Clarity For What's Next

There are certain terms in the industry lexicon that differ in meaning depending on who uses them and how. As a result, these terms end up having no meaning — or their meanings become so vast and varied that they actually lose definition.

“Broadband” is a good example: It is used as both adjective and noun, as a descriptor for transmission speed and an entire industry sector — and really the evolving industry as a whole. And yet, there still exists no true definition of “broadband.”

The concept of the “next-generation network” is another example. It certainly is a fluid descriptor: “Next-generation” could easily be altered to describe anything that is not of the moment.

All that changes when something moves from concept to industry standard, and that's exactly what happened when the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions gave definition to the concept of the next-gen network (NGN). With the introduction of its NGN Framework, ATIS began to delineate the precise components of the NGN architecture.

This supplement, a collaborative effort between Telephony and ATIS, attempts to provide even more clarification to exactly what defines the next-gen network. Through extensive interviews with representatives of ATIS members that contributed directly to the creation of the NGN Framework, our writers produced detailed analysis of various aspects of the NGN.

Our goal in producing this publication was to explore and analyze many of the critical elements of the NGN standardization effort and shed more light on the NGN concept. That effort takes several forms, from Executive Editor Vince Vittore's extensive look at how the NGN Framework was developed and its realistic meaning for today's service providers, to Senior Editor Tim McElligott's examination of next-gen services that the architecture was designed to support. Contributor Phil Britt also takes a look at the important interfacing issues that must be addressed in NGN migrations. Appropriately, we close with ATIS President and CEO Susan Miller, who outlines the organization's goals in creating this framework and expectations for its application.

Among those goals is giving shape to the previously nebulous idea of NGN. This publication puts several aspects of that effort into narrative form, offering an accessible look at a standardization effort from its earliest stages through implementation — and helping to give further definition to the concept of the NGN.