Network as a Strategic Asset: A New Frontier for TEM

For most of its history, Telecom Expense Management (TEM) has served a very specific type of customer: the traditional enterprise that buys WAN access, Internet connectivity, mobile services, and MPLS circuits to connect offices and users. TEM platforms were designed to answer financial questions. What do we have? Where is it? Who bills us? How much are we paying? Are we paying correctly? Can we optimize it?

The model worked well for two decades.

But a new category of buyers has emerged. Companies that don't just consume network services, they operate networks as part of their core infrastructure strategy. These organizations build and maintain high-performance backbone networks across data centers, cloud regions, colocation facilities, subsea routers, and long-haul fiber. For them, connectivity isn't just a cost center, it is a strategic asset that drives performance, reliability, and revenue.

Traditional TEM is not built for these buyers. And as infrastructure scale increases, the gap becomes more obvious.

The New Infrastructure-Centric Buyer

These companies typically invest in:

• dark fiber and fiber pairs

• subsea cables

• metro and long-haul transport

• data center interconnects

• cross-connects in colo facilities

• cloud interconnect and edge presence

• backbone capacity

• leased circuits and wavelengths

They are not simply providing users with Internet access. They are supporting distributed compute, AI training, replication, storage, data ingestion, and application delivery.

In this world, the network is not a bill, it is a supply chain for compute.

What Traditional TEM Does Well

It's important to recognize that TEM brings real strengths:

• Circuit inventory

• Billing validation and disputes

• Contract/tariff management

• Benchmarking and optimization

• Chargeback and allocation

• Budgeting and forecasting

These functions are still relevant. The issue is not that TEM is wrong, it's that TEM is incomplete for a different buyer archetype.

Where Traditional TEM Stops

TEM today is almost entirely focused on the financial layer, which exits alongside the network but does not describe the network itself.

To illustrate this, consider a simplified layer model:

Layer 0 - Fiber/Right-of-way

Layer 1 - Optical transport

Layer 2 - Ethernet/MPLS/VXLAN

Layer 3 - IP routing & addressing

Layer 4-7 - Services & applications

Financial Layer - Contracts, billing, budgeting

TEM sits almost exclusively in the Financial Layer, and partially in Layer 2 (circuits). But infrastructure-centric buyers operate across all of the technical layers.

This gap is why a circuit inventory alone no longer satisfies them.

The Missing Concept: Topology and Dependency

The most important capability TEM lacks today is topology - an understanding of how network assets connect, depend on each other, and support higher-layer services.

A circuit ID can tell you what exists. It cannot tell you:

• what data center it connects to

• what region it supports

• what AZ backhaul it carries

• what services ride on top of it

• what its failover path are

• how it impacts latency

• what depends on it during outage events

For infrastructure buyer, this context matters far more than the invoice.

New Requirements for the Infrastructure Era

To support this new buyer class, TEM platforms need to evolve into network asset intelligence, incorporating capability such as:

1. Topology Awareness - Mapping how links, nodes, data centers, cloud regions, and cross-connects interrelate. Not just listing them.

2. Capacity and Utilization Visibility - Cost without utilization is incomplete. Infrastructure buyers need to know how much capacity is actually being consumed and where.

3. Vendor and Route Risk Modeling - Understanding concentration risk, diversity, and geopolitical dependencies across providers and physical routes.

4. Colo and DCIM Integration - Colocation cross-connects, cages, meet-me rooms, and AZ presence are now first-class assets.

5. Performance Correlation - Latency and availability increasingly affect revenue and application performance, not just SLAs.

6. Hierarchical Inventory - Moving from flat circuit lists to multi-layer network models that reflect physical, logical, and service relationships.

These capabilities push TEM from "what does it cost?" to "what is it, how does it work, and what does it enable?"

Why This Evolution Is Happening Now

There are three macro forces driving the shift:

1. AI and distributed compute - Data no longer lives in one place; training and inference traffic creates massive east-west demand.

2. Cloud regionalization - More AZs, more edge locations, more replication paths, more colocation, more interconnect complexity.

3. Vendor dependency and geopolitical risk - Who owns fiber, capable landing stations, optic routes, and subsea assets now matters strategically.

The companies on the front edge simply got there first.

The Opportunity for TEM Providers

This shift does not eliminate TEM. It expands it.

The winning TEM platform of the next decade will blend:

• financial inventory

• technical topology

• utilization + performance data

• vendor risk modeling

• and analytical intelligence

into a unified system of record for network assets.

For infrastructure-centric buyers, that system would become invaluable.

Conclusion

They buyers are changing. Networks are changing. The economics are changing. Traditional TEM was built for a world where connectivity was purchased, not operated. But as more companies treat networks as strategic infrastructure, the expectations placed on TEM will grow.

The future of TEM is not just about managing telecom expenses. It is about understanding the network as an asset.

And those who evolved in that direction will have an entirely new market waiting for them.