 | Issue: | Africa and the Middle East I 2003 |
| Article no.: | 8 | |
| Topic: | What Does Broadband Do for the SME? | |
| Author: | Lesley Hansen | |
| Title: | Marketing Director EMEA | |
| Organisation: | Net to Net Technologies Ltd | |
| PDF size: | 64KB |
About author
Lesley Hansen joined Net to Net Technologies in February 2000 as European Marketing Director to launch this US-based start-up into the European market. Prior to joining Net to Net Technologies Ms Hansen spent four years with Nortel Networks. Lesley joined Nortel through the acquisition of Micom Communications. As Director of International Marketing responsible for the Micom range of voice data integration products in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific, Lesley launched the industry’s first VoIP gateway product. In 1999 Lesley established a market intelligence capability in Europe covering both voice and data solutions for the enterprise market. Ms Hansen spent several years with Cabletron Systems as European Product Marketing Manager before joining Nortel. She has worked with a variety of engineering products in businesses both in the UK and overseas covering sales, product management and marketing. She is specialised in Local Area Network technology and products.
Article abstract
SMEs need low cost, reliable broadband access to the Internet. The equipment industry seems to have forgotten the end user, building sophisticated solutions, but users need utility services to do business inexpensively. IP-based networks support voice, data and a wide variety of available SME applications simply and reliably. There are many types of broadband connections to the Internet, but not all work for SMEs. ADSL is good at home, but SMEs need SDSL for high speed in both directions.
Full Article
SMEs, the Internet and Utility The Small/ Medium Enterprise market wants low-cost high-speed Internet, it wants it at a reasonable cost, easy to get, easy to install and easy to use and it wants it now. There are various debates going on in the industry at present – cable vs wireless vs digital subscriber line (DSL) for broadband access; IP vs ATM vs MPLS for quality of service (QoS); voice over DSL or over IP or over traditional POTs (plain old telephony) connections – to mention only a few. These debates typically become highly technical in content and highly theoretical in nature. In many cases, the debates seem to lose entirely any focus on the end user. Yet, at the end of it all, most SMEs want – and are still waiting for – high-speed Internet access. It seems that the true issue is that, although telecommunications is becoming a utility, the traditional equipment vendors and carriers unfortunately have not yet realised it. These vendors and carriers are still building and putting into place sophisticated and complex solutions to provide a high revenue, high performance service – when what their users want is a utility service. When one moves into a new office or house, one expects electricity, water and telephone to be connected. Today, one also wants high-speed Internet access in-place and ready to use. There are those who would like to see every building or office block with a high-speed access connection installed by default and connected on request. They probably have got the vision right, even though so far, the carriers have not yet achieved the economies of deployment scale to make it real. A utility is a service that is ubiquitous in nature. The dictionary defines utility as the quality or state of being useful, the ability to satisfy human wants. It comes from the word utile, which means practical, and useful as opposed to ornamental or aesthetic in nature. We have certain expectations of our utility services: they should be available and reliable; they should cost little to connect; and they should be generally available, under equal conditions, to all in the community despite any geographical difficulties. SME’s Need Services Not Technology The average SME user is not interested in the technology debates or in the variety of solutions available; s/he is interested in the services available. It is the utility network that carries these services. An SME user wants to subscribe to a service that lets it share information by e-mail quickly and efficiently, that provides access to the latest industry newsletters, that facilitates downloading new application software, that helps it collect competitor intelligence and to download information on new contract opportunities. SMEs are interested not in video-conferencing as such. They are interested in the savings and facilities that video-conferencing brings: the reduction in their business travel costs; the time savings; the ability to hold meetings, at short notice- even immediately, with their colleagues, clients and suppliers, no matter where in the world they may be – all without having to leave the office. “The average SME user is not interested in the technology debates or in the variety of solutions available; s/he is interested in the services available. It is the utility network that carries these services. An SME user wants to subscribe to a service that lets it share information by e-mail quickly and efficiently, that provides access to the latest industry newsletters, that facilitates downloading new application software …” SMEs, initially, need basic, high-speed Internet access simply to have rapid, always available, ‘no wait’ access to the Internet. Once this service is in place, though, savings are made and a number of interesting facilities and services, otherwise not available, can be obtained. SMEs can save on computer service and upgrade costs by using online IT management facilities; they can simplify and improve their server backup procedures by using a central ISP-based backup facility; or, they can outsource the installation and maintenance of new application software through an Application Service Provider – just to name a few of the many services that can be obtained using a broadband connec-tion to the Internet. End users need and buy services. Today, many of the services are built for online IP (Internet Protocol) delivery. The Technology for Today All of the exciting new capabilities that the end users want and are willing to pay for today are built on an IP protocol stack. IP is the only protocol able to support voice, data and video that runs on both LANs and WANs; it also underpins most of the key applications for SMEs. For this reason, and this alone, IP in a packet-based architecture will prove to be the winning technology solution for the long term. IP will not win many technical arguments; it is not elegant, sophisticated or aesthetically pleasing to the telecom engineers, but it is cost-effective and delivers what end users want. A few simple rules apply to all technologies. Doing little or nothing to the traffic is less expensive than doing a lot. Doing a lot takes time, adds delay, and allows more opportunity for things to go wrong. Devices that are complex need more support and maintenance because there is more to go wrong. So the best strategy for a utility network is to keep it simple. Avoid the excesses of technological sophistication that are so inspiring to a technical person and aim at a solution that is cost-effective, simple and easy to install and support. IP offers just such a solution. Equity Research reports that IP networks, compared to ATM networks, have an 8 to1 cost advantage. Cost is Critical, But the Service Has to Be Right Not all DSL services are the same. When deploying DSL at a SME these differences can be highly significant. ADSL or Asymmetrical DSL is the technology of choice for residential applications. Generally speaking, in residential applications more bandwidth, higher speed, is needed for incoming traffic, and less bandwidth is needed to handle traffic from the end user back to the network. Simultaneous voice and data support allows providers to take advantage of line sharing agreements and further reduces the cost of deploying residential DSL services. ADSL is an ideal voice and data solution for residential use since it supports both data and voice services over a single copper pair. Telephone systems have their own independent power supplies; as a result, both the voice and the data connections will still function in the event of power loss. ADSL provides the high-speed downstream bandwidth required to deliver IP video from the telephone company’s street-level wiring distribution cabinet. Because ADSL is the solution of choice for the residential market, modem costs have been driven down by volume demand. Still, ADSL is based on ATM, an underlying technology whose costs for deployment, support and maintenance are high. Also, and perhaps more importantly, ADSL does not provide the symmetrical (equal speed and throughput in both directions) bandwidth needed for business applications and, therefore, does not truly meet the needs of much of the SME market. SDSL, or Symmetrical DSL, provides the high-speed, symmetrical bandwidth that is required by many small business users, SOHOs or telecommuters. By using modems at the office site that support loop bonding, it is possible to bond copper lines together to increase total bandwidth to the SME. Up to four lines can be bonded together to provide bandwidths as high as 9.2Mbps at distances up to 3,600 metres (12,000feet). More significantly, loop bonding allows faster speeds at greater distances for end users further away from the local exchange. When providing up to four DSL lines with guaranteed quality of service, the service provider can deliver additional service options, and revenue opportunities for the business user by making use of the higher upstream bandwidth of symmetrical DSL. SDSL also provides higher reliability than ADSL. Since there are several copper pairs in the circuit, should one or more pairs fail the traffic continues, although at a lower speed on the remaining pairs. This provides very high uptime levels – a very important advantage for many SMEs. “ADSL provides the high-speed downstream bandwidth required to deliver IP video from the telephone company’s street-level wiring distribution cabinet. Because ADSL is the solution of choice for the residential market, modem costs have been driven down by volume demand …” The method of connection from the DSL back to the core network is also important to the SME, if a poor quality or limited bandwidth connection is provided then the SME will experience congestion on the line and register this as poor service. DSL and fixed wireless are natural partners in any large-scale deployment plan since both address the issues of low-cost bandwidth deploy-ment. Fixed wireless can be considered as a local access solution backhauled (connecting to the backbone network) on DSL or as a backhaul solution for DSL services. So What Does it Mean? Users need and want to buy services. These services can be delivered more cost-effectively, with less complexity; hence less risk of it going wrong over IP-based networks. Users should not be asking, “Why aren’t you providing me with the broadband service I want?” Instead, they might ask, “Why aren’t you providing me with a low-cost, easy to use, simple utility network so that I can buy services – no matter how aesthetically displeasing the solution may be to your engineers?”
