Net.com SCREAMs for dynamic networks

(Telephony) Forget bandwidth. There’s too much of it anyway. Net.com has seen the future, and it is service creation.

“Service creation is the key to service provider success,” said Bert Whyte, president and CEO of net.com.

At the DSLCon Global Summit this week in Honolulu, Hawaii, Whyte defined service creation as “taking services to another level.” It is not about increased capacity, speeds and feeds or broadband aggregation, he added. It’s about finding new ways to generate revenue.

“Service providers--even the incumbents--have no idea how to make money with broadband,” Whyte said. “They are rushing ahead to build bandwidth, but they don’t know how to deliver [new] services.”

Net.com aims to change that. The company’s SCREAM devices will allow providers to offer individualized services on a per-customer basis. The device sits at the access network and looks at every packet to determine its origin and traffic-related information. It can analyze packets based on the user, network operation, application, content or event.

“We [can] adapt, change, enhance the network end instantaneously,” Whyte said.

Today’s networks are static, well-planned--“you could go to [an incumbent] and you’d see 10,000 people planning the voice network--closed and proprietary, Whyte averred. “We need a dynamic network. We have the ability to do that and to provide a level of control.”

Net.com’s idea behind service creation is to manage subscribers and build an open system--not a proprietary system with open interfaces--to “bring power to the users and offer a lot more flexibility to the users,” Whyte said.

The idea is “fundamentally radical,” he added, because it changes how service providers build networks. Creating a dynamic, unpredictable, open network that can be customized for each user based on any number of factors is the way to earn money. Customers can be charged not only based on time, capacity and distance, but also per-packet, application, access to content and quality, Whyte said.

The company is testing its device with France Telecom and an Israeli-based provider.