original answer, but it’s what matters more than anything to our wholesale clients. Our clients make their profits by selling services on to their own customers, and we provide the products on which they need to add value.

The more that we can keep these base costs under control, the more opportunity they have to engage in profitable business. Margins are tight, and our clients are under a lot of pressure – if we can categorically demonstrate our ability to deliver cost-effectively, then they have a foundation on which they can build good business themselves.

So how do you reduce cost for your clients?
The key lies in process efficiency and simplicity. Whatever you do in business, you need to be able to stand back and understand the real costs. You need to be able to grasp not just the ‘list price’, but to see what any arrangement is going to cost you in terms of additional management and commitment.

KPN International wants to make it as easy and as direct as possible for our clients to do business with us. We want our terms and conditions to be absolutely clear and we want it to be easy for our clients to scope and define even the most extensive contract. This direct approach makes it easier to do business, and reduces costs as a result.

A clear and simple business style is about more than cost, surely?
Absolutely. It’s also the foundation of a respectful business relationship with your clients. When I am talking with our wholesale clients I want our discussions to be open, direct and professional – there’s no room for fluff. Clear communication helps people use their time effectively and this is a real sign of respect: if we can speedily bring a client to a mutually beneficial agreement without months of complex negotiation, it’s good for everybody.

‘Clear and simple’ is not just an attitude however - it’s also about organizational and operational behaviour. At KPN International we are deliberately organized with a very direct chain of command. This makes it easy to engage with the people with the relevant decision-making power and this is a real bonus for our clients. When a client wants to try something new or different, we can quickly engage with the people who are going to help make it happen.

Apart from pure cost, what other issues are really affecting your clients at the moment?
We are all concerned about the current business climate, but it is important to look at it with a cool head. There are two things which particularly stand out for me, and I see them both benefitting our industry.

The first is about flexibility and retention. We are seeing more demands for early termination clauses in our contracts. Although this is unsettling, there is a positive side too. It means that anybody with an incumbent relationship has to fight complacency harder than ever. It becomes essential to demonstrate value through greater responsiveness, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness – and this is good for us all.

The second issue is a general slowdown in technology evolution from telecommunications suppliers. This is not surprising – if revenues are down, then R&D, for example works on a smaller budget. We’ve seen this before. In the telco crunch five years ago, we saw development really slow down for a while.

Again, there is a positive side to this. A slowdown in development means that we can expect to see innovation levelling out across the industry to create a common platform for the next wave of business growth.

KPN International has recently announced its new 40 Gbit/s service – why is this good news for your clients?
It’s cost-effective: the 40 Gbit/s upgrade allows us to optimize network performance for our customers who can pass more traffic over the same bandwidth. It’s about future-readiness too. Even in the current climate, demand for high-volume digital communication of all kinds continues to grow. Our clients need to take advantage of that trend – and with the 40 Gbit/s capacity, we are ready.

One other thing about the upgrade which I find particularly satisfying – it shows we got it right. With our last major upgrade, we thought carefully about capacity and added what we thought our business could effectively absorb. Our latest upgrade shows that we set our targets correctly.

So, as partnership networks become more integrated, what are the risks to your clients?
As digital communications have become an increasingly critical component of our lives, the need to protect against outage becomes an absolute imperative. As a result, our clients are becoming increasingly sensitive to diversity. KPN International is used to being asked to provide information on its routes, but today, clients demand much more. We now need to provide real detail on both our own and our partner networks.

This is an issue for all providers who must find ways to share what was previously regarded as confidential information with competitors. We have a program in place to increase the diversity of our current network, and are actively working with our partners and competitors to achieve even greater levels of transparency.

And looking to the future?
There is no end to connection: more and more people being connected and sharing more and more ideas and content over a greater diversity of media and a greater range of devices.

Even in recession, increase in traffic and increase in opportunity won’t stop. The successful carriers and ISPs will be those who continue to anticipate demand, and who are able to satisfy it at the right time and the right cost.

Look for example at what we are doing with Next Generation Ethernet services and you see a platform which any service provider can present to its business customers even in today’s climate as a clear value-add.

On a personal level, the excitement and enthusiasm I had as a nine-year old is still pretty much the same. I am always impressed with what we achieve together with our clients. For example, we have been working for about 3 years with DFN in Germany to establish the scientific network which will be used by 2.5 million university students and researchers.

The results that these scientists will achieve in the coming years will be beyond belief. Our contribution is in their communications infrastructure, and that is something to feel good about.

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