 | Issue: | Asia-Pacific I 2007 |
| Article no.: | 4 | |
| Topic: | Next-generation networks for a hyper-connected world | |
| Author: | Michael Pangia | |
| Title: | President – Asia | |
| Organisation: | Nortel | |
| PDF size: | 280KB |
About author
Michael Pangia is Nortel’s President for Asia responsible for the overall sales strategy and operation for Nortel in the Asia-Pacific region. During his 20 years with Nortel, Mr Pangia has held various senior management positions, including Vice President for Global Enterprise Operations and Services and Vice President of Finance for the Optical business unit. Prior to his current assignment, he was Chief Operating Officer for the Asia-Pacific region. Mr Pangia holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Windsor, Canada and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Toronto, Canada.
Article abstract
The rise of bandwidth-intensive communication by individuals and businesses alike is rapidly absorbing capacity of both wired and wireless systems. Just six per cent of 3G subscribers viewing video can exhaust network capacity in many areas. In addition, the introduction of software-based telephony systems has facilitated the introduction of communications-intensive business applications. New technologies such as the ultra-high-speed Metro Ethernet Network for optical connectivity and 4G wireless solutions such as WiMAX, LTE and EV-DO Rev C are coming to the rescue.
Full Article
In today’s fast-paced telecommunications environment, ‘hyper-connectivity’ is increasingly becoming the order of the day. There are myriad ways for consumers and business people to connect – e-mail, voicemail, VoIP, instant messaging, SIP-based ‘presence’ and collaborative multimedia conferencing to name but a few. This makes it easier for workers to reach colleagues, partners and customers, and for each of us to reach family and friends, not only anywhere and anytime, but also via the devices and applications we use most. In three areas in particular, breakthroughs in improving the communications experience for businesses and consumers are creating significant opportunities for forward-thinking service providers. Next-generation mobility and convergence More than any other technological innovation, advances in mobility have significantly changed the telecommunications landscape. Already, in most countries within Asia, mobile user numbers outstrip fixed-line subscribers. Further change is on the horizon, with the next wave of mobility elevating wireless networks to record speed and bandwidth levels. The next-generation of wireless networks – increasingly referred to as 4G – involves lighting up devices many people don’t think about and linking them wirelessly to the Internet – like portable gaming systems, digital still and video cameras, DVD and MP3 players, medical diagnostic devices, and navigation systems and devices. To provide this level of hyper-connectivity and achieve true mobile broadband, there are several technologies – WiMAX, High-Speed Downlink Packet Access, HSDPA, Long Term Evolution, LTE, and CDMA EV-DO Revision C – that are going to make 4G a success. The first road to 4G is via WiMAX, and the technology is very much in the spotlight currently. Delivering transmission of speeds up to 50 Mbps, mobile WiMAX is going to enable a new-generation of Internet-savvy consumers to take their broadband connection with them as they go about their activities, making the laptop or PDA-type device of tomorrow as connected and as mobile as the cellular phone of today. In fact, the impact of WiMAX is reminiscent of the effect mobile phones had on landlines, surpassing them in country after country. Across Asia, our customers are embracing the wireless broadband reality that WiMAX and other next-generation technologies bring. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Taiwan. The city of Taipei has been awarded the prestigious 2006 Intelligent City award, and been recognized as the world’s largest Wireless LAN deployment. Chunghwa Telecom and the National Taiwan University have both engaged in WiMAX trial activities and a device centre of excellence for interoperability testing is advancing the WiMAX ecosystem. All of these activities are happening with the help of new technology and industry initiatives, and we are seeing examples – especially municipal wireless networks – repeated or planned in other parts of Asia and the rest of the world. The explosion in the use of video is, largely, driving the growing interest in 4G technologies. Mobile video is changing the way people communicate – as more and more people share film clips they have either shot themselves or downloaded from the Internet. For example, many expect that iTunes video’s growth will be comparable to the early growth in iTunes music – and this is going to create problems for today’s 3G networks. When just six per cent of a current 3G network’s subscribers are viewing video content, network capacity in many areas is virtually exhausted. This is where the combination of OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) and the advanced antenna capabilities of MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) comes to the fore. OFDM/MIMO allows more users to be packed into the available spectrum at speeds more than ten times faster than current, commercially deployed, UMTS networks and four to five times faster than HSDPA. OFDM/MIMO is at the core of all three of the main next-generation technologies – WiMAX, LTE and EV-DO Rev C. The seamless transmission of mobile video across any type of network to any type of wireless-enabled device requires convergence, and an IP Multimedia Subsystem, IMS, is the solution. IMS turns an intelligent network into an intuitive network that is device, application and access aware – providing enhanced IP backbone Internetworking across fixed and mobile domains and enabling multimedia services that provide new levels of security, mobility and personalization. Making connectivity more personal is a major feature of 4G. Instead of having one broadband Internet and data connection per household or per business, next-generation wireless broadband technologies provide people with the convenience of a single, personal broadband connection they can use anytime, anywhere. Soon, users will not even be aware they are using a network to communicate. Next-generation mobility is one of the factors driving a significant upturn in optical networking requirements. As wireless services grow and customer demand increases, the cost of expanding backhaul capabilities to keep pace with growing bandwidth demand escalates. In addition, since the fibre-optic surfeit from the dot.com bubble is rapidly being used up, there will be increasing need among wireless operators for more optical backhaul capacity. Enter the Metro Ethernet Network. Combining the bandwidth and performance of advanced photonics with the cost-effectiveness and ubiquity of Ethernet, these ultra-high-speed networks meet complex backhaul requirements, and resolve last-mile network bottlenecks that slow transmission and adversely impact the real-time experience of mobile video. Metro Ethernet is providing carrier-grade services with Ethernet economics. Two recent examples of new technologies in Asia are Australia’s Silk telecom and Shanghai Telecom in China. Both companies have found flexible and cost-effective solutions to meet increased bandwidth requirements in very different situations – one in China’s most populous city, the other helping to bridge the rural digital divide. The increased bandwidth capability supported by Metro Ethernet innovation will also support the deployment of IPTV services. The fusion of voice, multimedia and SIP technologies into the TV experience is creating a differentiated IPTV offering that will be attractive to subscribers and generate new revenues for service providers. In addition, this calibre of IPTV solution will also support targeting interactive advertising to different subscriber types. Targeted advertising is set to be a significant source of future service provider revenue. Transforming the enterprise Enterprises are looking to next-generation technologies to help their businesses become more competitive. They want their business applications integrated with their telephony systems, and they want this integration to be simple and seamless for the end user. They too are faced with myriad choices, but the desired benefits are clear: reduced network complexity, reduced operational costs and enhanced productivity for employees. The modus operandi is also clear. Software-based telephony will replace traditional business phone systems. This will enable the easy integration of telephony with software-based business applications and a more rapid creation of new and innovative business applications. This vision involves breaking down today’s device and network-centric silos of communication and providing users with a single identity across all the communications tools and applications they use, from unified messaging, which includes e-mail, fax and voice, and multimedia conferencing to IP networking, Internet access, contact centres with skills-based routing and IP telephony. Of course, whether corporate intranet or Internet access is via a landline, mobile phone, laptop softphone, PDA or some other device will be irrelevant. Integration will be simple and seamless to the end user. This unified communication solution is being delivered today – and is the central focus of the industry partnership, the Innovative Communications Alliance. Traditionally, advanced business communications systems have only been available to larger enterprises. That is changing. Today, there is a focus on the small and medium-sized business, SMB, bringing the power of VoIP, wireless LAN, security and converged voice and data to SMBs with anywhere from three to 250 employees. By streamlining their network architecture, SMBs can achieve considerable financial savings in capital and operating costs, and the employee productivity benefits are immeasurable. Service and solutions More and more companies are turning to the experts – to those who developed and best understand the next-generation technologies and solutions they are deploying – to help manage their networks and meet their communications challenges. Through Network Operating Centres, NOCs, strategically located around the world, a telecommunications supplier can relieve customers of network concerns by ensuring they have the right hardware, software and configurations for maximizing interaction of networks and components from multiple vendors, integrators and services. By assuming these time-consuming details, an NOC makes it possible for customers to re-focus valuable resources on managing their business, rather than their networks. Today, around the world, enterprises are increasingly moving away from simply buying products to a model that allows them to focus on growing their business by outsourcing processes and procedures that free them from worrying about the nuts and bolts of their networks and the business-critical applications they carry. The commitment of a successful supplier – and one who is a valued partner for its customers – is to help today’s service providers and enterprises simplify their business – to help them accomplish their business goals faster, at a lower cost, and more reliably than they could do alone. This commitment is central to the delivery of next-generation networks, services and solutions to meet the evolving needs of customers across Asia and throughout the world.
