Wholesale telecoms carriers have a significant opportunity for growth by delivering managed services, according to an independent market analyst firm.

In a new report, Ovum said that the market for outsourced managed services is still very young, but it is an area with much growth potential.

According to its findings, the move to delivering value-added services will ensure customer loyalty, improve margins and encourage longer-term contracts. It also enables intermediaries to benefit from wholesale carriers' lower costs, greater efficiencies and expertise.

Paris Burstyn, Ovum senior analyst and author of the report, said, "There is a significant growth opportunity for wholesale carriers with the necessary network resources and skills to deliver managed services to network operators and other intermediaries.

"The market is only just starting to take shape but we expect carriers to quickly move beyond commodity bandwidth to providing value added services."

Mr Burstyn said the managed services provided by wholesale carriers are built from those that they provide for their own needs, for example security and data centers.

"Leveraging them to deliver integrated wholesale managed services to intermediaries represents a natural evolutionary step in developing new business."

According to the report, there is significant demand for the services wholesale carriers can offer.

"We expect the world's major telecoms players to support a growing range of managed wholesale services that build on their network infrastructure, connectivity and in-house skills to encompass a range of applications and bundled services," said Mr Burstyn.

He said it is not just service providers that are keen to tap into wholesale carriers' many strengths in the managed services arena, but also Web 2.0 enterprises such as social networking sites, web applications and video-sharing sites.

"While Web 2.0 enterprises only represent a small portion of the current market, they can use wholesale carriers' managed services to deliver applications, content and other products to their customers, allowing them to focus on their businesses while the wholesaler runs the foundation network."