BT 21CN Hits Turbulence

BT Group might be rethinking or simply slowing deployment of its 21CN voice network architecture, based in large part on a network element called a Multi-Service Access Node (MSAN), intended to dramatically simplify access plant operations.

It isn't clear whether it is the architecture or simply the price points at which BT now is able to source MSANs that are the issue.

But at least one Internet service provider that wants to use the 21CN network has found the cost unappealing, lending at least some credence to the notion that the costs of its MSAN-driven access infrastructure remain higher than desired.

"Things are not entirely going to plan," says says Andrews & Arnold Ltd., operators of AAISP.net, on the company blog. "Some of the cost reductions we expected are not happening as we expected, which means 20CN lines will continue to cost us a lot more than 21CN lines."

"Until we get a new service (WBMC IPStream connect) from BT (which could be 6 months off) we don't make any savings moving lines to 21CN and in fact increase costs," AAISP says.

But "the last straw" is the cut-over process, AAISP says. Many customers were out of service for days as the network cut-overs were executed. "We have had something like six whole exchanges that have not worked in the last week alone," AAISP says.

So AAISP is trying to cancel all planned customer upgrades to the 21CN network. BT normally charges AASIP £15 for each cancellation so AAISP is seeking a mass waiver these charges so it can cancel all pending cut-overs to 21CN.

Separately, BT Wholesale has been under pressure as well. We hear that the cost of fully integrating what used to be the Infonet network now are so high that BT is simply going to run its legacy network and the former Infonet assets separately.

Unfortunately, it appears the complexity of the BT Wholesale networks overall are great enough that salespeople have been quoting costs that actually are less than the cost to provide services. Those of you who have had to deal in such things will appreciate the complexity of those sorts of issues.

Most of us will be wishing BT the best of luck resolving both the 21CN and BT Wholesale issues. Some competitors obviously will not be saddened, and perhaps some retail customers are happy they are buying service below cost.

But the U.K.'s broadband infrastructure hangs on BT getting things fixed, since so much domestic capability is dependent on the carrier of last resort.

http://aaisp.blogspot.com/2009/04/state-of-play.html

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=176244&f_src=lightreading_gnews

200 Goats at Google

200 goats "mowing" the grass at Google headquarters.  Google thinks it is a lower carbon approach than the typical mowing using gasoline-propelled mowers.

That might or might not be true. The goats have to be trucked to the site and then back home.

Don't get me wrong; I love goats. They are a more pleasing way to cut back weeds and other flammable material. I'd do it, too.

But I'm not sure it actually produces less carbon, overall.

Here Comes the Cloud Computing Hype Cycle

Nothing is more predictable than hype cycles in the information technology business. So here comes the peak of the "cloud computing" hype cycle. 

Click on the graphic to expand it. 

No Consumer Cutbacks for Communications, Video, Survey Finds

Cutbacks in home communications and entertainment services have yet to emerge as a measurable trend, despite the ongoing recession, say analysts at Pike & Fischer, who just completed a nationwide survey on that subject.

Most consumers are spending the same amount on phone, Internet and multichannel video as they've spent in the past, the survey found.

Respondents say they would rather keep Internet, video and voice services in their budgets than any other type of expense, including gym memberships, personal care products and apparel.

But the results also point to customers becoming more aware of ways to spend less on those services. One example is people switching to prepaid wireless and dropping their postpaid accounts. In other cases people simply are buying fewer pay-per-view events or ordering fewer on-demand movies.

All of those trends are consistent with consumer behavior in past recessions, and first quarter financial results from a growing number of service providers also suggest the Pike & Fischer survey study of reported attitudes and behaviors is reflected in actual behavior.

Despite fears that "this recession will be different," so far it hasn't been. Knowing nothing other than how consumers have behaved in past recessions, one would have predicted precisely what we are seeing.

The big question marks, though, have been around newer services such as broadband Internet access and wireless, neither of which had become such mass market services during the last recession. But behavior in those two segments seems to mirror video entertainment behavior we have seen over the years.

People are careful about upgrades and premium services. They might be more prone to switch providers to get better prices. But they are not droppoing subscriptions. The single exception is that some pressure continues for wired voice, which is a product category in secular decline.

100 Mbps is Really Nice: How Many Really Need It?

Aside from the general observation that marketing bragging rights are a key reason for touting really-fast broadband connections, one wonders how much real value the typical consumer customer gains.

Cablevision Systems, for example, is on the verge of launching a 101 Mbps (downstream) service costing $99.95 a month. Other service providers have been marketing 50-Mbps services (downstream).

But one wonders how much traction such services will get in the consumer space. To be sure, a 101-Mbps access connection better matches common in-home or on-premises bandwidth supported by Wi-Fi routers.

But it remains unclear how much incremental value the additional bandwidth provides, as many factors affect perceived performance. It won't help to have a really-fast access connection if the servers holding the content one wants to access are not capable of spewing out bits equally fast, if the backbone networks are congested or if there are end user device limitations.

A single user on such a connection (50 Mbps to 100 Mbps) might not have an experience any different from a user with a 10 Mbps or 20 Mbps connection.

To be sure, one can note that bandwidth requirements keep growing. The change from text to graphics generated a one to two order of magnitude increase in bandwidth requirements, for example. A text screen is typically 400 bytes, while a graphic screen can be 50 Kbytes to 100Kbytes, an increase of 10-100 times.

Similar changes can be noted for streaming audio or video. So bandwidth requirements will increase over time. The issue is how much, and for whom.

Locations with many users to support--businesses and large families--will have higher requirements.  In some cases, a family might benefit from having that much bandwidth if multiple users, working simultaneously, frequently are downloading or streaming high-quality video, for example.

Still, one fact is incontestable: the larger the degree of sharing, the more efficient the multiplexing becomes. The ability to share bandwidth becomes more efficient as more users are sharing any single link. So the increased demand will not be linear.

A typical single user, on a single link, might not require so much. By the same token, it isn't clear how much bandwidth a single user, on a single link, actually benefits from really-fast connections, beyond a certain point, as other variables also condition and limit the experience.

That isn't to say access bandwidth requirements are not growing, or to argue those requirements will stop growing. Having the opportunity to buy faster connections is valuable for some end users, particularly those with multiple users in a single household. It is much less clear how much additional utility is gained by the typical single user.

2007 was the Inflection Point for News

This is what you call an inflection point: a dramatic surge in people using the Internet as their primary source of news happened in 2007.

By late 2008 and early 2009, the dominoes started to fall and major U.S. newspapers began to disappear. 

Remote Work Might Pay Off During H1N1 Threat

Yankee Group survey results from April show workers to be highly receptive to a mobile lifestyle:  Fewer than 50 percent of respondents believe their work needs to be completed at their primary workplace.

And 58 percent of workers strongly agree that "allowing employees to work from home benefits companies." Employees who work from headquarters locations are just as likely to think that teleworking is a good idea as those who already are teleworkers.

With the H1N1 virus threat reaching global pandemic status and growing talk of the need to avoid large public gatherings where possible, the value of organized remote work capabilities is obvious.

Not every job can be done as effectively on a remote basis as in a physically co-located mode. But many more jobs can. As it turns out, remote work is not just an employee satisfaction enhancer, a cost reducer and in some cases a productivity-boosting measure, it also provides protection from pandemics and other potential disruptions of civil life.