From Voice to Web to Content Optimized Networks

To the extent we can say legacy telephone and mobile networks were optimized for voice as a lead application, as radio, TV and cable TV networks were optimized for delivery of video or aural content, then we might also say that Internet Protocol networks were less optimized than traditional networks.

That is to say, IP networks were designed as general purpose networks. With the advent of broadband transport and access, IP networks began to function better for all media types: narrowband wideband and broadband.

However, it now seems possible to argue that future iterations of the IP networks will again begin to focus on “lead apps.”

ATIS has launched an “Evolution to Content Optimized Networks (eCON) Initiative,” a to create an evolutionary path from today's IP-based routing network to a future network that leverages the increasingly important role of content.

We already have seen the growth of solutions to optimize content delivery and improve user experience, including edge-caching, end-to-end encryption and proxies.

In the future, further changes are necessary, ATIS believes, including moves to embrace content naming.

Basically, that means embracing content as a primitive, an approach that promises greater scalability, security and performance for users retrieving content over IP networks.

In other words, instead of network routing organized around endpoint locations, routing and network layer functions could be additionally optimized around specific content identifiers.

That is expected to make easier location-independent retrieval (so edge caching is more efficient), allow better load balancing and support multicast in a more native way.

Phoenix Suns Tickets Earn Free Gigabytes from Verizon Wireless

The Phoenix Suns have partnered with Verizon to offer mobile data usage when customers buy tickets to attend games. That use of sponsored data sheds even more light on the many ways brands can take advantage of sponsored data for promotions, even if some do not want apps to be able to do so.

Fans can earn up to 11 GB of data during the current season, Verizon says. Ticket buyers earn 1 GB of data for the first game purchased, and 2 GB for the second game. Each ticket for a subsequent game earns 3 GB, up to a maximum of 11 GB under the promotion.

Fans who are not Verizon customers can “gift” the data to someone else who is a Verizon Wireless customer.

For 28% of Australian Consumers, Hybrid Fiber Coax Will Be the Only Fixed Network

How much access platforms have changed, and will change, is illustrated by the Australian National Broadband Network, a wholesale-only next-generation network.

As planned about 28 percent of total locations (about 3.5 million homes) will use the hybrid fiber coax platform used by cable TV operators, not fiber to the home or fiber to the neighborhood or curb.

In many markets, HFC exists as a full functional substitute for the “telecom” network.

Ovum researchers estimate there are approximately 150 million cable broadband connections globally, representing 20 percent of the global high speed access market.  

Rarely, if ever, has HFC been the “ubiquitous” and primary communications network.

For 28 percent of Australian residential locations, HFC will be the primary network, with no rival telecom network available.

In recent tests, layer-3 peak speeds speeds at up to 100 Mbps downstream and up to 40 Mbps upstream were recorded.

End user speeds, on average, were about 84 Mbps downstream and 33 Mbps upstream.

source: NBN

Orange VoLTE, Wi-Fi Launch" What's the Upside?

Orange is launching voice over Long Term Evolution (VoLTE) as well as Wi-Fi calling across its European operations, “to enrich the voice experience for all its customers.”

The launch illustrates a key business model challenge for telecom service providers launching some next generation networks and features.  The emphasis of the launch is supplying the “very best voice experience available today,” not “new revenue” or “new markets.”

As with some other investments, next generation technology and features essentially is a “cost of being in business,” not a direct enabler of new revenue sources and new markets.

Much the same business model problem was encountered by fixed network operators looking at upgrades from digital subscriber line to fiber access technology.  And some would say high definition voice is the same sort of investment.

All those investments bring “better performance,” but not necessarily much incremental revenue.

Orange VoLTE will provide better experience, reducing connection times from approximately eight to two seconds. Use of VoLTE also will enable simultaneous use of voice and high speed data.

Orange will launch VoLTE beyond its existing Romanian market in 2016 and early 2017.

Orange also is launching Wi-Fi calling to ensure improved indoor coverage. Wi-Fi calling will be launched across Orange’s remaining European footprint in 2016 and early 2017 as well.

Note that the advantage there is a way to support voice connectivity indoors, where mobile signals are weak. Again, we see that an investment is made not to enable pursuit of a new market, but to support basic existing services, customers and markets.

That is one key difference between investments in Internet of Things platforms and services, and much of VoLTE, Wi-Fi calling, and even some portion of the value of access upgrades.

Platforms to support IoT, investors hope and expect, will support big new markets and new services to provide payback from the investments.

Still, as has been clear for decades now, investments sometimes must be made so competitors do not take away markets, and not for traditional reasons (invest X, gain Y revenue).

Such investments are strategic in nature. The investments must be made, as defensive measures, even if incremental revenue is quite slight.

The rationale is not “you make more money, from new services.” The rationale is “you get to keep most of your business.” Or, to be blunt, the upside is “you do not go bankrupt, in the near term.”

GSMA Launches "Connected Women" Initiative

The GSMA today announced the launch of the Connected Women Commitment Initiative, aimed at reducing the mobile gender gap and connecting millions more women in low- and middle-income countries by 2020.

Dialog Axiata PLC in Sri Lanka, Digi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd (Digi) in Malaysia, Indosat Ooredoo in Indonesia, Ooredoo Maldives, Ooredoo Myanmar, Robi Axiata Limited in Bangladesh, Tigo Rwanda and Turkcell in Turkey are initial supporters.

GSMA estimates there are 200 million fewer women than men who own a mobile phone in low- and middle-income countries.

In a study conducted by the GSMA, across 11 countries studied, the top five barriers to mobile phone ownership and use by women are:

• High cost of mobile handsets and credit
• Poor network quality and coverage
• Security concerns and harassment over mobile phones
• Lack of trust in agents and operators
• Low technical literacy and confidence  

But even when women do own a mobile device, they are far less likely to use it for more sophisticated services, such as mobile internet and mobile money, and therefore miss out on key socio-economic opportunities.

Existing and potential commitments amongst the mobile operators include, for example: increasing the number of female agents; improving the data top-up process to be safer and more appealing to women; and improving digital literacy among women through educational programmes and interactive content.

Closing the gender gap in mobile phone ownership and usage in the developing world could unlock an estimated US$170 billion market opportunity for the mobile industry in the period 2015-2020.

source: GSMA

In U.K., FTTH Payback Remains a Key Issue

As always, financial payback remains a key problem for service providers building fiber-to-home networks, in the United Kingdom as elsewhere.

Aside from prosaic issues such as construction labor availability, the bigger issues remain the business model. Some wonder whether U.K. consumers will gladly pay the higher prices fiber to home networks might require.

The business model is complicated even more in competitive markets where there might be two or even three fixed network providers of high speed access, at least two of which offer hundreds of megabits per second to gigabit speeds.

In such instances, any single provider can reasonably expect take rates in the 20 percent to 40 percent range. That obviously means there is a danger of stranding (network is built but there are no paying customers using that infrastructure) as much as 60 percent to 80 percent of core distribution assets.  

That is why the build only in some neighborhoods approach is so important. That method avoids stranding so much capital in facilities that will never earn a return.

But progress will continue.  

Core communications infrastructure costs have improved over several decades, meaning it now costs less to deploy a modern, Internet Protocol based application, access or transport network.

Mobile networks and cable TV hybrid fiber coax networks cost less than fiber-to-home networks, for example. But all networks have increased their capacity on a cost-per-bit basis over the last few decades.  

Different network architectures, physical media, lower cost computing and storage, open source code, virtualized networks and Internet Protocol itself have helped. Additional spectrum has been a key enabler as well.

But greater cost reductions are expected. One new initiative, the “Telecom Infra Project,”  aims to to “develop new technologies and approaches to building and deploying telecom network infrastructure,” according to Jay Parikh, Facebook global head of engineering and infrastructure.

Facebook, Intel, and Nokia have pledged to contribute an initial suite of reference designs, while other members such as operators Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom will help define and deploy the technology as it fits their needs, said Parikh.

Telecom Infra Project  members will work together to contribute designs in three areas including  access, backhaul, and core and management.

Significantly, the effort will apply Open Compute Project models of openness and disaggregation as methods of spurring innovation. In other words, in addition to relying on open source, the Project also will rely on use of standard, “commodity” hardware.

“In what is a traditionally closed system, component pieces will be unbundled, affording operators more flexibility in building networks,” Parikh says.

Facebook, in collaboration with Globe, recently launched a pilot deployment based on Telecom Infra Project principles to connect a small village in the Philippines that previously did not have mobile coverage.

In addition, EE is planning to work as part of TIP to pilot a community-run 4G coverage solution that can withstand the challenges presented by the remote environment of the Scottish Highlands to connect unconnected communities.

Testing new technologies and approaches and sharing what we learn with the rest of the industry will enable operators to adopt new models with full confidence that they will be sustainable.

Without much doubt, the Project will help service providers build networks at lower cost. The Project also continues to show the importance new providers and suppliers represent in the communications market.

As Google Fiber represented both a challenge to thinking about how to build fiber to home networks, and a challenge to conventional thinking about access provider market share dynamics, so too investment in unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned balloons for Internet access are bringing new possibilities to Internet access infrastructure.

Now Facebook will try and leverage the principles behind its Open Compute Project for data center infrastructure to the problem of access and transport networks.

As always, in competitive markets, the low cost provider tends to win. Just as certainly, overall access and transport costs are going to keep dropping.

Telecom Infra Project Aims to Reduce Telecom Infrastructure Costs

Core communications infrastructure costs have improved over several decades, meaning it now costs less to deploy a modern, Internet Protocol based application, access or transport network.

Different network architectures, physical media, lower cost computing and storage, open source code, virtualized networks and Internet Protocol itself have contributed.

But greater cost reductions are expected. One new initiative, the “Telecom Infra Project,”  aims to to “develop new technologies and approaches to building and deploying telecom network infrastructure,” according to Jay Parikh, Facebook global head of engineering and infrastructure.

Facebook, Intel, and Nokia have pledged to contribute an initial suite of reference designs, while other members such as operators Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom will help define and deploy the technology as it fits their needs, said Parikh.

Telecom Infra Project  members will work together to contribute designs in three areas including  access, backhaul, and core and management.

Significantly, the effort will apply Open Compute Project models of openness and disaggregation as methods of spurring innovation. In other words, in addition to relying on open source, the Project also will rely on use of standard, “commodity” hardware.

“In what is a traditionally closed system, component pieces will be unbundled, affording operators more flexibility in building networks,” Parikh says.

Facebook, in collaboration with Globe, recently launched a pilot deployment based on Telecom Infra Project principles to connect a small village in the Philippines that previously did not have mobile coverage.

In addition, EE is planning to work as part of TIP to pilot a community-run 4G coverage solution that can withstand the challenges presented by the remote environment of the Scottish Highlands to connect unconnected communities.

Testing new technologies and approaches and sharing what we learn with the rest of the industry will enable operators to adopt new models with full confidence that they will be sustainable.

Without much doubt, the Project will help service providers build networks at lower cost.