If the telecom market seems like it's in a state of flux - you're right. According to a recent white paper from Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert), that's because 'traditional operators and emerging players vie for competitive advantage by delivering a wide array of new content and service offerings.'

Operators need a new strategy in order to differentiate and compete successfully, the paper finds: 'Instead of relying solely on the deployment of new technologies and rollout of new services, operators need to think in terms of adopting new strategic operations approaches and outsourcing business models.'

Among other useful content, the paper outlines several approaches:

Assistance and consolidation. This can be viewed as something like consultancy and support. The operator has decided to implement change management but not to outsource the processes to a partner; rather, the operator calls on the managed services partner for help in analyzing the processes, to propose the change that's needed, and to implement the change. The operator, meanwhile, maintains operation of the network, but begins to consider a managed services approach for operations with cost or technology challenges.

Outsourcing/Strategic collaborations. In this model the operator transfers a series of network- facing operations functions to the managed services partner. These functions can include network supervision, fault monitoring and trouble detection, network diagnostics, fault management and trouble ticket management and field operations and on-site management.

Build/Operate/Manage. BOM is a comprehensive multi-phase model that addresses an operator's need to cost- effectively plan, design, engineer, roll out, operate and manage a new network deployment. It comprises such phases as build (plan, design, planning, engineering, installation, integration, optimization, test and network turn-up), Operate and manage (monitor, fault management, field maintenance, repair, performance and configuration management) and eventual transfer (transition plan, knowledge transfer, transfer of assets, headcount and operational responsibility) to the operator.

Managed capacity. Here the operator contracts for a BOM or outsourcing option. But it combines services and network equipment in a creative pricing model with payments based on a unit of equipment or capacity, or on a percent of revenue. It is not a pay-as-you-grow option on equipment (that would be straightforward financing). Nor does the managed services provider assume 100 percent of the risk; rather, this model features a risk-sharing arrangement between partner and operator.