In the spring of 1993, hundreds of vendors attended a meeting hosted by Time Warner. During the one-day presentation, Time Warner outlined its vision of a Full Service Network to be deployed in Orlando, Florida. The company also sent out a challenge to the vendors present: Help us figure out how to do this. Several vendors stepped up and the network launched on December 14, 1994, offering interactive digital content, video on demand, games, and information services.
Despite the innovation and vision, the right path to the future remained unclear when the trial ended in 1996. The technology used in the trial never was used in wide-scale deployments. In a ten-year period
-- which now seems like a century of change -- IP emerged as the grand unifying glue to the vision of a full-service network. Many in the audience saw such a network coming, but few could have predicted the path that would lead to this integrated future.
Hybrid Overlay Networks
When Time Warner launched the Full Service Network, telephone and video architectures were totally distinct networks. Operators interested in rolling out the two services, such as U.S. West in Omaha, were building parallel networks of Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) for video and twisted pair for telephone. While many understood this to be suboptimal, network planners knew that their vision of an integrated network was well beyond the technology available at the time.
Beyond the traditional voice and video services, the other applications for the Full Service Network were an undefined amalgamation of
"information services." Time Warner's venture preceded the foundation elements for today's broadband--the creation of DOCSIS by the cable operators and the advent of commercially viable DSL services by communications service providers. The Internet browser and the World Wide Web were just in their infancy. The emergence of information services would define, more than anything else, the shape of what was to come.
False Starts
During the 1990s a number of other attempts were made to introduce full-service networks based on an integrated model. A few vendors created proprietary platforms based on ATM. While these offerings did offer the hope of an integrated platform for the delivery of services, their deployment was fairly limited, and they locked operators into an architectural model that was not consistent with where the world was heading.
IP: The Unifying Force
By the late 1990s the network battle between ATM and IP was peaking. ATM had succeeded in the network core of communication service providers but failed on the edge. IP had won convincingly on the edge, particularly at enterprises, but was making headway in to the core, first as an overlay for enterprise customers but increasingly for core network functions.
Meanwhile, the introduction of DOCSIS 1.0 scored a huge success in the cable industry. The introduction of the uBR router with DOCSIS blades by Cisco in 1999 placed the cable operators at the forefront of broadband. Immediately, cable operators in the U.S. took control of the market for broadband services to residential subscribers, winning three out of every five homes for high-speed Internet service. In 1999 and 2000, millions of DOCSIS lines and thousands of uBRs were shipped.
IP quickly became the standard for broadband access by cable operators, and every cable network now had IP at the edge and the core. Provisioning of all services was done by IP addresses, dynamically assigned by DHCP servers. Over the next several years the cable industry added PacketCable, initially a voice over IP (VOIP) standard and now an evolving multimedia standard offering common control for a whole range of information services.
Ironically, the original strength of the cable operators--video--was the one service that was not converted completely to IP. The cable operators' video legacy allowed them to offer video on the same physical infrastructure--their HFC networks--but the video service was essentially an overlay. This is an opening that communications service providers have now exploited.
Communications Service Providers Respond
Initially, the traditional telephone operators fought back against cable with ATM-based DSL services. DSL struggled to gain market share against cable. Communication service provider service quality was worse than cable, and operators reached fewer homes with the DSL footprint when compared to cable operators. While cable operators enjoyed huge margins on high-speed data, the communications service providers had poor financial results with their broadband services based on DSL.
Over time the financial power of the communications service providers allowed them to even the playing field. Today, DSL subscriptions in the U.S. are still fewer than cable subscriptions, but the rate of growth is higher. By 2007 or 2008, the number of DSL subscribers will overtake the number of cable modem subscribers.
Like the cable operators with Cable Labs, the major communications service providers addressed the technical obstacles facing them by putting together standards bodies such as the DSL Forum and the Full Service Access Network (FSAN), which included both VDSL2 and Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH). Both of these organizations promulgated standards that started to shift the network architectures away from ATM and placed the future squarely in the IP camp. Lacking a video legacy, communications service providers have adopted IP as the core to the entire suite of network services. While communications service providers continue to offer circuit-switched voice, most operators have fully embraced an operational and architectural model built on VOIP.
And so what began as an advantage to cable for first embracing full-service networks and IP has now shifted to the advantage of communication service providers. They are the ones implementing comprehensive, totally IP-based full-service networks. Not only do these networks offer differentiation against cable, but they also hold the promise of being significantly cheaper to operate and maintain.
Network Transformation
The trend toward IP is driving a broader trend toward a complete transformation of communication service provider networks. This transformation consists of three primary elements:
Physical network transformation. Bandwidth is increasing to handle emerging broadband services. Architectures such as Fiber-to-the-Node (FTTN) and FTTH are critical to ensuring bandwidths that are sufficient for emerging services.
Logical network transformation. The network is migrating from connection-oriented, circuit-switched traffic to IP-based, connectionless switching.
Operational network transformation. Integration and management of services and applications is seamless. Operational transformation transcends basic service bundles, arriving at a common OSS approach to IP-based services management.
It is illustrative to look at the services that are critical to driving network transformation. Chief among them is video entertainment over IP or Internet protocol television (IPTV). Due to the bandwidths required to offer IPTV and the competitive advantages it offers over cable competitors, communication service providers are basing much of their physical network transformation on IPTV rollout.
The logical network transformation is primarily being driven by the transition of circuit-switched voice to softswitched VOIP. This
transition offers communication service providers a more competitive service offering against cable and Vonage-type services, while at the same time offering significant operational savings by replacing class 5 switches with VOIP softswitches.
The beauty of integrated networks based on IP is that access platforms accomplish physical and logical network transformation simultaneously. Communication service providers can add a module to their existing equipment to easily upgrade access bandwidths, while also converting circuit to packet traffic. This translates to huge savings in capital for the operator.
Going a step further, the operator can upgrade the access equipment to support integrating wireline with wireless services. Introduced initially as a next-generation wireless service, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is communication service providers' answer to the cable industry's PacketCable initiative.
On the surface, the network transformations required to support IPTV, VOIP, and wireline-wireless integration would seem to be quite different from one another. IPTV requires targeted, very-high capacity broadband; VOIP requires a migration to softswitching; and wireless-wireline integration will require mediation systems to support the dynamic transition of services across disparate networks. However, in the access network they are elegantly complementary. In fact, by simply recognizing the inter-relationships of these distinct initiatives network planners can reduce the costs associated with network transformation by up to 50 percent or more. A key element to these operational savings is the choice of access platform and a common OSS approach to IP-based services management.
Information, Communications, and Entertainment
While the terms video and voice are still used to describe services, no operator today can risk calling itself only a voice provider or only a video provider. IP has caused a shift not only in network architecture and operations, but even more fundamentally in the types of services offered to subscribers. The explosion of the Internet and a diverse array of server-based applications have created entire new industries such as Google and Apple's iTunes phenomenon. The amorphous term
"information services," which some saw as extensions of bulletin boards and library searches, has morphed in to multibillion-dollar
businesses.
Terms used in the mid-1990s are much less useful today. An operator is no longer a telephone provider; it must provide consumers with an array of communication services. While video is still a part of the service mix, entertainment services now include a wide range of opportunities for differentiation. This transformation of services extends beyond traditional voice and data services--and even beyond video--to an era of integrated information, communication, and entertainment, or ICE, services.
These changes are not just in terminology, but are fundamental to whether an operator is keeping up with consumer demand and addressing new opportunities for growth in the face of declining revenues from more traditional services such as lifeline POTS. Going forward, successful operators will be ICE operators, providing information, communication, and entertainment services to subscribers. To deliver ICE services uniformly and cost effectively, providers must transform their networks and their business models, encompassing entirely new lines of business.
This vision opens up all the promise that the Time Warner Full Service Network envisioned. But underscoring all the revenue opportunities are significant cost savings offered by an integrated network based on IP. The combination of greater growth opportunities in services and lower costs is the compelling equation for integrated full-service networks.
About the Author
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David Russell is Solutions
Marketing Director at Calix. He has
over 20 years of experience in business development and marketing of
broadband access systems. Mr. Russell came to Calix through the
acquisition of Optical Solutions, a leading Fiber-to-the-Home supplier,
where he was responsible for strategy and business partnerships. Prior
to joining Optical Solutions in 2003, Mr. Russell worked in ADC's IP
Cable Group, which is now the CMTS product line at Big Band Networks .
Mr. Russell holds six patents in cable and wireless technologies. He
holds a B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College, in Lancaster, PA .
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About
Calix
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Calix
is a privately-held supplier of telecommunications platforms designed to
simplify carrier access networks and enable local exchange carriers of
all sizes to offer voice, data, and video service delivery to business
and residential subscribers. The company is based in Petaluma,
California.
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