If you're a network operators or service network service, we don't need to tell you that to stay competitive, you need to offer more than a wide range of activities. If you're like most providers you're always looking for new ways to generate additional revenue without adding corresponding costs that erode margins.

Today, those challenges have intensified as a result of a rapid rise in consumer demand for broadband, according to a recent white paper from Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) titled "Teleconomics: Doing More with Less: The Key to Sustainable Business Models for Telecommunications."

The paper finds that consumers' endless hunger for multimedia services has consumers, enterprises and governments' consumption of video and multimedia content booming. "This trend makes high-quality broadband services increasingly important for maintaining customer loyalty," the paper advises, adding that in fact, "recent Alcatel-Lucent research found that consumers worldwide value their broadband connection more than any other network service.

There is a downside to all this wonderful growth, however. Bandwidth provisioning costs are rising as profit margins flatten, because much of today's video content is delivered over the Internet - "with new revenue going primarily to content and application providers, rather than service providers."

A high leverage network, therefore, "can help you deliver the broadband services customers want most while maintaining your profitability," the study finds. This network combines distributed intelligence with a simplified architecture, "giving you the capabilities required to do more with less."

According to Alcatel-Lucent officials, you can optimize bandwidth usage, streamline operations and use your existing networks to create new multimedia offerings, "as well as sustainable business models."

High leverage networks also give you a way to put bandwidth where it's needed, using fewer resources, the paper contends: "Their dynamic bandwidth management capabilities intelligently allocate your available network assets - providing bandwidth wherever it's required to maintain reliable performance."

As a result, these networks work for video, voice and data traffic streams, delivering a low total cost of ownership per transported bit.