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The eternal
challenge
By Carol Wilson
There is one thing that has remained consistent in the 22 years I have
been writing about telecom, and that is the industry's search for
services that add value--and revenue--over and above the mere
transmission of voice or data. When I started writing about telecom,
that search was generating ISDN and advanced calling features such as
caller ID. Now, obviously, there is much more afoot.
But the basic problem remains for telecom service providers. They must
constantly be adding value or risk becoming the dreaded "dumb pipe." If
anything, the Internet has exacerbated that problem, since consumers
now
can use broadband connections--very high-speed dumb pipes--to get voice
service and video content as well, with no need to pay more to purchase
those from the company selling them the pipe. As wireless data
proliferates, and next-generation offerings deliver more bandwidth,
there is even a threat to the pipe business.
Where technology taketh away, it also giveth. The transition to an
all-IP network promises to give service providers new tools to enable
them to offer those higher-value services, and if they do so on a
timely
basis, and at a reasonable price, they can retain and even expand their
customer base. Those are some big "ifs," and there is little doubt that
the battle to add value will rage on indefinitely.
This first issue of our "Next-Gen Technologies at NXTcomm" newsletter
series looks at what service providers can expect to find at NXTcomm,
June 19-21 in Chicago, to help them address this eternal challenge.
E-mail me at cwilson3@telephonyonline.com.
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By Carol Wilson
Despite all the attention being given to IPTV, there is a world of IP
services that don't address just the consumer market. In fact, the
transition to an all-IP network has created a wealth of possibilities
that began with voice over IP and service convergence and now include
software as a service, presence-enabled services and more.
The real challenge for service providers has been identifying which IP
services they want to offer and developing both the underlying
capabilities and the ability to sell these new services...
Read more
of this story
|
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|
Carriers looking to lop more costs off the price they charge for
VoIP calls may soon have an interesting alternative: advertising. A
Turkish company called Argela Technologies is bringing its multimedia
"sponsored call" VoIP gateway to the U.S., demonstrating it at the IMS
Forum's booth at NXTcomm...
Read more of this story
|
Embarq Logistics, which will be exhibiting at NXTcomm, and
fiber equipment vendor Wave7 are deploying a fiber-to-the-premises
network for South Sioux City, Neb., customers of Long Lines, an
independent operating company serving more than 100 communities in
Iowa,
Nebraska and South Dakota...
Read more of this
story
|
The newest chairman and CEO of the largest U.S. telecom service
provider will get a coming-out party of sorts at NXTcomm next month.
Randall Stephenson, chosen last month by the AT&T Board of Directors to
replace the retiring Ed Whitacre as Chairman and CEO, is also taking
Whitacre's spot as a keynote speaker when NXTcomm debuts at Chicago's
McCormick Place, June 19-21...
Read more of this story
|
In January, Wayne Crawford assumed the position of executive
director of NXTcomm, the newly minted annual conference and exhibition
of USTelecom and the Telecommunications Industries Association.
Crawford
brings considerable trade show experience to a considerable
challenge--stage a major event that normally takes more than a year to
plan in only about six months. He spoke with Telephony's
Editor-at-Large Carol Wilson about what visitors to NXTcomm can expect.
Read more of this story
|
For service providers delivering IP-based triple-play services to
residential and enterprise customers, competition is intensifying. It
is
now imperative that they ensure last-mile service quality and service
performance to ensure a competitive advantage...
Read more of this
story
|
By Carol Wilson
Despite all the attention being given to IPTV, there is a world of IP
services that don't address just the consumer market. In fact, the
transition to an all-IP network has created a wealth of possibilities
that began with voice over IP and service convergence and now include
software as a service, presence-enabled services and more.
The real challenge for service providers has been identifying which IP
services they want to offer and developing both the underlying
capabilities and the ability to sell these new services.
"We are going through a little bit of a mind shift--service providers
have skills around selling core voice service," said Michael O'Hara,
general manager of Microsoft's Communications Sector. "They need a
little help learning how to sell other things. In our conversations,
they are saying they need services that they can get deployed over
these
networks, and that bridges onto, 'Can you help us sell those
services?'"
Microsoft is steering service provider customers to consider selling
"live" software packages--Windows Live, Office Live, Xbox Live--as
services that the software giant hosts in its data centers. On display
at NXTcomm will be those capabilities and Microsoft's Connected
Services
Sandbox, an environment in which service providers can test out new
applications.
"We have some good examples where people are out there in
implementation," O'Hara said. "Orange was concerned about revenue loss
from SMS. So we combined the Microsoft IM community--which is 240
million IDs--with Orange's 130 million telecom users across the world
and created an offering with a client on the PC and a client on the
mobile device that lets users click to call people, click to see video.
It's funded by subscription and by advertising, which creates a win-win
for both companies."
There are also more traditional IP service paths that build on expanded
capacity of core, metro and access networks. NXTcomm attendees can
expect to see major product releases from companies such as Redback
Networks, Juniper Networks, Occam Networks and others.
The goal of much of this effort is to not just add capacity but also to
add intelligence to enable more efficient service deployment, said
Arpit
Joshipura, vice president of product management for Redback. Much of
the
effort is being driven by IPTV, he added, but the service capacity can
also be used for other IP services, including wireless-wireline
convergence.
Similarly, core router upgrades are being driven by the need to deliver
video but also will take into account the need for more intelligence,
said Shailesh Shukla, vice president of service provider marketing and
partnerships at Juniper.
"We want to add intelligence in the core so you can do two things --
you
can manage traffic cost effectively so you can build networks that are
efficient, and you can enable the core to participate in actual service
delivery," he said.
As service providers extend the reach of IP, they also are in a better
position to deploy advanced offerings such as Ethernet at the edge of
the network. Increasingly, business customers--even small to mid-sized
businesses or large businesses with many smaller locations--are looking
to Ethernet services for greater efficiency.
"There are many ways to offer Ethernet," said Kevin Morgan, director of
marketing for Adtran's Carrier Division. "You can put in a DSLAM at
every access point in your network that is close to business users that
want it. That is expensive proposition."
What Adtran will be showing is the ability to do bonding of T-1s to
deliver faster Ethernet-based service using existing T-1s and T-3
links.
By changing out the customer premises equipment to a termination device
that does bonding at that location, Morgan said, service providers can
the "bring all those T-1s through your existing cloud to some
intelligent device to bond them for delivery over the IP-MPLS core."
Adtran is one of several vendors showing Ethernet-over-copper services
including Actelis, Atrica and Hatteras Networks.
Finally, the IPTV revolution also will reach into businesses, via
services such as videoconferencing, video SMS and interactive voice and
video response (IVVR), said Bill Bryant, director of marketing for
Dialogic. The company will be demonstrating IVVR, which is expected to
have appeal among the health care services and the insurance
industries,
as well as videoconferencing and video ringback tones for mobile
phones.
"Any industry that depends on taking pictures or show moving
pictures--such as a consumer could do of a car damaged in an
accident--could use streaming video over IP to do that," Bryant said.
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