Networks intertwine

The newly deregulated telecommunications world is spinning rapidly, and Supercomm organizers say they're working hard to stay on top of each new development as show time nears.

Three of these axis-turning trends, analysts say, are users' demands for higher speeds and broadband access, customers' gradual migration of legacy networks to frame relay and ultimately to asynchronous transfer mode technology, and carriers' increasing role in providing solutions that integrate voice, data, video and other applications.

The Internet is driving the demand for greater access speed and connectivity, says David Yates, vice president of marketing for OnStream Networks, a broadband wide area networking company based in Santa Clara, Calif.

"In the frame relay marketplace, Internet service providers' speeds of 56 kb/s to T-1 and speeds above T-1 are developing rapidly for Internet access and for connecting companies to each other," he says.

Two access technologies emerging as leaders in the race are asymmetrical digital subscriber line (ADSL) for data services and multichannel multipoint distribution service (MMDS) for video, says Barry Nalls, director of business data products and services at GTE Corp.

Indeed, Internet access is driving a new economic model for carriers, as exemplified by MFS Communications' recent merger with UUNet, says Mary Ellen Kuehn, executive director of corporate communications at NetEdge Systems Inc., Research Triangle Park, N.C. MFS is connecting a local area network to ATM across the wide area and out to the Internet access point, Kuehn notes.

This moves marks an industry trend in which carriers will layer services onto a high-speed access base, increasing their revenues in the process, she says.

Yates predicts that ATM products will make a viable appearance at Supercomm, adding to ATM's emergence as the preferred backbone networking technology for service providers and, to some extent, end users.

"If vendors are feeling a sense of security that ATM standards are fairly stable, that adds up to a greater degree of product purchases and installations," he says.

ATM also is playing a critical role in public carriers' implementation of transparent LANs-a key growth area, Kuehn says.

"It means the public carrier has the ability to make the WAN totally transparent to end users over a geographic area," she says. By implementing transparent LAN service, public carriers can aggregate many customers' LANs onto one ATM pipe, Kuehn says.

However, ATM still isn't fully capable of providing switched virtual circuits, according to GTE's Nalls. A network of many customers requires permanent virtual circuits throughout to ensure true privacy and security, he says.

"Just giving customers an ATM pipe doesn't do them any good. We at GTE are working with customers to fine-tune applications that could benefit from an ATM environment," Nalls says.

However, Nalls, Kuehn and Yates all agree that public and private networks are becoming increasingly blurred and therefore more complicated to integrate and manage.

"Customers are asking us, 'What can you do to help us with the Internet, voice network, voice-over-frame relay, the Internet phone?'" says Nalls. One of the more intriguing questions, he says, involves running an Internet protocol addressing scheme over a public network.

Such complications are apparent in a shift away from a network owned and run by one operator, says Shashi Raval, telecom business manager for synchronization products at Hewlett-Packard. "For example, if two long-distance companies want to compete against a regional Bell holding company in the local loop, they might agree to partner in some parts of the country so their networks can be shared," he says.

And personal communication services operators that are rapidly building new networks may piggyback onto multiple networks. Such complexities are driving carriers to seek network management experts, in part because they have no control and no knowledge of the level of timing and synchronization accuracy of their rivals' networks, Raval says.

Nalls predicted that Supercomm '96 will see traditional voice service providers exhibiting one solution for each of their customers' requirements such as banking or providing remote access to corporate facilities.

"I think we'll see some solutions instead of boxes," he says. Still, Kuehn doesn't believe that many voice service providers have adequately resolved the issue of data-voice integration.

However, traditional voice service providers are fully aware that analyses show data traffic will overtake voice by 2000, Kuehn says. "This is the year of recognition that data is big, and it's where their future lies," she stresses.