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January 30, 2008

A Taste of Telecom Diversity

This week's post is about a fascinating trip I've been on in Asia these last couple of weeks - visiting Indonesia, Vietnam, India & Thailand. Each of these countries is going through tremendous transformation and the network infrastructure is key to them propelling themselves to a much stronger position in the world. The state of the telecom infrastructure for each of these countries could be topics of a blog or book, so let me focus this post on Vietnam.

Getting off the plane in Hanoi reminded me of my first visit to Beijing in 1996 - the airport, the officials, the process all seemed to be similar to what I recall in my first visit to China. Leaving the airport in the taxi, I suddenly felt that I had arrived in Bangalore - small streets that are packed with cars, motorcycles, scooters and other transports. The ride from the airport to the hotel took about 1.5 hours in which I had time to ponder the current state of local economy, telecom market and infrastructure in Vietnam.

Vietnam has a population of over 80million, has 61 provinces and 3 major cities. The local economy is healthy and there is a large and growing presence of multinational companies investing heavily locally in manufacturing plants - companies ranging from Canon to Intel are investing heavily. The few local hotels are overbooked and overcrowded with business travelers flocking to be part of the country's growth.

In terms of telecom, the market is fairly deregulated. There are a number of Service Providers (wireline and mobile combined). The latest estimates indicate 10M fixed line subscribers, 25M mobile subscribers and only 1M internet subscribers. Of the service providers, 4 to 6 are planning or already offering triple play services and in addition there are 6 mobile operators (3 GSM & 3 CDMA)….and a 7th license was announced the day I arrived. As in most of the other south Asian countries, majority of the mobile subscribers are prepaid and the ARPUs are extremely low ($4-$6USD/month).

As if this was not fascinating enough for the commute to the hotel, I was intrigued by the sights I saw. No, it was not any historical monuments or landmarks, it was the local infrastructure - the streets, the houses and most of all the cables hanging on the poles alongside each road in the city of Hanoi. I found myself so fascinated that I had to stop the driver and get my camera out of my bag to take pictures. For the next 36 hours I took numerous pictures to share with colleagues and friends….and post on my blog.

I was surprised at the wiring centers on the poles that had cable television, copper telephony and likely even fiber running in mass alongside the road. Each street intersection was like a wiring center and all along the roadways, there were cables crossing the street overhead every few feet. There were cables running through the trees and around the trees. I know what you are thinking and yes I thought of it too….why not look at wireless to solve this problem? Of course that is a great option but given the buildings/homes are built with concrete there's likely going to be in building/home coverage issues. Actually speaking of homes, check out the picture of a typical home....clearly land is extremely precious and expensive and the only way to scale is up...so a house typically has a few feet frontage and deep and tall...I mean 4 to 6 stories tall.

While all of these are solvable, imagine the wonderful opportunity of modernizing this infrastructure and there's clear motivation from the local operators and regulators to make this happen and happen fast.

Well, I am off to the next city now but have a long commute to the airport in Bangalore and can't wait to find more interesting things I can share with you.

Posted by Kelly Ahuja at 02:59 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 25, 2008

Coherent Experiences

"Seamless mobility" is a trendy industry buzz phrase, promoted by Motorola, Microsoft, Intel and many others. Any content available on any device across any network...sounds magical! Often this idea arises in discussions of fixed-mobile convergence. Yet systems that successfully span fixed and mobile are usually not seamless at all. On the contrary, fixed and mobile remain distinct, each optimized for its own constraints.

Consider two highly successful systems, the Apple iPod and the RIM BlackBerry.

First, neither system attempts to create a universal experience for accessing any content. On the contrary, each is optimized for a particular compelling experience, listening to music or podcasts on the iPod, and tending to business email on the Blackberry. Each experience is concrete and easy to understand, not abstracted into universal techno-speak. "Listening to music" and "tending to email" are much more tangible than "a new world where consumers are mobile, informed, entertained, secured, connected and empowered" (sorry, Motorola). Future examples might include "watching television," "playing games" or "attending meetings." Focus on experience seems central to Apple and RIM's success.

Second, neither attempts to create an identical, "seamless" fixed and mobile experience. Using an iPod is different than using iTunes, and using a Blackberry is different than using Outlook. And the experiences should be different. With iTunes and Outlook, the user is sitting down, gazing at a full screen, and using both hands on a keyboard and mouse. With an iPod or Blackberry, the user is on the move, glancing at a small screen, and often using only one thumb on small buttons. Rather than seamless, these experiences are coherent. They are the same in ways that make sense, and they are different in ways that make sense. My songs and podcasts in iTunes also appear on my iPod. When I delete email on my Blackberry, it's also deleted when I look in Outlook. Much of the art of such systems goes into designing every detail correctly, maintaining this coherence. Hand-waving about "seamlessness" neglects these all-important details.

Finally, the coherence of each system flows from a single source of definitive data. For the iPod, that source (of song files) resides on my Mac or PC with iTunes, and coherence is maintained through syncing the iPod periodically. For the Blackberry, that source (of emails) resides on my Exchange server, and coherence is maintained through the cellular data network. As Internet connections become faster and more ubiquitous, I expect that such sources will increasingly reside "in the cloud," that is, in professionally maintained data centers, rather than a personal computer (more like the BlackBerry than like the iPod). That way, maintenance and back-ups don't burden the user, and data stays current rather than drifting into obsolescence between syncs (particularly noticeable with podcast subscriptions). In fact, if I were the Microsoft Zune product manager, I'd shift towards the cloud model and away from the sync model, in an effort to differentiate from its current imitation-iPod positioning.

Both these examples require specialized mobile devices, but with the emergence of more open mobile devices, perhaps developers will create new experiences on such platforms instead. Either way, the key question is not whether they support seamless mobility, but rather whether they create a coherent experience. With offerings from big companies, like Cisco's Unified Mobile Communicator and Qualcomm's MediaFLO, to start ups, like MobiTV and Danger, users have many new experiences to try.

Posted by Larry Lang at 05:36 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 16, 2008

Meanwhile Back at the Ranch – What about CableCARDs?

With all the talk about DCAS and secure download for cable and IPTV, let’s not forget CableCARDs

Until downloadable conditional access system (DCAS) and the IPTV Interoperability Forum’s (IIF) secure download become available for wide deployment, CableCARD and the ATIS (the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions) point of deployment (APOD) module (specs for which are currently near finalization) will provide present and near-term security solutions for both HFC cable and IPTV networks. It is very unlikely that CableCARDs will completely be displaced in the next two years by any downloadable solution and, even longer term, may be a coexisting technology.

Information from the NCTA that was disclosed in a recent FCC filing indicated the 10 largest U.S. cable operators had deployed more than 300,000 CableCARD units as of December 2007. The filing also reported that the NCTA has said that these U.S. MSOs have deployed more than 2.25 million CableCARD-capable set-tops since July 7, 2007, meaning for every CableCARD consumers have requested, cable operators have shipped over seven CableCARD-capable set-tops. (Need a refresher on CableCARDs? Visit the OpenCable site for more information.)

One of the well-known issues that CableCARDs present however is that they are a more expensive solution compared to previous “embedded” security implementations. They will also likely remain more expensive than any downloadable solution even in the long run. Over time, however, and with increased volume, it is possible that CableCard prices may decrease. If so, this would likely have the effect of extending the length of the CableCard (and APOD) era and prolong their role as coexisting security technologies.

Since consumer demand for CableCARDs has been relatively weak so far, the main effect of CableCARDs has been extra equipment expense for operators. Even so, as long as regulations are in place requiring the separation of security features from navigation features in receiving devices, CableCARDs will be around and APODs will likely become the solution du jour for the time being.

Posted by Tony Wasilewski at 10:28 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 15, 2008

Protecting the Perimeter

As the Internet and access to it becomes more and more prevalent around the world, service providers, enterprises as well as small and medium businesses are challenged to protect their internet infrastructure from hackers and malicious applications causing business disruption. One of the key applications that has evolved over the years is the firewall. Firewall acts as a regulator between networks at different trust levels. Typical examples of trust levels being the Internet and a corporate internal network.

How it works
Firewalls are used for packet inspection & filtering, application proxy & stateful inspections of packet flows through the network. It is typically positioned at the network perimeter or provider edge - where internet traffic come in or goes out of the network.

Packet filtering allows for inspecting individual packets against a set of parameters that allows for access control. This allows the system to filter out all unwanted traffic. However, this can break some of the applications running on a packet network. In order to ensure these applications run smoothly - firewall can act as a proxy or perform stateful inspection of packet.

What makes this possible?
For service providers, the protection starts at the perimeter of the network. This means fortifying the provider edge routers with FW functionality. This adaptive "single device, many uses" approach reduces the number of platforms that must be deployed and managed while offering a common operating and management environment across all of the network edge. This approach simplifies configuration, monitoring, troubleshooting, and security staff training. One of the popular provider edge platforms - The Cisco XR-12K - introduces this functionality via the Multi Service Blade, which can provide multiple Firewall contexts to enable service providers to leverage firewall virtualization to support and segregate multiple customers on a single physical device.

Posted by Kelly Ahuja at 09:21 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 14, 2008

Holiday Nerd

Happy New Year! During the holidays, I visited family back east, sharing good meals (too many) and good times (never enough). My inner nerd also enjoyed checking out their new networking gadgets.

My mother-in-law received a WiFi picture frame, a great device for grandparents everywhere. Particularly compelling is the ability to email photos directly to the frame, via Seeframe. After transferring photos from our digital camera to a PC, we just email them to a particular address, and they start appearing in her living room, with no technical gymnastics on her side. (Keep the email address private, to avoid unpleasant pictorial surprises!) Even quicker, we can send photos directly from our camera phones to the frame, for near-real-time grandchild updates. This ability to send photos from a mobile phone to a picture frame serves as a reminder that possible innovations for fixed-mobile convergence are much broader than just handing off phone calls between cellular and WiFi radio access.

My sister showed me her new iPhone (also good news for the niece who received her hand-me-down phone). She'd already mastered bringing up maps and satellite views, and the whole family gathered round to share favorite YouTube videos. As she pinched to shrink and spread to enlarge, I was reminded how much a good user interface opens up technology to those interested in its benefits, but impatient with its impenetrable rituals. As I described the Cisco technology working behind the scenes to make this experience possible, I was also reminded how little anyone cares, as long as it works!

My parents recently subscribed to FiOS, and they're pleased with the telephone, video and Internet services. The system included a WiFi router, installed with WEP security enabled. (In contrast, about ten of their neighbors' WiFi access points were visible, and each one I tried was wide open.) From my laptop, I measured almost 20 Mbps downstream and about 5 Mbps upstream. They'd experienced one problem with no dial tone, but when they called for support (on their mobile phone), they discovered the problem was an extension left off the hook, an old fashioned problem indeed. The FiOS equipment had been installed with a tidiness that reminded me of central office cable lacing (although of course now they use nylon cable ties). But what impressed them most was the courteous and thorough service provided by the installing technicians, a reminder that the technology debates about Ethernet and passive optical networks, hybrid fiber-coax and video over IP matter little outside our industry conferences.

Posted by Larry Lang at 08:16 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 10, 2008

China 2008: The Year of the Rat and the 2008 Olympics

Greetings from Beijing on January 10 2008!

On February 7 2008, the Chinese Lunar year will commence as the Year of the Rat or “Wu Zhi”, and 25% of the world’s population will celebrate the Chinese lunar year, of Wu Zhi.

Moreover, the number 8 signifies luck and it is no surprise that the Olympics in Beijing will commence on August 8 2008 or 8/8/2008. Beijing 2008 Olympics, will be one of the greatest and the most influential sports events worldwide.

By 2008, thousands of athletes from more than 200 countries will participate and billions of audiences will watch the games, creating a huge amount of information management, interaction and broadcasting -- and Chinese Service Providers will be on the forefront in operating the networks, in addition to demonstrating technology showcases that these games will be hosted on.

With new technology and video feeds that will operate over the Internet, China will highlight its 5000-year history, Chinese styles, cultural splendour, contemporary spirits and mass participation shall be part of what spectators can expect to experience.

From digital Olympics we will experience digital transformation of Beijing itself that is designed to endure beyond the 2008 games, such as:

 Guaranteeing the successful construction of all facilities for Olympic Games in Beijing (Stadiums, transportation system)
 Enhancing the management system of Beijing municipal government through Olympic events (emergency, public security, etc)
 Elevating the maturity of information service for Beijing
 Promoting several technology industries for and beyond 2008 Beijing Olympic (digital TV, advanced call center, integrated PDA, wired automobile, rich service content)

These are exciting times for China, Chinese Service Providers, and the world--- “let the games begin!”

Posted by Monique Morrow at 01:43 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 07, 2008

Is distance really dead?

Distance is becoming less significant to the cost of telecommunications services. Prices are tending towards actual costs and these costs are predominantly associated with the origination and termination of traffic. In addition, the duration of calls is also becoming less significant as flat-rate charging is becoming more popular, even for mobile services. This leads to the situation in which bandwidth and access capabilities, such as location-based services, become more significant factors in charging and in generating Service Provider revenues.

It is now generally recognized that the distance separating communicating parties and also the duration of a call are no longer key parameters in the cost and pricing of telecommunication services. Clearly technological developments have played a role in this development but government policy caused the initial moves in this direction. The monopoly telecommunications regimes that were the norm prior to the wave of liberalization of the telecommunication markets were perceived as subsidizing local calls by the revenue from long-distance and international traffic. The introduction of competition in the provision of telecommunication services required tariffs to be related to actual costs and one of the initial policy decisions in the first market to be liberalized, the UK, was to rebalance local and long-distance call charges between 1984 and 1986.

International telephone call charges are affected by the system of settlement payments between operators known as the accounting rate system. This system is defined in an international treaty known as the International Telecommunication Regulations that is administered by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Under this system an operator that originates an international call makes a payment to the operator that terminates the call and there will be a net payment if the originated and terminated traffic is not in balance. In general there has been an imbalance on routes between developed and developing countries in that more calls originate in developed countries than in the developing countries. In 1995 US operators made net payments amounting to $5099 million to operators in other countries and these payments have been a significant form of revenue for operators in developing countries. For example, Mexico received payments from the USA in excess of US$ 1 billion in 1996 which accounts for more than 10% of Telmex’s revenues (US$ 8.5 billion in 1998).

However, the international accounting rate system has increasingly been by-passed by using voice over IP on leased circuits between countries. In 2000 it was estimated that about half of all international telephone traffic by-passed the accounting rate system. In response to this trend there has been an attempt to reform the accounting rate system so as to set rates that more accurately reflect costs.

The imbalance in international Internet traffic is greater than that for telephony and ISP peering arrangements are such that many ISPs in developing countries must pay the full circuit cost for interconnection with Tier 1 ISPs as they do not meet the conditions set by Tier 1 ISPs for settlement-free interconnection. This reverses the direction of payment flows. However, the dominance of the USA as the hub of the Internet may well decline as more local content is provided around the world and more direct connections are made between countries rather than being made via the USA. TeleGeography have reported that traffic growth is greater on non-USA international links than on US international links in Europe, Asia and Latin America. IP transit prices have also been falling significantly.

In summary:
• Tariffs for telecommunication services are tending towards actual costs and these costs are predominantly associated with the origination and termination of traffic.
• There is recognition that distance and duration no longer significantly determine prices.
• Bandwidth and access capabilities, such as location-based services, are becoming more significant factors in charging and in generating Service Provider revenues.

Posted by Rajiv Kapoor at 11:44 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Mobile Web in 2008

The Internet and Mobility have been the two biggest trends in the communications industry over the last several decades and both are now on a clear collision course. Companies are also starting to collide as the legacy mobile handset world has to deal with the likes of Apple and Google. It will be interesting to see how this plays out being that these two industries have so little in common.

-- The Mobile world tends to be fairly closed: operators are in control, voice is the primary app, there is limited innovation, and end users are controlled through subsidized phones and early termination agreements. The mobile industry also seems to be hitting saturation in much of the developed world.

-- The Internet world is very open, end users are in control, there are many different types of applications, lots of innovation, and customers stay because they like what they get.

How will these two industries come together?

Here is my top 10 list for the mobile Web in 2008:

1) Everything starts with the device. With the arrival of the iPhone, we have the world's first truly useful mobile computer with a modified MAC OS X operating system, a Safari Web browser, and a very innovative UI. Compelling new devices from other vendors are certain to follow and will allow the world to finally embrace a truly useful mobile Web experience. In time, most Internet access will be via mobile devices (not the PC). Look for a tremendous amount of innovation in the mobile device space in 2008.

2) The mobile Web will need apps….and lots of them. Developing apps for the mobile world is more challenging then in the wired world as there are more OS options. In 2007, we saw Apple and Google join a list that includes Windows Mobile, RIM, Symbian, Linux, and Palm. The Google Android option promises to be the most open of all. The big question here is just how much traction they will get in the market?

3) Need bandwidth... and lots of it. In the voice world, the average user consumes about 12 kbps. As we move to a mobile Web experience, consumption will increase by between one and two orders of magnitude. Where will that bandwidth come from? New modulation technologies (like OFDM) and antenna technologies (like MIMO) will help. Auctioning off analog TV bands is another possibility. However, to really increase the bps per square kilometer we will need smaller cells... much smaller cells. Options here include femtocells and WiFi.

4) FMC = femtocells or WiFi. Femtocells offer a very compelling solution to the challenge of delivering a lot more bandwidth without a lot more cost. It accomplishes this by creating a very small UMTS cell that covers an area about the size of the average home. The home unit would cost around $100, connect to the mobile network via broadband links (DSL or Cable) and the Internet, and support all standard UMTS mobile devices. The subscriber would get a vastly enhanced user experience and the operator doesn't have to pay for power or backhaul. Everyone wins! Look for this technology to rollout in 2008.

WiFi also has great potential in enabling the mobile Web. This technology has struggled in the mobile world as operators have never cared for WiFi. But things are starting to change. As operators have become more positive about WiFi, it has started to appear on more devices. WiFi is the world’s most popular indoor RF technology and has a great future in mobile devices.

5) MIMO and OFDM offer great promise in increasing the airlink efficiency. These technologies will be implemented first in Wimax networks. Success here will play a crucial role in pushing the 3G world more rapidly toward OFDM and MIMO in the guise of LTE. The future will see UMTS/LTE as the dominant licensed RF technology for paired spectrum and Wimax will hold the same position for unpaired spectrum. Wimax should start to gain a solid foothold in 2008 with such high profile deployments as Sprint-Nextel Xohm network which is set to rollout in selected US cities.

6) Lots of gateway capacity required. Today, most mobile traffic is circuit switched voice. That will change as networks begin the migration to all IP end-to-end. EVERYTHING will then go through the IP network, which implies much bigger packet gateways (GGSNs, PDSNs, and ASN GWs). Next-gen packet gateways need to have at least two to three orders of magnitude more capacity and be even more reliable. Look for larger and more robust mobile GWs in 2008.

7) Mobile networks need to "open up" in order to enable the mobile Web. Closed architectures worked in the voice world where there was really only one application that mattered. Such a closed approach will NOT work in the mobile Web where we will see thousands of companies developing all sorts of new applications. We can trust that the Web 2.0 community will try EVERYTHING and the market will decide what works and what doesn't. The "open" Internet business model has always been a bit unsettling to mobile operators as it is difficult to monetize. Tim O'Reilly, in a recent Op Ed piece in the NY Times, made the case that open systems engender a "winner takes all" environment. History would seem to back that up. His argument implies that whichever operator can master the new world of the mobile Web can win.... and win really BIG. VzW is starting to move in this direction. We will see the mobile operators struggle with this transition in 2008.

8) The enterprise will be a key constituent in the mobile world. RIM's early lead is now being challenged by Microsoft with their recent Mobile Device Manager release. Device management is crucial to a successful enterprise deployment and the vendors that get this right will do very well in the market. Today, most of these systems are optimized for a specific OS. A great opportunity going forward is to develop a multi-OS mobile device manager. A variety of different vendors are chasing this opportunity.

9) The emergence of mobile Web will create all sorts of backhaul challenges. As all traffic moves to IP, look for technologies like metro Ethernet to become the primary mechanism for cost effectively backhauling the huge amount of traffic that these networks will generate.

10) IPv6's time may finally have come. The emergence of mobile Web and the huge number of people worldwide that will be introduced to the Web via a mobile device should finally overwhelm IPv4’s much more limited address space. IPv6 offers all sorts of added capabilities that make it very compelling in a mobile environment, including the potential to separate a user’s location from their identity (one of the big limitations of IPv4 in a mobile environment). Look for lots of IPv6 related activity in 2008.

Posted by Jeff Spagnola at 07:29 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

January 02, 2008

Why I’m old

ATT recently published their top 10 ringtones for 2007. The lists includes songs like “A Bay Bay” and “Crank That” and includes artists like “Mims” and “Akon,” with the top one being (drum roll, please):

Party Like a Rockstar by Shop Boyz

My biggest takeaway from the list? I’m old. Really old. I don’t recognize any of these songs – at all. And have maybe only heard of one or two of the artists. (I think a gray hair popped out on my head just by writing that….)

But professionally, my biggest takeaway is how impressive this is. In this blog, you’ve likely read about our thoughts of service providers are becoming experience providers. It’s our perspective on the evolution of the industry where providers will deliver an ever expanding array of new services, about how they can offer their subscribers the means to personalize those services, and how in the end, they will be able to increase their relevance to their users and their own revenues all the more.

While ringtones may not be new, it is a great example of one of the routes ATT is taking on this evolutiong to experience privder. It doesn’t really matter if this tall, dorky Texan doesn’t relate to ringtones, as this service feature isn’t necessarily meant to appeal to me as many of their other business-focused services do. Rather, this is meant to appeal to another, likely younger, and most certainly a hipper segment of their user base. Different, personalized services for different subscriber interests, delivered over the same network, increasing both the value of the experience to their customer and the amount of their bottom line to their shareholders. Brilliant.

Long live the experience provider – may they continue to “party like a rockstar.”

Posted by Doug Webster at 10:26 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)