Top Technologies for 2001: What Will 2001 Bring?

Internet protocol (IP), the World Wide Web, and the new preponderance of public network data traffic already has wreaked havoc on the circuit-switched telecommunications industry. Many pundits have said it is only a matter of time before packets dominate, and it seems carriers, service providers, wireless operators, analysts, consultants, technologists and vendors are saying that this time will come in 2001.

Handling IP traffic now is the core issue facing public network operators, and it is voice over IP (VOIP) that many see as the top technology for 2001. Advances have improved VOIP’s quality and reliability. Coupled with the ability to migrate services customers already have and a plethora of new offerings, the arguments against VOIP are fading fast.

“VOIP (packet telephony or IP telephony) is undergoing some interesting developments during the second part of 2000 and will do the same in most of 2001,” says Bardia Saeedi, chairman and founder of Denver, Colorado-based Vsys.

“The industry is moving toward the next phase of realizing the promise of packet telephony: deployment of large packet telephony networks,” he says, adding that the deployment of application-specific solutions that take advantage of packet telephony technology also is at hand.

Avaya Communication, the Basking Ridge, New Jersey-based former Enterprise networks Group of Lucent Technologies, adds that it is telephony-over-IP that matters, making sure that customers get the same functionality with IP that they expected to get from a circuit-switched network.

Nortel Networks also sees 2001 as the start of the “bend in the hockey stick” for VOIP growth because of the recognized cost benefits of the technology and the move by carriers toward a standardized, converged network.

Global Crossing, for example, already is lighting VOIP networks in Europe, working with Sonus Networks, and offering customers a range of new services.

“IP performance, reliability, quality of service efforts and deployments will begin to allow for offering of real-time service (voice, streaming video) on a broader public network basis over the Internet,” says David H. Yedwab, executive vice president of The Eastern Management Group in Bedminster, New Jersey. This trend, Yedwab, says, will enable the broader adoption of VOIP and voice over digital subscriber line (VODSL) in 2001.

VODSL, however, is sometimes met with mixed results. For competitive carriers who enter a new market with flat-rate DSL data service, the opportunity to offer customers voice services creates new revenue streams that mean a much faster return on investment.

For incumbents, VODSL is a technology that can replace higher margin leased line service and will need to develop new revenue-producing applications and services to gain acceptance.

Global Telephony will explore VODSL technologies in more detail in the February issue.

Nortel Networks says another trend on the horizon will revolve around content delivery and the ability to provide end users with relevant and personalized content and value-added services delivered from anywhere on any device. That ability comes from IP, added network intelligence, and integration that will allow service providers to increase competitive advantages by moving to a value-added broadband service model.
-- Wayne Walley

If 2000 was the year that intelligent dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) transport started to reach critical mass, 2001 is expected to witness the first serious deployments of intelligent optical switching at the network edge as well as in the core.

“The next natural step is going to be switching wavelengths or switching sub-rate services inside those waves,” predicts Rick Barry, co-founder and chief technology officer of Chelmsford, Massachusetts-headquartered optical networking concern Sycamore Networks.

There are a number of drivers at work here.

As data volumes in the network swell, one of these drivers, according to Sycamore co-founder and chairman Gururaj Desh Deshpande, is the requirement to recreate the same levels of bandwidth in the metropolitan area network (MAN) and wide area network (WAN) that have already been achieved in the local area network (LAN).

Increasingly the requirement is for gigabit Ethernet capacity. “The market is in the midst of the Ethernet renaissance,” states Bill Hawe, chief technology officer of Nortel Networks.

“Ethernet has become the compelling interface across many types of networking equipment and service provider access solutions. We are continually driving its cost down and its performance up.”

In the past, the issues with Ethernet were its scalability, reliability and limited reach. The integration with optical elements, however, can give Ethernet scalability to 10 Gb/s (gigabits per second), carrier-grade reliability and greater reach.

Both Nortel and Sycamore are equipment suppliers to Utfors, a Scandinavian operator offering Gigabit Ethernet services on its new 6,500 km (kilometers) intelligent broadband fiber network. This network connects the 50 largest towns and cities of southern and central Sweden with Oslo, Copenhagen and Helsinki.

“Ethernet provides a better cost structure than competing technologies, provides more bandwidth as it scales to higher speeds and offers the best opportunity for an end-to-end, seamless protocol that is unmatched by competing technologies,” says Fazal Abbas, director of applications for Lara Networks in San Jose, California.

The industry’s move to IP, Abbas contents, bodes well for Ethernet because the technology has long been coupled to IP.

“The pressure for performance and convergence of service will further push the market demand to a single protocol. There are two ways for this trend to manifest: existing Sonet/ATM backbone technologies move to the enterprise, or Ethernet moves to the backbone and MAN networks. The most likely trend shows Ethernet moving from the enterprise to the Man and backbone,” Abbas says.

David Yates, vice president of marketing for Atrica Inc. in San Jose, California, describes 10/100 Ethernet connections in the MAN as the likely hot technology for access in 2001.

“The standards are almost there and the solutions will be there in the next 12 months,” Yates says. “The demand is there from Internet-based applications, the infrastructure is getting there as companies install fiber and new service providers are springing up to provide services that are amazingly affordable.”

For service providers, Nortel Networks says an optical Ethernet solution enables multiple wholesale access and enterprise outsourcing services. In addition, the technology can support bandwidth intensive applications for residential customers such as movies-on-demand, networked video gaming and more.

Nor is this search for higher and higher capacity confined to highly specialized operators or the bandwidth-fixated early adopter North American market.

The opening up of local access through xDSL (digital subscriber line), wireless local loop and 3G cellular technologies also drives user demand for broadband capacity throughout Europe.

“Operators need to adapt their networks to very high traffic growth, whenever and wherever it appears,” comments Fred Gastaldo, chief operating officer of Paris-headquartered broadband service provider LDCOM.

LDCOM now is constructing an intelligent, switched 14,000 km fiber network and metropolitan infrastructure in and between 20 major European cities, with extensive coverage in France. It plans to offer a suite of optical services including wavelength services, managed bandwidth and optical virtual private networks (VPNs).

A second driver of intelligent optical networking is the on-going need to displace cost in the network, an objective that can be progressed by minimizing the frequency of optical-electrical-optical conversion.

A third driver is for service providers to be more customer-friendly and market-responsive in a ferociously competitive commercial environment. Deshpande reckons it sometimes now takes several months to provision new end-to-end network services and that it will be necessary to cut this process to minutes and, ultimately, to a point-and-click real-time exercise.

But while there is consensus that optical networking will need to become much more intelligent, flexible and scalable, there are differing views on what these networks will look like in detail.

Sycamore, for example, anticipates a fully switched meshed architecture, with optical switching in the core and opto-electronic machines at the edge. The company also foresees the survival of synchronous digital hierarchy/synchronous optical network (SDH/Sonet) in new generation forms, but believes ring networks are an endangered species due to their lack of flexibility and ready scalability, and the inefficiency of many of their one-to-one protection mechanisms.

While agreeing that much protection designed into rings is wasteful, Columbia, Maryland-headquartered Corvis Corp. forecasts that the SDH/Sonet framing layer eventually will disappear and you’ll be left with a beefed-up Internet protocol (IP) on DWDM.

While such a wholesale transformation is not likely to happen in 2001, the foundation for this type of migration is already under way.

“We will certainly get to IP over glass,” states Shyam Jha, Corvis vice president of marketing.

Corvis also seems to set greater store than Sycamore on all-optical switching, arguing that transmitting and switching traffic entirely in the optical form as wavelengths of light results in higher performance and reliability for carriers, while significantly reducing the capital and operational costs associated with today’s hybrid electrical optical switching.

Last year, Corvis announced the deployment by Broadway Communications of the first commercial all-optical switch to be used in a nationwide network. The Corvis machine has a 2.4 Tb/s (terabits per second) capacity, and the company maintains it is a key element in enabling point-and-click provisioning of wave services.

“Corvis’ delivery of the industry's first all-optical switch to Broadwing is a defining moment in our industry,” opines Rick Ellenberger, president and CEO of Broadwing Inc.

“The integration of the Corvis all-optical switch into the world's first all-optical network, now being deployed by Broadwing, will enable us to deliver the killer platform that makes possible new applications and services for our customers.”

How you manage intelligent optical networks also is the subject of some industry debate.

Many experts see multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) as a key part of the optical management solution, although Dr. Chris Lilly, managing director optical routing vendor ilotron based in Mayfield, England, warns operators not to put all their network eggs into the one MPLS basket when deploying next-generation technology.

He advises operators to “sweat” their existing management assets such as TMN.

MPLS, ilotron believes, will not be standardized in time for field implementation of the optical superhighways that will be created by optical cross connects. To allow the migration from TMN to optical cross connects, ilotron itself provides a Q interface which is compliant with simple network management protocol (SNMP)-based applications.

In addition, ilotron provides network elements with a distributive management capability, effectively creating what the company describes as an “MPLS lite.” This is designed for integration with the legacy TMN structures to enable fast protection and provisioning at the optical transport layer, while maintaining the useful features of TMN.
-- John Williamson

While code division multiple access (CDMA) is best known as an air interface for mobile networks, CodeStream Technologies Corp. has come up with optical CDMA (OCDMA). The market for the technology, CodeStream says, includes service providers who aggregate or distribute communications channels within a metropolitan area.

Dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM), the company explains, uses multiple discrete frequency lasers to carry channels on which data is sent, but OCDMA uses a common broadband light source. And, as an optical bus, OCDMA can be simultaneously configured into multiple topologies including ring, star and mesh.

The system, according to CodeStream, derives channels by selectively blocking out parts of the light giving it the appearance of a bar code. And dynamically changing the bar code enables rapid service provisioning and reconfiguration.

Nortel Networks sees a future coming that will allow Internet data centers to be interconnected with content and storage infrastructure across high-bandwidth optical networks.

Such “optical Internet data centers” should make distance irrelevant and increase reliability, meaning service and content delivery providers could put content in any location worldwide connected to an optical network, Nortel Networks says.

Such a scenario, the vendor explains, will bring e-business services to the mass market and enhance the profitability of service providers in several ways, including:

SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT: A network of worldwide Internet data centers can be managed as a single “virtual data center” with reliability to ensure transaction completion and enhanced end-user experiences.

BANDWIDTH ON DEMAND: A simplified network model enables businesses to implement more affordable mission-critical applications and could become more efficient when service providers can deliver scalable Internet capacity on demand via optical technology.

CONTENT AWARE NETWORKS: By embedding content-aware intelligence into the optical layer, service providers with smart infrastructure could offer end-to-end delivery of new services such as streaming media, e-business services and mobile Internet services.

VPN SERVICES: As metro optical solutions grow from 10 Mb/s (megabits per second) to 100 Mb/s and 1,000 Mb/s, then service providers will be able to offer disk-on-demand, remote data replication, and disaster recovery services.

If local loop unbundling (LLUB) builds momentum internationally in 2001, many industry watchers anticipate a surge in the fortunes of xDSL (digital subscriber line) technology.

According to estimates cited by management consultants McKinsey & Company, some 2.6 million xDSL lines were expected to be installed in the United States at the end of 2000 with Europe having around one tenth of that figure.

The company also suggests that the European and U.S. penetration gap could close within the three to four years after 2000, ending up with about 10 million DSL lines in each market.

However, not everything in the LLUB garden is rosy, particularly in Europe. While Denmark, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands have acquiesced to LLUB, others -- notably BT in the United Kingdom -- are perceived to be dragging their heels over surrendering their copper birthrights.

“The European telecoms industry is acting as though it can conduct the negotiations for unbundling and co-location as a private family squabble,” says Ian Scales, lead author of a new report, “Delivering DSL in Europe,” from the Cambridge, U.K.-headquartered Analysys consulting concern.

“It can’t,” he says. “The political and economic stakes are too high, since unbundling and the competitively priced Internet access services expected to flow from it are viewed as a critical component for EU global competitiveness.” Scales suggests that co-location and unbundling should be seen as a partnering opportunity rather than a regulatory imposition, with net gains for all parties.

Analysys suggests would-be new entrant xDSL carriers will focus investment in those countries where the conditions look best, and that those countries that appear to have difficult environments will miss out on the bulk of the investment.

Evidence, Analysys says, is supplied by Global Crossing and WorldCom. Both carriers have announced they have no current plans to participate directly in the unbundling process in the United Kingdom. Analysys says those operators that remain are increasingly downbeat about their likely speed of deployment and their ability to provide compelling competitive services.

However, London-headquartered research and consultancy enterprise Ovum, in its report “Broadband Access: New Business Models,” cites the cost of interconnection as the main stumbling block to widespread xDSL deployment.

“Technology costs are only the tip of the iceberg for operators and new entrants,” asserts Yum Petkovic, Ovum analyst and lead author of the report.

“The cost of interconnection can often form the biggest expense, even leaving aside the cost of rolling out a new network. So despite all the regulatory work needed to unbundle the local loop, countries which have achieved unbundling may find that new entrants are not queuing up to take advantage of the new rules.”

Meantime, sentiment in some quarters seems to be edging away from asymmetric DSL (ADSL). According to an estimate cited by Munich-based semiconductor concern Infineon Technologies, deployment of symmetric DSL (SDSL) will surpass that of asymmetric DSL in 2002.

The German company is betting some of its money on the future prospects of the International Telecommunication Union’s version of symmetric high bitrate digital subscriber line (G.SHDSL).

This year also is supposed to be the one when voice over DSL (VODSL) hits the big time, big time. And as vendors such as Israel’s Rad Data Communications point out, VODSL is a symmetrical service.

Rad recently introduced its LAT-140 ATM VODSL that supports up to 12 analog voice ports, up to three data/LAN ports, and one 10/100Base T port. The LAT-140 also has a built-in router to interface between different technologies.

Another DSL technology that could start to see the light of commercial day in 2001 is very high speed DSL (VSDL). This can be configured to be symmetric but the copper distances that can be covered by VDSL are very modest at the moment. At the highest bitrates achievable, this is usually measured in low hundreds of meters.

Another Israeli company, Lod-based Be Connected Ltd., reckons it has a solution for this in the form of an integrated multiservice access platform (IMAP). The platform essentially locates the digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM), normally found in the central office, in a roadside cabinet close to the user, or actually on the user premise in an optical network unit (ONU). Fiber then transports traffic back to the central office.

“If you want to have VDSL, video and high bit rates, you really have to be much closer to the customer,” states Uzi Yaha, Be Connected’s vice president for marketing and sales.
-- John Williamson

In an acronym-filled industry, there is always room for another. How about DVRN? It stands for dense virtual routed networking, and Crescent Networks thinks service providers will be hearing a lot more about this technology in 2001.

DVRN, according to Crescent, is a network-level solution integrating dynamic virtual routing, optical-scale application quality of service, and collaborative service management. As more businesses look for ways to improve efficiency through virtual collaboration via intranets, extranets and more, it is the service provider, Crescent argues, that can offer dynamic and virtual routed networks to start using public networks as the point of delivery. But as businesses ask for VRNs to scale and replicate by orders of magnitude, it will create the need for DVRNs.

Now that more businesses and people are becoming dependent on Internet connections, next-generation IP networks and more, service providers need better testing and analytical tools. Therein lies the challenge for the test and measurement industry.

“This reliance on digital services means that testing applications will need to evolve accordingly,” says Frank Bourne, vice president of technology for Harris Corp.

“The time-sensitive nature of these services will demand that technicians be properly equipped with data-safe test sets in order to protect quality of service standards, and bridged tap detection past 18,000 feet will become necessary if these services are to reach the masses,” Bourne says.

But one key trend in this area for 2001 will be the increasing sophistication related to line qualification for digital subscriber line connections, something that companies like Harris, Sunrise Telecom, Fluke Corp., Hekimian, Teradyne, Tollgrade Communications, and Wavetek, Wandel & Goltermann already have recognized.

Service providers need faster and less expensive ways to determine whether existing copper lines can handle the higher speed transmissions.

Frost & Sullivan, in its report “World xDSL Test Equipment Markets,” estimated $600 million in industry revenues in 2000, and also projected rapid growth in this area with revenues expected to top $2.5 billion by 2006.

“Provisioning lines to qualify them for DSL service has traditionally been a sticking point in speedy deployment,” says Greg Bublitz, leader of the access test and management business unit of Harris Corp.’s network support division.

A direct interface between digital subscriber line access multiplexers (DSLAMs), he says, and line test equipment is the most ideal situation, but many DSLAMs do not have built-in test access. That’s where Harris has come in with a carrier test access switch used downstream of the DSLAM to provide access to the lines with Harris remote test units then used to perform testing.

DataZen Corp. now has a DataZen Service Finder for DSL, a Web-delivered, intelligence solution that integrates geospatial mapping technology and multiple data sets to determine whether a DSL service provider can provision services at a particular address.
-- Wayne Walley

Summit Strategies, a Boston, Massachusetts-based research firm, determines an annual “Summit Seven” report listing what the company expects to be the seven key imperatives facing the technology industry in the coming year. Here’s a look at what the company picked as the seven trends for 2001, plus a few “future watch” issues Summit says could create new opportunities or threats in the coming years.

Summit Seven

• INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE:

  The second-generation Internet will take shape, as engineers begin overhauling the original with new generations of infrastructure hardware and software for high performance, capacity on demand and ironclad guarantees.

• ASPs:

  Applications service providers (ASPs) need to develop a value proposition to attract “early majority” customers – and to survive a shakeout.

• VIRTUAL WORKPLACES:

  Stand-alone portals, hosted applications and marketplaces will be eclipsed by virtual workplaces – environments that integrate hosted applications, internal and industry content and complementary services tailored to the needs of the individual.

• WIRELESS:

  Wireless carriers will finally recognize that business – rather than consumer – applications will drive the North American wireless Internet adoption, which will dramatically alter the way they approach the market.

• EXTENDED ENTERPRISE:

  The extended enterprise entails seamless integration of a company’s business-to-business (B2B) processes with those of its suppliers, partners and customers. It is a concept so simple, yet so significant that it will bring about cataclysmic change in the way companies operate.

• XML STANDARDS:

  Standards are coming. And they will pave the way for a new era of integration and collaboration for businesses, tying together enterprise-based and hosted applications to online marketplaces and content portals.

• E-MARKETPLACES:

  E-marketplaces will be forced to add enterprise functionality to their offerings to gain and retain customers as well as reduce costs. The right mix of integrated applications can mean the difference between standing on your own two feet and falling to your knees.

Future Watch

• B2Me:

  In 2001, companies will begin to recognize the opportunity to merge B2B and business to consumer (B2C) into a “B2Me” Web more in tune with today’s information and transactional requirements.

• “Insight Economy”:

  Information alone is no longer enough. In 2001, we will start to migrate from the information economy to an insight economy. Providers will compete to create new tools to recognize the user’s context and deliver the right information when and where it is needed.

• Redistributing Network Intelligence:

  Having convinced much of the world that centralized, server-based computing is the wave of the future, systems and software vendors will swing at least partway back toward a more distributed environment during 2001. Vendors will push computing and storage engines out to the network’s edge, close to the data’s consumers. Meanwhile, the emergence of “peer-to-peer” applications and services will renew interest in client-based computing.

Broadband wireless access (BWA) technology is building up a head of steam in many parts of the world. Such networks have been operating in the U.S. since the second half of 1998 and licenses began to be awarded in Europe the following year.

Last year saw licensing continue and the technology spread to additional regions, notably Eastern Europe and Asia Pacific. However, many markets have yet to select carriers and additional licenses are up for auction in some existing BWA markets.

Forecasts by different analysts cited by Amnon Yacoby, CEO of Yehuda, Israel-headquartered BWA concern Floware Wireless Systems Ltd., indicate a compound annual growth rate of more than 100 percent from 2000 to 2003 for BWA.

BWA technologies have a number of advantages, including relatively quick roll-outs. As management consultants McKinsey & Company point out, customer premise equipment (CPE) comprise most of the upfront capital expenditure for BWA as customers are added to the network, and the CPE can be relocated when customers churn.

Maintenance and operating costs are low, and bandwidth can be re-allocated among the customer base when particular customers are not using the system. McKinsey & Company say that it is not uncommon for local multipoint distribution system (LMDS) operators to sign up six to 10 times more customers than their networks could otherwise support at one time.

Some in the industry also are now predicting a move toward point-to-point products that can provide more capacity and faster connection speeds. And one U.S.-based vendor, fSONA, is touting what it calls “optical wireless” technology that can be installed in less than 24 hours to link corporate offices to the Internet or to each other.

The Strategis Group, a telecom consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., speaks of “free space optics” (FSO) as an emerging technology in the fixed broadband space that transports data from point-to-point and multipoint via laser technology.

FSO equipment, according to Strategis, is being deployed for different applications such as last-mile connections to buildings, assisting mobile networks, network backup, and emergency relief.

“With other fixed wireless technologies such as LMDS and MMDS, people had a strong understanding of RF technology because of the wide use of mobile phones. However, lasers remain somewhat of a mystery,” says James Mendelson, Strategis Group analyst and lead author of the group’s study “Free Space Optics: Fixed Wireless Broadband.”

“In order to be successful, FSO vendors must first educate the market. Then, they must quickly deliver on their promises of fast, reliable, high-bandwidth connections.”

As you might expect, there are several less attractive BWA characteristics, too. Network engineering is somewhat complex given the need to avoid interference with other spectrum users, the susceptibility of signals to attenuation in rain and fog, and the basic line-of-sight limitation of the microwave frequencies used.

These frequencies are generally 24 GHz (gigahertz) to 26 GHz in Europe, with 38 GHz also used in the United States, to serve small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), and 2.5 GHz to 3.5GHz to serve the European small office home office (SOHO) and residential market sectors.

BWA CPE costs still are relatively expensive, although some operating licenses have been awarded on a “beauty contest” basis. If the licensing authorities set too high an entry fee in the case of an auction, the business case for BWA might not be viable.

A second round of BWA licensing in the United Kingdom in November 2000 ended in tears because of the high price indicated for the 28 GHz spectrum permits auctioned. In the event, the British authorities sold 14 of the 42 BWA licenses, raising around £38 million ($60.8 million) instead of the hoped-for £1 billion.

Even so, the U.K.’s London-headquartered consultancy Ovum reckons that BWA is a good access strategy for new market entrants.

In its “Broadband Access: New Business Models” report, Ovum argues that this option allows operators without an existing customer base to build new networks without the need to pay for interconnect licenses or dig up roads. In principle they will be able to bring their customer offerings to market and recoup rollout costs quickly.

”Wireless is definitely a good short-term strategy, because the revenue generated will soon outstrip cost margins,” says the Ovum report’s lead author Yum Petkovic. “The wireless approach is being encouraged in Hong Kong, for example, as it represents the quickest way to foster competition -- nearly 20 licenses have already been awarded.”

What to watch for next in the BWA arena?

Probably the use of additional frequencies in Europe – 4 GHz and 5 GHz are in the frame, although a question mark hangs over 40 GHz. And probably higher capacities.

A note from Montpelier, France-based consultancy IDATE in July 2000 stated: “LMDS delivers symmetrical speeds of 2 to 8 Mb/s [megabits per second] per subscriber at present and will probably climb to 16 Mb/s within the next two years as technology progresses.”

Then there’s non-radio BWA. Companies, such as San Diego, California-based Optical Access, are working with laser technology.

“High-speed optical wireless access is the perfect answer for dense metropolitan areas like London and Paris. Getting rights-of-way and licenses to install actual fiber-optic cable is too expensive, too slow and too inflexible,” claims Allen Brandt, vice president of business development at Optical Access.

“Optical Access can deliver 155 Mb/s service in a matter of hours anywhere in London and do so at a saving of up to 85 percent with a reach of more than 2 miles. As for the future, we are already in final lab trials for 622 Mb/s and OC-48 over distances greater than 3 miles.”
-- John Williamson

Not everyone is convinced that 2001 will be the year for the so-called “softswitch” to make its mark in the public network.

Most of the world’s large public network operators already have deployed asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and many are using or looking very closely at multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) as a way to integrate ATM with Internet protocol (IP).

Avici Systems, for example, sees 2001 as the year MPLS will become more than a traffic engineering tool for network management. Carriers, the company says, should start using MPLS to offer advanced IP-based services.

But with greater acceptance of VOIP on the horizon, the next step to softswitches seems inevitable. “Softswitch will remain a hot technology since it both reduces market entry barriers for service providers, like costs associated with deployment of new services, and enables delivery of multimedia and telephony services over IP networks,” says Geoff Butcher, CEO, Protek.

“The key opportunity here is not simply to offer VOIP in terms of a lower cost long-distance telephony transport, nor to simply replace the existing functionality of the telephone system. The main prospect of softswitch technology is the creation of a multimedia, personalized communication system with means of universal access underpinned by a ubiquitous transport infrastructure,” Butcher says.

While Butcher expects ATM to play more of a supporting role in the future, the Mobile Wireless Internet Forum points out that many planned 3G wireless networks will be using ATM as a transport of choice.

Greg Baltzer, president and CEO of Vsys in Denver, Colorado, also is a proponent of softswitch technology and expects further developments this year.

“The issue facing carriers in 2001 involves interconnecting their large IP infrastructure with other carriers’ IP networks. Firewall management, security and VOIP protocol mediation are very important technical issues as carriers allow other IP networks to deliver calls directly to their IP infrastructure. Softswitch technology solves this set of problems,” Baltzer says.

For wireless operators, the prospects for mobile Internet, mobile data services and m-commerce are tantalizing for 2001.

But the mobile industry’s biggest story in 2000 had to be the exponential growth of NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode service in Japan. The service had at least 15.5 million subscribers at the end of the year, and the mobile phone operator was forecasting more than 20 million i-mode customers by March.

The technology, no doubt, has overshadowed what many have described as a lackluster performance of wireless application protocol (WAP).

“Despite the many promises of the mobile Internet, WAP does not cut it,” says Carles Ferreiro, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan.

“Anyone who has used a WAP device complains of slow connections, dull display, poor content, and, in some cases, by-the-minute billing,” Ferreiro says. “But there is a learning curve in data over mobile, and, when the technology is ready, those with expertise are likely to have an edge. ‘Internet anywhere’ may not be here yet, but it will be.” In fact, i-mode could be in line to spread to more markets as NTT DoCoMo invests in other operators, such as U.S.-based AT&T Wireless, and form partnerships with carriers such as KPN Mobile in Europe.

The big question facing many, however, is whether the Japanese experience is an anomaly or the wave the future. Some say i-mode’s popularity is rooted in meeting cultural needs in Japan and will not necessarily translate into other regions of the world.

Others see the i-mode experience as a lesson in understanding a regional marketplace, properly pricing services, and using current technologies to best meet customer needs. The service today provides more than 1,100 sites of 600 NTT DoCoMo application alliance partners companies, more than 27,000 Internet Web sites, more than 300 search engines and various intranets.

Kei-ichi Enoki, managing director of NTT DoCoMo, said during his presentation at ITU Telecom Asia 2000 in Hong Kong in December that content is the key to success in wireless Internet.

“Developing a content portfolio to attract users is essential. First, we offer information such as news, weather and sports. Mobile operators often make the same mistake. They think that they are providing ‘wireless Internet’ just because they are offering news and weather information. But news is only a part of the Internet. Therefore, we also need to offer transaction services, such as mobile banking, securities trading and ticket reservations,” he said.

“But these alone are still not the Internet, so we must offer database information. Like restaurant guides, recipes, and the yellow pages telephone directory … we need to complement our content portfolio with entertainment contents, like cartoon character gif downloads, network games, downloadable ringing-tones and karaoke information. In this way, we offer a well-balanced content portfolio, which targets not just one segment of the market, but the entire market.”

With billions of dollars spent for third-generation mobile licenses in European wireless markets such as the United Kingdom and Germany, NTT DoCoMo’s success gives hope for an eventual return on investments.

But where does this leave the technology trends for the wireless industry in 2001?

Well, scores of GSM operators have either already launched or are preparing to launch general packet radio service (GPRS), the first step toward offering subscribers new types of revenue-generating services. Several CDMA operators have made the move to cdma2000 1X, offering high-speed data capabilities. Some operators, such as NTT DoCoMo, are preparing for 3G with W-CDMA in 2001 and others are getting ready for 3G with universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS).

Global Telephony’s February issue will include a more in-depth look at how the industry is preparing for 3G.

Another trend to be explored in the June issue will be how mobile operators are coping with wireless IP demands by building IP backbones -- and more.
-- Wayne Walley

While much attention is placed on data such as text and video when it comes to mobile and fixed Internet, m-commerce and e-commerce, there is a growing movement toward voice applications that can create voice portals and voice-enabled Web sites.

That means anyone with a telephone can access information from the Internet.

“Voice portals and voice-enabled Web sites will breathe new life into an old invention: the telephone,” says Paul Pauesick of Datacomm Research.

The Kelsey Group in Princeton, New Jersey, for example, predicts 18 million consumers will use some type of speech-recognition application to access the Web by 2005.

Cahners In-Stat Group expects voice recognition system and related service providers to have $120 billion in revenue by 2006.

One vendor, Audiopoint, already uses advanced interactive voice response (IVR) technologies to build applications for the media, banking, finance and travel industries that allow callers to get the information they want without speaking to an operator.

Dialogic, an Intel company, has created a voice portal platform so that voice portal customers can get instant access to the Internet using a telephone. And several big players keep developing better forms of speech recognition, synthesis software and speech engines including Conversa, IBM, Nuance, Philips Speech Processing and SpeechWorks, to name but a few.

Most of the top technologies mentioned so far relate to the creation of new services, value-added services and integrating services.

To offer these new bandwidth-intensive services to customers, network operators will need better and more comprehensive network management software.

Hewlett-Packard, for example, expects an increasing need this year to link always-on infrastructure with e-services and appliances. The company predicts the coming “killer app” will be an end-to-end network management solution allowing service providers to provide value-added e-services in a reliable and secure environment.

Syndesis, a provisioning software vendor, also sees the electronic marketplace changing the way subscribers interact with service providers, increasing the need for integrated supply chains.

However, the company says automated service delivery is becoming a “must-have” for service providers of all sizes because of cost reductions and the possibility of service innovation.

It is Web-based, self-service technology that will likely make the most strides in 2001, allowing carriers, service providers and wireless operators to improve customer care and more.

At least 10 companies have signed on for TeleManagement Forum’s “Self-Service over Multiple Networks” (SSMN) catalyst project. The companies plan to design and develop solutions for service providers to offer Web-enabled customer self-care and always-on provisioning.

The project is expected to show how service providers can quickly increase revenue, add a premium service to an existing service package, and market the service to an existing customer base.

The companies involved include Alcatel, Astracon, Cambio, Cisco Systems, Cygent, Hewlett-Packard, Information & Graphics Systems (IGS), Portal Software, Syndesis and WebMethods.

In 2001, the billing industry also will need to keep pace with network advancements so that service providers can properly bill for advanced IP services.

Motorola and Portal Software, for example, created a competency center for next-generation IP billing solutions in June to combine efforts for IP-based billing solution developments.

The need, and what vendors expect to provide in the coming year, are real-time, flexible customer management and billing platforms.
-- Wayne Walley

One thing the industry is likely to hear more about in 2001 is new generation operations systems and software (NGOSS), a new industry initiative started by the TeleManagement Forum.

TMF says the program includes a business case, requirements, and an implementation technology-neutral architecture providing a way to develop and deploy advanced management systems globally. The group expects the effort to result in systems that can be built more quickly and will more easily interoperate with each other.

At the same time, TMF has started several Catalyst projects to prove the principles of NGOSS and provide technology solutions with a goal to have NGOSS-based products in the market by early 2002. Those involved in the initiative include AT&T Labs – Broadband, BT, Connex Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, Korea Telecom, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Verizon, RHK, Tivoli, Telcordia and UUNET.

The telecom industry has an acronym-filled language of its own, but there are some new terms in business you might want to be aware of in 2001.

Kaplan Inc., an educational and career services provider in New York, asked its Kaptest.com business school experts to come up with this tongue-in-cheek list of the top 10 business words to know in 2001.

CROCK OPTIONS: When a dot-com offers stock options with a minimum strike prices that is actually higher than the stock’s current price on the open market.

DOT-COMA: A Web site with no visible signs of life: content is not updated; commerce and any other features requiring humans have been removed.

E-NNOYANCE: Vexation or irritation caused by the placement of “e” in front of every word.

FREE FALL: What all those brilliant Web sites that gave everything away for free are now doing.

NET WORKING: Using your Internet connection at work to look for a new job.

NOT COM: Laid off from a dot-com business.

TBD: That’s Been Dissolved.

THE GREAT POTATO CHIP FAMINE: The ending of the free snacks – including potato chips – that used to be the rule among dot-com employers.

TOYNOYING: Someone who has too many toys (pens, Palm pilots, mobile phones, etc.) and flaunts them.

WALL ENVY: New economy employees who covet old economy offices instead of an ever-smaller cubicle.