TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: Convergence

One of the conference tracks in CommunicAsia was on next-generation networks (NGN). NGN will have a big impact on the future of computing and communications as networks become converged, higher speed and ubiquitous, leading to the emergence of new services. In this series, we will explore NGN and discuss new applications. For countries like India, NGN offer a great opportunity to leapfrog to a state-of-the-art broadband infrastructure.

As we discussed in last week’s Tech Talk, South Korea’s IT839 initiative offers some insights into tomorrow’s world of converged networks. As I wrote in my Business Standard column on CommunicAsia: “Convergence is finally becoming a reality as the next-generation networks with all-IP cores are making it possible to have triple play services (voice, data and video) flow over the same network. Convergence is also happening in terms of the fixed line and wireless worlds – in both the networks and handsets. Convergence technology drivers include SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and IMS (IP Multimedia System). There will be a time soon when our handsets will support WiFi and GSM/CDMA, such that in hotspots they would use WiFi to make and receive calls, while at other locations they would use the cellular networks.”

This is what I wrote in my Tech Talk on Disruptions recently: “For the most part, voice has been carried separately from data, while video has had its own network. Now, it is all changing as next-generation networks built around IP at their core, and voice and video are digitised. Voice becomes yet another application – as is already happening with VoIP, and network TV shifts to networked TV (to borrow a phrase from Esther Dyson). IMS, MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) and SIP are some of the building blocks for these networks.”

While I use the term “next-generation network” more broadly, here is how the ITU defines NGN: “a packet-based network able to provide telecommunication services and able to make use of multiple broadband, QoS-enabled transport technologies and in which service-related functions are independent from underlying transport-related technologies. It enables unfettered access for users to networks and to competing service providers and/or services of their choice. It supports generalized mobility which will allow consistent and ubiquitous provision of services to users.”

The promise is clear: a converged world where we can get the applications and services we want where we want them and on the device of our choice. This has been the Holy Grail in the telecom world for many years, but finally things seem to be coming together.

Tomorrow: The Rationale

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: The Rationale

Let us start by looking at what the definition and motivations behind the next-generation networks. Dr. Peter Tomsu of Cisco Systems writes:

The phrase Next Generation Network (NGN) describes an integrated, open network architecture that provides voice, data and multimedia services over the same network. Integrated networking itself is not something specifically new: looking back over more than 20 years we’ve seen Broadband ISDN, then ATM, and Multi Service Networks. These all tried to deliver integrated service offerings. So what is the new and appealing in NGN? What makes NGN a popular buzzword seen all over the networking industry today?

NGN uses a packet-based network and multiple broadband, quality of service (QoS)-enabled transport technologies to provide services including telecommunication and data services. One special area addressed by NGN is the concept of nomadicity, a feature which gives fixed line and mobile users completely seamless communication. Simply put, this means the underlying technology will be invisible to the user regardless of where in a multi-service, multi-protocol, multi-vendor environment the user “resides”. This is a big advance, since it allows us to decouple service-related functions from underlying transport-related technologies. NGN offers unrestricted access to different service providers and supports generalized mobility, affording users consistent and ubiquitous provisioning of services.

The most important ingredient of NGN is a converged, QoS-aware packet infrastructure. This infrastructure must satisfy QOS criteria while also ensuring transparent service availability in any part of the network. This is achieved in an NGN by providing seamless access to critical information and by virtualizing applications and services. NGN satisfies the ubiquitous access requirement by providing transport independent services, in a converged wireless and wireline network model.

BCR writes (in an introduction for its NGN 2005 conference coming up in September):

Many enterprises, service providers and equipment makers aren’t satisfied with today’s networks. They want more—more security, more real-time QOS for voice and video, more features and functions, and of course, if they are in the business of selling products or services, more revenue. And they aren’t sure they’ll get it from today’s ’Net.

That’s why there are multiple visions of Next Generation Networks, and we’ll be talking about all of them at the NGN 2005 conference. First, there is the vision of the international standards bodies that are working to standardize network services rather than components, interfaces and basic technologies. If successful, these efforts will not only impose new rules on what network users can do, they will also force new directions on the evolution of network technologies.

Second, there are the many visions of wireless, which are rapidly unfolding as customers—enterprises and consumers—shift away from the wireline world and take their voice, data and even video capabilities with them. Wireless technologies have often outrun the standards organizations and service providers, and the latest versions of WiFi, WiMAX, UWB and SDR are no exception. We are in the early stages of the “wireless everything” revolution, and it’s far from clear which technologies and services will survive the coming shakeout.

Tomorrow: IMS

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: IMS

David Passmore, Research Director for the Burton Group, lays out the ITU vision of NGN:

The ITU NGN isn’t just oriented towards voice, but is intended to support presence and instant messaging, push-to-talk, voice mail, video and other multimedia applications. This includes both real-time and streaming modes—particularly important for video.

Architecturally, the ITU’s NGN relies heavily on the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) framework, developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)/3GPP2 for 3G/UMTS and CDMA mobile networks. The IMS has been extended to cover wireline facilities, to create a converged, seamless mobile user experience. The ITU NGN also mandates IPv6, and uses traffic prioritization end-to-end to deliver service quality. It requires reservation and commitment of network resources before connections are established.

The IMS upon which NGN is based uses the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) with extensions, and creates a telephony-oriented signalling network that sits on top of an underlying IP “cloud;” it replaces telco SS7 signalling and acts as a wireless/wireline control plane. An IMS network consists of many SIP proxy servers that mediate all customer/user connections and access to network resources. Just as with cellular networks, IMS assumes each user is associated with a “home” network, and supports the concept of roaming across other wired or wireless nets. IMS also includes a policy engine and authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA) server for operator control and security.

In this context, it is useful to understand IMS. Here is what Wikipedia has to say:

The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is an open, standardised, operator friendly, NGN multi-media architecture for mobile and fixed IP services. It's a VoIP implementation based on a 3GPP variant of SIP, and runs over the standard Internet protocol (IP). It's used by telecom operators in NGN networks (which combine voice and data in a single packet switched network), to offer network controlled multimedia services.

The aim of IMS is not only to provide new services but to provide all the services, current and future, that the Internet provides. In addition, users have to be able to execute all their services when roaming as well as from their home networks. To achieve these goals the IMS uses open standard IP protocols, defined by the IETF. So, a multi-media session between 2 IMS users, between an IMS user and a user on the Internet, and between 2 users on the Internet is established using exactly the same protocol. Moreover, the interfaces for service developers are also based in IP protocols. This is why the IMS truly merges the Internet with the cellular world; it uses cellular technologies to provide ubiquitous access and Internet technologies to provide appealing services.

Tomorrow: IMS (continued)

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: IMS (Part 2)

John Waclawsky, part of the Mobile Wireless Group at Cisco Systems, provides some background:

Out of the wireless standards consortium called 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) comes a slow-growing and complicated collection of carrier network functions and processes that collectively are referred to as IMS, which stands for the IP (or Internet) Multimedia Subsystem. The IMS standards promise an operator-friendly environment for real-time, packet-based calls and services that not only will preserve traditional carrier controls over user signaling and usage-based billing, but also will generate new revenue via deep packet inspection of protocols, URI and content.

IMS was conceived for the evolution of cellular telephony networks, but the benefits of user signaling and billing controls have attracted the endorsement and involvement of wireline network operators and standards makers.
IMS is only a part of such a system, as defined by 3GPP. The entire 3G system can be briefly summarized in five pieces:

1. The IMS, or SIP/SDP control plane, at the core.
2. The media and signal conversion layer wrapped around the core.
3. The embedded walled garden, defined by the applications or services the operator offers to its subscribers and the limits it also sets on their behavior and signaling.
4. The billing and back office function layer.
5. An array of network, systems management and operations tools.

IMS is a result of the telephony carriers’ growing interest (at 3GPP) in data applications, the Internet in general and the emerging wireless Internet in particular. IMS is part of a huge 3G gamble by the mobile telephony operators around the world, with assistance from traditional telephony vendors, to obtain control of the vast new Internet medium and monetize it.

TechTip adds about SIP:

SIP [Session Initiation Protocol] is the real-time communication protocol for VoIP [Voice over IP]. SIP has been expanded to support video and instant-messaging applications. SIP is designed to perform basic call-control tasks, such as session call set up and tear down and signaling for features such as call hold, caller ID, conferencing and call transferring.

"Presence" is an all-encompassing term used to describe reachability control over how, where, when and by whom they can be contacted (reached). Presence covers any concept such as "buddy lists" (desired contacts) or the means (wireless/wireline), device (pager, cell, PDA, TV, etc.) or media (voice, data, music, multi-media) and yet-to-be-defined means of communication.

Tomorrow: The Future

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: The Future

Peter Sevcik, president of NetForecast, lays out the forces that are shaping next-generation networks:

Innovation Moves Up And Out: The bulk of technical innovation is shifting from network cores and low-layer protocols to the edge and upper-layer protocols. This movement up-and-out is both a natural progression of the TCP/IP success story and a byproduct of core network scale. The core is huge, must operate non-stop, and is built out of optical components and ASICs. The core can’t change quickly any more… But the edge is still fast-changing software running on general-purpose computers. These innovations are strictly focused on Layer 4 and above, where the news is what it does—the application—rather than how it’s done.

Technology Lock-Down: Big carriers have power, and they are finding new ways to use it. They are using their purchasing clout and customer base to go back to forcing the consumer to buy the terminal with the service.

Power Concentration: Even as carriers are working to lock down the technology, big players of all sorts are moving to consolidate their market power in the networks of the future…For starters, not only are carriers exercising dictatorial control over their own networks, they’re also seeking to extend their domination over the playing field on which those networks compete. Not content simply to wield monopoly control over the last-mile copper (and soon fiber), the incumbents are fighting any newcomers.

Regulation: Of course, the ultimate power player is the government, and it’s a sure bet that the Internet will not remain unregulated for much longer.

Conclusion: These forces are set to clash: Innovation against walled gardens. Business might against government power. Notice that technology has very little influence in shaping the future. The next generation networks will be defined by how the trends find temporary states of coexistence.

So, what’s really changing? In the past (and true even now), there have been separate networks for voice, data and video. The phone system has carried our voice calls, while the Internet has been used for our data traffic. Video (especially TV) has relied on its own networks – primarily a combination of cable, satellite and terrestrial broadcasting. What is changing now is that the shift is happening from vertically integrated networks to horizontally-integrated networks, which decouples the services from the transport layer.

We are seeing a fascinating evolution in the networks that connect our computers and mobile phones to services. On the wired networks, technologies like VDSL2 have the potential to dramatically increase the connectivity we have available at home and work. In the wired world, 3G networks are starting to get deployed. WiMax is also being touted as an alternative to 3G. For now, technologies like EV-DO offer hundreds of kilobits per second connectivity for the early adopters. Among other technologies, one which is getting increasing recent interest is Broadband over Power Lines (BPL).

In other words, NGN is all set to usher opportunity as disruption as the worlds of mobile and fixed networks collide. At the same time, they will also usher in a new dynamic in network-aware applications.

Next Week: NGN (continued)

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: Convergence Areas

This week’s Tech Talk is written by Ninad Mehta. Ninad works at Lucent in New Jersey, USA. Ninad and I used to work together at NYNEX Science & Technology during 1989-1991 – and we were also room-mates. Ninad has extensive experience in telecom. So I invited him to elaborate on next-generation networks.

Last week, in the tech-talk series on Next Generation Networks, we covered the following topics: Convergence and what it means, the Rationale behind convergence, what is IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and its role in convergence and what would a Converged NGN in the future look like.

Let’s do a deeper dive on some of these topics. While we understand that Convergence can have different meaning to different people, in broad terms, convergence is happening in four major areas: Applications, Endpoints, Access Networks and Core Networks. Let’s take these one at a time.

Applications convergence is easy to understand by an example such as Unified Mailbox where voice, e-mail, fax etc. all arrive in the same e-mail application inbox. Additionally, you would also want to share data that is common, across all these applications. Application convergence has been happening for many years now.

We have also seen Endpoints converge (mostly into cellphones) so that we can use one device to make phone calls, browse the Internet, send e-mails/SMSs and also perform functions traditionally available in PDAs (such as calendars, contact lists, reminders, to do lists, calculators, etc.). With larger and higher resolution displays becoming common on today’s cellphones, portable gaming devices have also started converging into cellphones. We also hear about wireless and wireline convergence in the form of Wifi enabled cell phones that will use the home broadband connection for carrying voice when a wifi network is available. This will reduce the opex costs for the wireless service provider and benefit the consumer in the way of lower per minute charges.

Let’s talk about the core network convergence from separate TDM, ATM and IP to a multiservice IP/MPLS network. The main drivers for the convergence in the core are: reduced operational costs, faster and cheaper delivery of new services, customer configurable virtual private networks, etc. British Telecom has launched a major initiative called 21CN for an All-IP network.

What is Access convergence? Here I am talking about the evolution in the access network technology that connects end user devices to the service providers. You might think that with all sorts of broadband options available in the last mile, the access network is NOT converging. This is partly true – while the “last mile” part of the access network seems to “diverge” into different technology options, the migration of end-user services is clearly from carrying bearer traffic over {analog, cable, wireless, TDM, ATM, Frame Relay, SONET/SDH} to carrying bearer over IP. In other words, instead of having our analog phone carrying analog voice signals to the PSTN network, we are migrating to VoIP. Instead of carrying voice over a GSM/CDMA/TDMA interface, we will be migrating to VoIP over these air interfaces. Instead of analog video carried over cable/FTTx, we are migrating to various forms of Video over IP. This brings up a fundamental question- why bother to supplant all these well-entrenched technologies with IP? Aren’t the traditional technologies we have been using for decades more reliable and cheaper? Aren’t IP based devices more expensive and error prone as they have lot more software? The answer to these questions is beyond our discussion in this tech-talk series but the key takeaway is that with proper encapsulation, many services can be carried over IP. Also, beyond the technologies visible to end users, there is convergence happening in the access network to core network interfaces. So, traditional Remote Terminals with TDM and ATM interfaces are migrating to Ethernet interfaces. Moreover, the traditional wireline access network elements and the cellular network elements are also coming together with IP interfaces into the core network.

Tomorrow, we will talk about the next generation services enabled by the NGN and why service providers plan to spend billions in the coming years to build these NGNs.

Tomorrow: Services and Business Models

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: Services and Business Models

by Ninad Mehta

You can divide the traditional voice telephony world into two large buckets: The developed countries characterized by high tele-density and the developing countries characterized by low tele-density. For the high tele-density countries, the number of fixed lines have been either stagnant or declining at an accelerated pace for last five years. This decline can be attributed to several factors, including the customer dropping the 2nd line for dial-up Internet, migrating from fixed to Cellular completely (cutting the chord), migrating to Voice over BB using the cable operator, migrating to VoBB using VNO such as Vonage, Skype or others. This erosion has two impacts: The revenue is staying more or less flat due to the limited number of services being offered on the traditional voice/data lines AND the costs of operating broadband networks is going up as more traffic migrates from fixed wireline to mobile and broadband. When the SP in a developed country has a fully depreciated network, there will be some level of natural migration to the next generation networks but due to various regulatory constraints, we haven’t seen massive investments going into building these new broadband networks like USA. In countries like Japan, South Korea and some Scandinavian nations, it is the government policy that enables the massive infrastructure investments for NGN.

The traditional business models that have worked for years are now breaking down. These SPs need to somehow increase their revenue and the solution they have found is in building NGN using the IMS framework. IMS promises the convergence of wireless and wireline networks and services. The SPs will be able to move up the value chain by offering a lot more than just raw bandwidth. In fact, the SPs who choose to stay on their current networks risk the possibility of being just bit pipe providers on whose networks, other application service providers can ride.

New business models will emerge based on new capabilities built around the IMS framework. In the past, the SP provided service bundles where network access & transport, call features and applications were all bundled together as part of a service. For example, your telephone company provided you with basic telephony (dialtone), calling features (caller ID, 3-way calling, speed dialing, etc.) and applications such as network voice mail. But, there are a lot of new, innovative and life enhancing applications that we have not even conceived yet. How will we get these services delivered? One option is for the SP to develop these applications and provide it over time. But this is a very slow approach. Another approach is IN based, which seemed to be the nirvana back in the mid ‘80s. With the applications, endpoints, access networks and core networks all converging, it makes a lot of logical sense for the SP to use IMS as the framework for service delivery. IMS enables a distributed ecosystem where application developers, application service providers and network providers can all come together.

IMS enables new applications and services in consumer as well as enterprise space. For Consumer Applications & Services will use Presence and Location information servers for real-time service enhancements. Enterprise Services – Fixed/Mobile convergence will enable an employee to have full PBX functionality available on his personal cellphone. This would include abilities such as abbreviated dialing, employee directory access and the traditional PBX features like call park, call forwarding on busy, etc.

Going back to our classification between low and high tele-density countries, low tele-density countries are mostly developing countries of the world where the primary government objective is to increase tele-density at the lowest costs. For these countries, the markets may not be fully ready for adopting the next generation services. Yet, it makes a lot of sense to invest in the next generation infrastructure that will enable these services in the near future.

Tomorrow, we will discuss some of the options available to us for building the next generation service delivery architectures.

Tomorrow: Building It Out

[Ninad Mehta works at Lucent in New Jersey. The views expressed in this column are his own.]

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: Building It Out

by Ninad Mehta

Now that we understand some of the new services enabled by NGN-IMS, lets see what are the other approaches for building the next generation networks.

For VoIP, the 2 major vendor approaches are SoftSwitch based point solutions versus IMS based approach. The major benefit of IMS is that it provides for much more than just voice applications. As we covered during the TechTalk on Monday, given that both Applications and Endpoints are converging, IMS delivers much higher benefits for deploying VoIP compared to Softswitch based point solutions. The main benefit of IMS is that network resources are shared across a wide array of applications. In fact, many Softswitch vendors in the market are trying to reposition their products within the IMS framework.

So what are some of the killer applications that absolutely require IMS? First of all, there aren’t too many applications that can’t be built using Softswitch based point solutions today. A LightReading article on Killer Apps for IMS (from Supercomm 2005) puts this very nicely:

There is no single killer application for carriers wanting to roll out converged services using IMS.

In fact, what is becoming clear here in Chicago is that in order to justify the cost of rolling out IP multimedia subsystems (IMS) carriers will likely want to see several applications that can improve their average revenue per user (ARPU).
IMS, you may recall, is envisaged as a unified architecture that can support a range of IP-based services for both packet- and circuit-switched networks and employ a range of different wireless and fixed access mechanisms. The big question is: which services and why?

"It's very hard to find a single application that you can roll out using IMS that you couldn't implement without it," says Alan Stoddard, general manager of converged networks at Nortel Networks Ltd. "It only makes... [financial] sense when you get to the third or fourth application; it doesn't make any sense for just one."

So, what are the applications that will encourage carriers to adopt IMS?

For next generation services, another major competitor to IMS might be Microsoft’s Connected Services Framework. In a June ’05 story, LightReading reported:

AT&T and Microsoft Corp. today announced a groundbreaking strategic alliance that is expected to revolutionize the development, deployment and delivery of next-generation Internet Protocol (IP)-based communications services.

The alliance leverages the far-reaching AT&T global IP network, which can be accessed from 149 countries, and Microsoft® Connected Services Framework, an integrated software solution that enables the rapid delivery of converged communications services across multiple networks and end-user devices. Using Connected Services Framework, AT&T will be able to dynamically create new network-based IP services and applications that can be deployed when and where they are needed.

So what can Microsoft’s CSF do? According to the same article:

Microsoft Connected Services Framework is an integrated software solution for building and managing complex services using a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web service interfaces. Microsoft Connected Services Framework allows telecommunications operators to aggregate, provision and manage converged communications services for their subscribers, regardless of network or device.

Back in February 2005, LightReading had reported BT, Bell Canada and Celcom Malaysia are deploying the Microsoft Connected Services Framework to facilitate the delivery of services to their customers.

Tomorrow, we will revisit some of the new business models that will emerge in the coming years once carriers start deploying IMS.

Tomorrow: IMS Impact

[Ninad Mehta works at Lucent in New Jersey. The views expressed in this column are his own.]

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: IMS Impact

by Ninad Mehta

During the last several years, we have seen the voice services market being attacked from many non-traditional competitors. There is a fundamental shift in networks from segregating voice, video and data to treating everything as data (over IP). This has rendered access providers to mere bandwidth providers on whose networks, VNOs (Virtual Network Operators) such as Vonage & ATT CallVantage can ride. Couple this with Skype etc. who are providing peer-to-peer voice services using your existing PC.

There is a paradigm shift in the voice world from “smart network, dumb endpoints” to “dumb network, smart endpoints”. While the former was necessary for mass adoption of the public switched telephone networks and the communications infrastructure, the latter has a severe impact on the business models of the traditional service providers. We have seen the transformation of “smart network, dumb endpoints” previously. Mainframes supporting dumb terminals paved way for client/server computing using Minicomputers from Digital. Then Minicomputers gave way to Sun’s workstations. Smart PCs connected LANs and file/print servers have resulted in mass adoption of today’s computing infrastructure.

Now, we are witnessing a similar value migration in the wireline voice world. Standard based networking protocols such as SIP, MGCP & H.323 have enabled applications and endpoints to become smarter over time. VoIP over wireless has the potential to enable similar value migration from today’s cellular voice networks to Voice-over-Wifi endpoints supported by the next generation voice service providers (VNOs).

What this means for the incumbent service provider is that even if they don’t lose customers to these new competitors at a rapid enough pace, they are surely losing control over their customers fast. Their biggest challenge is maintaining their profit margin and growing revenue while not losing control over the customers.

What can the service providers do to maintain their control over the customer? IMS provides several mechanisms for the service provider to own the customer. The customer ownership is achieved through owning the home subscriber server (HSS) database that maintains the unique service profile for each end-user. Various attributes of the HSS database are shared with different applications, on an as needed basis. Since the information available in the HSS database constantly changes (as the end-user’s location, presence, preferences and endpoints change all the time), application service providers need to always go back to the HSS database. Other functions within the IMS framework such as CSCF (Call Session Control Function), MGCF (Media Gateway Services Function), MRF (Media Resource Function), Service Brokers, etc. provide for further control. Also, technologies such as Session Border Controllers enable the service provider to control over QoS attributes.

The beauty of IMS is that a service provider can introduce new applications, new application service providers and other network service provider partners without the fear of losing customer control to any of these potential future competitors. Think of IMS as the middleware on which other application developers can write applications using standard interfaces.

Tomorrow, we will talk about major data/telecom vendors and service providers’ plans to build their Next Generation Networks.

Tomorrow: Carriers and Vendors

[Ninad Mehta works at Lucent in New Jersey. The views expressed in this column are his own.]

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: Carriers and Vendors

by Ninad Mehta

IMS delivers enough benefits and value that most wireline and wireless service providers will adopt it, according to a recent report by Yankee Group. Going back to our discussion 2 days ago, SPs in developed countries will start deploying IMS architectures in their networks within the next 1-2 years. The wireline carriers in the developed countries will see a strong need to deploy IMS as they plan to introduce fixed/mobile convergence services using partner SPs. Most Tier 1 NAR SPs (Verizon, SBC, BS, AT&T, Sprint) are either doing trials using IMS or deploying IMS in their networks as this is written. Tier 1 SPs in Europe (BT, DT, FT, Telefonica-x) are all also busy in doing market trials or deployments. Wireless carriers in developed countries are taking IMS very seriously as well – most of them have a lab or field trial going on and some have started deploying IMS within their networks.

Carriers in developing countries are still focusing on increasing teledensity and so they haven’t spent as much time and resources on IMS. This is changing as the government policy in several countries dictates that any infrastructure spending should be restricted to next generation infrastructure technologies.

On the supply side of IMS, the Telecom Practice arm of Venture Development Corporation classifies next generation infrastructure vendors in the following categories: (1) Enabling technology and components providers, (2) Network component providers, (3) System vendors, (4) 3rd Party application service providers and (5) System integrators.

This classification builds from bottom up and includes established as well some newer niche players.

According to a report by the Yankee Group, with respect to IMS components, most telecom equipment vendors have chosen to develop IMS core components (within the control layer) themselves and partner with niche providers for IMS components that belong to various gateways and application servers. Since IMS architecture is built upon well defined, standards based interfaces; theoretically, any vendors IMS component should work other vendors’ components. In reality, things would be quite different! I am sure system integrators and services providers are salivating at the revenue opportunity in putting things together.

Another important aspect of IMS supply side vendors is that non-traditional telecom vendors show up on the list of vendors providing various IMS components. These vendors have been historically associated as computing infrastructure providers. Examples include HP, IBM, Intel and others. There is a natural fit between blades based computing using ATCA (Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture) and distributed IMS components.

Over time, we will see IMS vendor consolidation since the market is already crowding up with numerous suppliers for each of the IMS components. We will also see consolidation within and between wireline and wireless service providers.

[Ninad Mehta works at Lucent in New Jersey. The views expressed in this column are his own.]

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: VDSL

In this week’s columns, we will look at some network technologies: VDSL, WiMax, 3G and 4G, and Broadband over power lines. We’ll start by taking a look at VDSL.

Very high bit-rate DSL (VDSL) can be thought of as the successor to ADSL (Asymmetric digital subscriber line) technology. Both work on regular telephone lines and as much are one of the most important wired broadband technologies. In India, BSNL and MTNL have launched DSL services across the country. Give the fact that unbundling of the local loop doesn’t seem likely for the foreseeable future, DSL offerings from the incumbent telcos is going to be the best bet for getting high-speed connectivity into homes and enterprises in the near-term.

HowStuffWorks writes about VDSL:

VDSL operates over the copper wires in your phone line in much the same way that ADSL does, but there are a couple of distinctions. VDSL can achieve incredible speeds, as high as 52 Mbps downstream (to your home) and 16 Mbps upstream (from your home). That is much faster than ADSL, which provides up to 8 Mbps downstream and 800 Kbps (kilobits per second) upstream. But VDSL's amazing performance comes at a price: It can only operate over the copper line for a short distance, about 4,000 feet (1,200 m)…The key to VDSL is that the telephone companies are replacing many of their main feeds with fiber-optic cable.

By placing a VDSL transceiver in your home and a VDSL gateway in the junction box, the distance limitation is neatly overcome. The gateway takes care of the analog-digital-analog conversion problem that disables ADSL over fiber-optic lines. It converts the data received from the transceiver into pulses of light that can be transmitted over the fiber-optic system to the central office, where the data is routed to the appropriate network to reach its final destination. When data is sent back to your computer, the VDSL gateway converts the signal from the fiber-optic cable and sends it to the transceiver. All of this happens millions of times each second!

Dave Burstein discusses about the use of VDSL by Bell South in the US: “SBC is selling satellite to 50% of their users -a fancy TIVO style set top and a slow DSL connection, and upgrading the rest to low profile VDSL2 they call fiber to the node. From the projected 2,000-5,000 feet, low profile VDSL2 is maybe 20 meg down, 1-3 meg up, most of which will be used for their video…BellSouth has 13 million lines, a million of which have fiber to the curb from a quiet build begun years ago, yes. Those are the lucky ones, because they will be upgraded to 100 meg symmetric VDSL over the next few years. Think 60 megs in practice, but still pretty good. BellSouth has just picked that build up to 200,000 lines for 2005 after slowing down for a few; unfortunately, at that rate it will take them fifty years to complete their rollout. ..Nominally ADSL2+, will morph into VDSL2 low profile soon. But VDSL2 low profile really is a slightly improved ADSL2+ (2-5 meg faster at these distances), not the 100 meg ‘high profile’ that only works 500-1000 feet they are using for the lucky fiber to the curb types.”

A July 2004 News.com report about South Korea discussed its VDSL adoption: “In Korea, large apartment buildings make it relatively simple for a telecommunications company to draw a fiber line to the basement and then provide VDSL (very high speed digital subscriber line). VDSL can offer as much as 50 to 100 megabits of service over short copper lines, so it is well-suited to these buildings. But the technology doesn't work so well in the United States, where the distance between homes and the telephone company's central offices are often large. As a result, the big phone companies say they are avoiding VDSL for the most part and looking instead to install fiber optics as a next-generation technology.”

In this context, it is also interesting to read the view of UGO Online (December 2004) about Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH): “An ideal implementation of the service will eliminate any need for dedicated telephone lines, satellites, TV cabling etc, as everything will be delivered on the one high speed optical line straight to your house. The exact details of such a system are not set in stone, but generally existing telephone exchanges will act as the hub to which the fiber is connected to, inserting all of the available services into the line to each house with high reliability and low maintenance…Besides the questionable reach of FTTH, there is also the matter of equipment costs. Laying cable is never cheap, which is why Cable Internet has failed to provide a widespread broadband solution. But the real costs come with the end user equipment…Whilst FTTH is by far the most impressive and feature-filled technology on display here, the likeliness of it ever reaching a wide audience isn't very high, at least not in the near future.”

Given that a lot of fibre backbones exist in India, what the telcos should be looking to do is to upgrade the last-mile infrastructure to offer higher speeds into Indian homes and enterprises with VDSL.

Tomorrow: WiMax

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: WiMax

There has been a lot of debate about WiMax in recent times. Will it be the ubiquitous networking nirvana that its advocates hope it will be, or will it be a damp squib as some of the detractors insist it will be? Here’s a sample comment from Bill Alpert writing in Barron’s (May 16, 2005): “Unwired communications will allow the emerging economies of Asia, Latin America and Africa to transport their masses into the age of the telephone and the Internet at prices affordable even to a low per capita GDP. But how much of the job will go to the cellular technologies promoted by the likes of LM Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm, and how much to WiFi and WiMAX, the wireless networking technologies driven by Intel and a flock of smaller vendors like Broadcom, Atheros Communications, Marvell Technology Group, Alvarion and Airspan Networks? For now, my money's on cellular.”

But that does not mean WiMax can be written off. This is from Intel, one of the WiMax champions:

WiMAX, or 802.16, is a fast-emerging wide-area wireless broadband technology that shows great promise as the "last mile" solution for bringing high-speed Internet access into homes and businesses. While the more familiar Wi-Fi* (802.11a, b and g) handles local areas, such as in offices or hotspots, WiMAX covers wider, metropolitan or rural areas. It can provide data rates up to 75 megabits per second (Mbps) per base station with typical cell sizes of 2 to 10 kilometers. This is enough bandwidth to simultaneously support (through a single base station) more than 60 businesses with T1/E1-type connectivity and hundreds of homes with DSL-type connectivity.
…
What makes WiMAX so attractive is its potential to provide broadband wireless access to entire sections of metropolitan areas, as well as small and remote locales throughout the world. People who could not afford it will now be able to get broadband — and in places it may not previously have been available. It enables coverage of a large geography very quickly…For many businesses, particularly small businesses that are out of reach of DSL or not part of the residential cable infrastructure, 802.16 represents an easy, affordable way to get connected to broadband.

The WiMax Weblog pointed to an article in ScienceDaily which gave a bullish view on WiMax:

WiMAX carriers will be pitted against broadband, DSL and cell-phone carriers for customers, said Greg Phillips, the chief executive officer of AirTegrity Wireless Inc.

"If you think about cell phones today, they're really limited. What we're really doing is turning them into broadband devices," Phillips said. "There will be a market play between the traditional cell-phone companies and the IEEE cell phone."

He said WiMAX could make a huge difference in developing countries and rural areas that have experienced very slow connections or have been unable to pay cable fees to establish service.

"It will allow other nations to engage more effectively where they were before constrained," Phillips said. "India and China already have a huge push going for them already," but the biggest changes will be in Latin America and Africa, which are still catching up.

"India and China won't be level," he said, "they'll be beyond us."

He said he expects a station to cost between $500 and $600 initially and go down drastically in price as the chips become cheaper to manufacture.

"There's a huge number of people that have never been introduced to telephony and they'll be introduced to broadband at almost the same time," Phillips said. "Think of all the people introduced to mainstream media. They'll be able to receive newscasts, education and even commercial use on these devices."

WiMax has great potential for countries like India which have large swathes of the countryside which have no telecom coverage and where it can be ideal solution.

Tomorrow: 3G and 4G

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: 3G and 4G

WiMax’s opponents (led primarily by Qualcomm) point to 3G as the ultimate solution for high-speed wireless networking. Technologies like EV-DO are already offering hundreds of kilobits per second for people on the move. 3G already has been deployed in some European and Asian countries. Discussion has also started in India about the allocation of spectrum for 3G services to the existing mobile operators.

Here is a tutorial from Russell Beattie (Dec 2003) on the evolution to 3G technologies:

First, here's the deal about CDMA vs. GSM. The way that GSM works is really an extension of the old TDMA analog system. GSM adds digital technology to divide up the frequency allotments into 8 channels, which are then time shared across those channels. CDMA on the other hand uses the same piece of spectrum and separates the calls by encoding each one uniquely, allowing your phone to disregard other transmissions on the same frequency.

Okay, so the basic CDMA that most people uses right now is now called "cdmaOne". The next generation is the move to "CDMA2000 1x RTT." This is what Verizon is spending all their money buying. The 1x stands for "single channel" and the RTT (which Qualcomm doesn't like to use any more, though it was written in the article that way) stands for "radio transmission technology." Even though the speeds of this new standard are really what has been considered 2.5G, the technology is the base for higher speeds and has been deemed 3G by marketing higher ups, so you'll see it referred to that way.

The 1x is the important part: CDMA2000 uses from one to three 1.25 MHz carriers. This first rev of CDMA2000 uses just one of those three. cdmaOne already uses this frequency, which is why CDMA2000 is considered "backwards compatible" and I guess what the CDMA2000 standard adds is more efficient use of that spectrum. The next steps in CDMA are then CDMA2000 1xEv which uses a second channel (1xEv phase one uses the second channel only for data only: "1xEv-DO" and phase two uses both channels together "2x"), and 3x which uses all three channels as a single 3.75Mhz carrier. You can see how adding channels and infrastructure will naturally cause data bandwidth to go up, though, it's important to note that unlike the GSM route, this allocation seems backwards compatible and isn't just for data, but also for voice calls as well.

The GSM path goes to GPRS next, which can dedicate one or more of the channels in the GSM spectrum to packet data only. It works, but has lots of provisioning problems and bandwidth constraints. I'm not sure about this, but it seems to me that if you're enabling GPRS, you're cutting off at least one channel, and this must affect the GSM voice service. After GRPS is EDGE which works in a similar way, but uses a newer "modulation scheme" which allows higher data rates. I have no idea what a "modulation scheme" is, actually, but it's easy to get the idea: same general functionality, but with faster moving bits.

After this, however, the GSM guys have to scratch all that equipment and move to WCDMA, which is a version of the CDMA technology and divides up calls by uniquely encoding them.

So that's the general idea. The pairs are roughly cdmaOne/GSM, CDMA2000 1x/GPRS, CDMA 1xEv/EDGE, CDMA2000 3x/WCDMA .

Wikipedia adds: “The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has defined the demands for third generation mobile networks with the IMT-2000 standard. An organisation called 3GPP has continued that work by defining a mobile system that fulfils the IMT-2000 standard. This system is called Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS)… The UMTS system is based on layered services, unlike GSM. On the top there is the services layer, which will give advantages like fast deployment of services and centralized location. In the middle there is the control layer, which will help upgrading procedures and allow the capacity of the network to be dynamically allocated. On the bottom is the connectivity layer where any transmission technology can be used and the voice will transfer over ATM/AAL2 or IP/RTP.”

Tomorrow: 3G and 4G (continued)

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: 3G and 4G (Part 2)

In the context of our discussion on IMS and SIP, Paul Golding makes the connection between IMS, SIP and 3G:

In my opinion, 3G is IMS. What SIP enables is a generic "connecting" protocol. We don't necessarily have to be interested in connecting users to make a voice call. In other words, SIP isn't just a "calling" protocol.

Thus far, mobile networks have been almost exclusively concerned with voice calls. The data model that has emerged so far is WAP, which is essentially "Web-lite". The paradigm is connecting users with information in the form of Web pages (portals etc.)

However, the essential nature of mobile technology is connecting people. This Person-to-Person (P2P) nature will be a dominant feature of mobile computing. We need to grasp what P2P "connecting" is all about. Today, we talk to each other. But, tomorrow, we shall: Click to play, to share, to view, to update, to invite, to compare, to tag, to consult, to message, to conference
…Click to connect!

GSM only allows "dial to talk", which is why we need SIP. With SIP, we can do all the above things. …

I believe that the future of the 3G era is:

3G = SIP + Presence

or,

3G = IMS + Presence
…
IMS allows operators to build an infrastructure that will support this paradigm. Therefore IMS will become important in the future of the 3G era. 3G is IMS.

MobileInfo writes on the need to look beyond 3G:

3G performance may not be sufficient to meet needs of future high-performance applications like multi-media, full-motion video, wireless teleconferencing. We need a network technology that extends 3G capacity by an order of magnitude.

There are multiple standards for 3G making it difficult to roam and interoperate across networks. we need global mobility and service portability

3G is based on primarily a wide-area concept. We need hybrid networks that utilize both wireless LAN (hot spot) concept and cell or base-station wide area network design.

We need wider bandwidth

Researchers have come up with spectrally more efficient modulation schemes that can not be retrofitted into 3G infrastructure

We need all digital packet network that utilizes IP in its fullest form with converged voice and data capability.

OFDM is one of the technologies which will be the cornerstone for 4G networks. Wave Report writes about OFDM: “Frequency division multiplexing (FDM) is a technology that transmits multiple signals simultaneously over a single transmission path, such as a cable or wireless system. Each signal travels within its own unique frequency range (carrier), which is modulated by the data (text, voice, video, etc.)…Orthogonal FDM's (OFDM) spread spectrum technique distributes the data over a large number of carriers that are spaced apart at precise frequencies. This spacing provides the ‘orthogonality’ in this technique which prevents the demodulators from seeing frequencies other than their own. The benefits of OFDM are high spectral efficiency, resiliency to RF interference, and lower multi-path distortion. This is useful because in a typical terrestrial broadcasting scenario there are multipath-channels (i.e. the transmitted signal arrives at the receiver using various paths of different length). Since multiple versions of the signal interfere with each other (inter symbol interference (ISI)) it becomes very hard to extract the original information.”

From India’s viewpoint, investing in the research and development of next-generation networks like 4G is something which should be strongly considered.

Tomorrow: BPL

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: BPL

Another technology which has been getting some buzz in recent times is broadband over power lines. The idea has been around for a long time. Wave Report writes:

Broadband power line (BPL) is the term coined by the FCC for new modems (BPL modems) used to deliver IP-based broadband services on electric power lines…BPL modems use silicon chips designed to send signals over electric power lines, much like cable and DSL modems use silicon chips designed to send signals over cable and telephone lines. Advances in processing power enable new BPL modem chips to overcome difficulties in sending communications signals over the electric power lines that could not be overcome with less computing power. BPL modem speed, like cable and DSL modem speeds, is changing rapidly with each advance in new technology, so it would be difficult to make any generalization here that would be accurate or timely.

The FCC NOI discusses two types of BPL, In-house BPL and Access BPL. In-house BPL is a home networking technology that uses the transmission standards developed by the HomePlug Alliance. Access BPL is a new technology to carry broadband Internet traffic over medium voltage power lines. BPL modems that electric utilities and their service partners can install on the electric distribution network also are available now.

HowStuffWorks writes about how BPL works:

Both electricity and the RF used to transmit data vibrate at certain frequencies. In order for data to transmit cleanly from point to point, it must have a dedicated band of the radio spectrum at which to vibrate without interference from other sources.

Hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity don't vibrate at a consistent frequency. That amount of power jumps all over the spectrum. As it spikes and hums along, it creates all kinds of interference. If it spikes at a frequency that is the same as the RF used to transmit data, then it will cancel out that signal and the data transmission will be dropped or damaged en route.

BPL bypasses this problem by avoiding high-voltage power lines all together. The system drops the data off of traditional fiber-optic lines downstream, onto the much more manageable 7,200 volts of medium-voltage power lines.
Once dropped on the medium-voltage lines, the data can only travel so far before it degrades. To counter this, special devices are installed on the lines to act as repeaters. The repeaters take in the data and repeat it in a new transmission, amplifying it for the next leg of the journey.

Recent investments by Google and IBM in this space have given it greater visibility. eWeek wrote:

Using a low-cost adapter, BPL (broadband over power line) customers can get high-speed Internet service using the wiring that already exists in their homes or offices.

The technology has been touted as having a number of benefits for users as well as for utility companies. Not only can it deliver broadband to areas that lack DSL or cable service, advocates say, but it also can boost power service reliability and track outage information more accurately by using network tracking capability.

Although utilities and technology companies have been tinkering with using power lines to carry data for nearly 20 years, within the past five years there has been increasing interest in commercialization.

Next Week: NGN (continued)

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: BPL (Part 2)

News.com adds:

For several years, people have thought that BPL could allow electric companies to become a viable third alternative to the cable and telephone companies providing high-speed access to the Internet. But technical issues have kept the technology from being deployed widely. What's more, critics say turning electric utilities into consumer broadband providers will cost the industry billions of dollars because of the need to upgrade existing electrical grids.

But there has been renewed interest in the technology as companies such as Google make significant investments in companies delivering BPL service. Supporters of the technology also say consumer broadband service is only one application that energy companies such as CenterPoint are considering as they look to deploy BPL technology.

"A lot of people have been focusing on BPL as the third competitive leg in the broadband market," said Raymond Blair, vice president for IBM's Broadband Over Powerlines initiatives. "But that is only the tip of the iceberg. The main reason utilities want BPL is to manage their businesses better."

Because BPL essentially turns the electrical grid into an Internet-based network, every device attached to the grid will be able to communicate with other devices on it. This means BPL technology has the potential to develop a "smart grid," which could allow for such services as automated meter reading, real-time system monitoring, preventive maintenance and diagnostics, outage detection and restoration, as well as other potential applications.

Alan Mutter provides additional context:

While cable and telephone companies long have scrambled with varying degrees of success to become full-service, triple-play providers of video, Internet and voice services, the third line into every home, the power line, has been quietly buzzing along and largely overlooked. Not any more.

Google, Hearst Corp. and Goldman Sachs have put $100 million into a private company called Current Communications Group, which says it can send and receive high-speed Internet signals to homes and businesses via the existing electric grid. The tres unlikely amigos are teaming up at Current Comm with earlier investor John Malone, the man who built Tele-Communications Inc. into a cable TV behemoth before he sold it to AT&T at the peak of ripeness in 1999.

Several small broadband power line (BPL) start-ups have spent a long time trying, without much technical or commercial success, to safely coax satisfactory Internet-protocol signals through electric lines. The plan was to provide an electrifying alternative to the enviable businesses of the high-priced cable guys and the low-tech telephone companies. To date, various flavors of BPL have moved out of the lab and onto a few hundred utility poles in a small number of experiments.

But the evident success of a 50,000-home pilot in Cincinnati has turned Current Comm into Google’s preferred partner in what appears to be no less an effort than delivering unlimited video on demand (VOD) to any home, shop or office with access to electricity.

BPL is an emerging technology which could potentially be the dark horse in the race to deliver broadband to the home.

Tomorrow: Next-Generation Services

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: Next-Generation Services

All of the new next-generation networks that are being built promise to dramatically change the way we live and work. They will usher in the era of convergence – which has been talked about for long, but is finally at hand. These networks will also help emerging markets like India leapfrog to a better digital infrastructure quickly. Given that this networking platform will become available, what are the new applications that will become part of our lives?

One approach is to look at the changes is through the three screens that are part of our lives: TV, computers and mobiles. Network TV is becoming “networked” TV. As Esther Dyson wrote in a recent Release 1.0 report:”…over the next decade, as a growing number of television sets, PCs and mobile devices are connected to what Jeremy Allaire, the founder of Brightcove, has dubbed ‘the Internet of video.’ Plugging TV into IP rather than into a terrestrial cable system or a fleet of geosynchronous satellites, could redeem - or at least reinvigorate - the medium. The hermetically sealed world of television is about to be cracked open and rewired, transformed into an open publishing platform as a variety of new devices and services emerge to make independent video content easier - and perhaps even profitable - to produce and distribute to smaller subsets of the population.”

There is a shift happening around the PC platform also. Bob Cringely wrote recently: “Microsoft has known for a long time that the PC as a platform is dying. The trends it sees for successor technologies are clear: mobility and gaming. Mobility means some combination of a handheld computer and a mobile phone. Gaming means xBox 360 and all that it can be -- a game system, a home media platform, a more-than-rudimentary Internet device and home PC…After a decade of messing around, thin client computing is almost inevitable for businesses. Not only are existing computers too darned hard to service, support, and keep virus-free, but all the new legal requirements for protecting and preserving corporate data (Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA, GLBA, FERC and so many others) pretty much demand some central data repository.

Mobiles are becoming uber-all devices – capable of playing not just music but also video. In fact, they will go much beyond that – as two-way, multimedia “teleputers” which are always available. Nokia’s vision for the future lays out what we can expect. “[2004 was phone as camera....2005] is the year of music -- the cell phone as a sort of iPod, capable of downloading, saving and playing thousands of songs. 2006 will be the year of television on your mobile telephone. 2007 will be the year for games on the phone and the capability to play them against other phone users. 2008 will be the year of "my connected life," when the years-old dream of cell phones that are Internet terminals will finally become a widespread reality,” writes Media Info Center.

All of these three screens will rely on next-generation networks. The much-talked about converged world is at hand. The opportunity is to now look at the new services that these networks and complementary devices will enable. We will look at two such ideas – Folk TV and Mirror Worlds.

Tomorrow: FolkTV

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: FolkTV

While there has been a lot of discussion and action around IPTV, if we were to project to a little ahead, then we can see a future where with the emergence of video-enabled mobile phones and broadband networks, video (rather than text) becomes the preferred mechanism to share experiences. (Already, some of us find it easy to created multimedia on our mobiles phones than write text!)

Ramesh Jain discusses IPTV and its limitations: “IPTV is in simple terms video on internet. The major difference is that it is assumed that this video could be shown on any device including TV, PC, and phones. This is a bigger change than it appears at first. And this is rebirth of VoD but in a much broader scope. This in fact is the convergence of communication, computing, and content. People commonly talk about the convergence of communication and computing. In terms of content, people were used to thinking mostly in terms of text and ‘blobs’ where a blob could be any media item but that was considered atomic entity for the information system. So a three hour video could be played as a three hour video but there was no indexing or content bases access possible. In the new world, that is not going to be acceptable. Content could also be stored and accessed at different levels of granularities based on its semantics.”

Ramesh then goes ahead to discuss how IPTV wil morph into FolkTV:

Internet culture will result in people starting to produce lots of video content for many different applications. The ‘long tail’ effect will dominate this area also. People will start producing and placing videos on Internet that they know will be used by only a very limited number of other people – in some case may be only 5 other people. This will however happen only if the production tools for editing video will allow people to capture and prepare video to put on the Internet as easily as they author web pages. Current video editing tools are very difficult to use. The tools that are easy to use do not give enough control to author what an amateur producer may want. This is a interesting challenge to multimedia community – and was correctly identified in the Berkeley retreat in 2003 as a grand challenge problem for multimedia.

The second and equally important problem is how to find videos of interest. Search engines have trained current generation of Internet users, even regular computer users, to search for information using easy tools like specifying some keywords. How will we search video on internet? Current search techniques on internet are direct extension of text based techniques and are definitely going to be very limiting in accessing video. Multimedia information retrieval research community and the practicing video retrieval community are poles apart. They are developing more or less disjoint approaches – research community wants to use only visual characteristics because that’s where interesting research challenges are and practicing people want to just apply text based approaches because that’s what they know. Everybody recognizes that to be successful, one must use all knowledge sources and all possible techniques for accessing video information. Unfortunately, that’s where most of the time it ends – just talking that combining multiple sources is vital to solving this puzzle and then going to your workplace and keep doing what you have been doing. We require people who take this challenge seriously and start developing techniques to access video information using text processing, visual computing , audio recognition.

IPTV is a real transformation in the society. IPTV brings TV media to masses not only as a consumer but also as a producer. Common people start using TV medium to share their experiences and producing contents of interest to other people, not necessarily only with commercial interest in mind. People will use it to share family birthdays with other family members who could not be there to share the moment in person. And that could be done live or time displaced. If the last major revolution brought WWW and information revolution, this will be the next revolution and a major step in bringing experiences to people. IPTV is really FolkTV.

Tomorrow’s world will see us equipped with mobile phones which can not only take pictures but also record videos. With the next-generation networks giving us the ability to share these videos (which are really a mirror of our experiences) almost instantly, it will make the world an even smaller and more connected place.

Tomorrow: Mirror Worlds

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: Mirror Worlds

Over the past few months, it has become increasingly obvious that the mobile phone is going to become the personal device owned by more than half the world's population in 5 years. (The current ownership figure is about 1.8 billion). The very nature of the device personal, always-on, always available and always-connected will bring forth a new set of services. These will go beyond voice, SMS and the holy trinity of ringtones, wallpapers and games that we are seeing today. The mobile will become the computer in our pocket. Others think of it as a teleputer or a social computer. Whatever we call it, it is a device unlike anything we have possessed before. Just as the Internet ushered in a new world, so will be the next-generation of mobile services.

It is important to distinguish today's mobiles and data services from tomorrow's. Today, the phone is mostly used for talk and messaging, with some personalisation being done through the choice of ringtones and ringback tones (or the lack thereof). Some of us download games for offlines entertainment. A few use the mobile to check email and browse the Internet. But for the most part, the mobile of data is 90% voice and 10% data. Of the data, the majority is person-to-person SMS.

Also, data services being offered today are very closely controlled by the operators. As such, the ecosystem of value-added service providers that has come up is focused on creating offerings for the operators. Independent entities have to work through one of these allies of the operators. So, what is present is a closed garden of data/value-added services.

I like to think of this as v1.0 of Mobile Data. The focus so far in countries like India has been on growth and customer acquisition naturally so. Little attention has been paid to widening the array of data services. The phone by itself has morphed into a multimedia-capable, networked device but the applications and services have not kept pace. There are obvious limitations in the input/output on the phone but this, along with the operator control, has prevented independent mobile data services vendors from coming up and thriving beyond the ringtones-wallpapers-games categories.

The time has come to now look ahead. Let us imagine what v2.0 of Mobile Data will be. The coming generation of phones are rapidly subsuming functionality from camera phones to the ability to play music and video to high-speed Internet access via 3G networks. The next version of Mobile Data services will be much more open as operators realise that opening up will help them generate greater revenue to offset the falling voice revenues from increasing competition in maturing markets.

It is in this context that we need to look ahead to what the mobile is capable of - by itself, and connected to networks. This world will be very different from the one we are currently seeing. Different countries are in varying stages of building this out with Japan and South Korea leading the way. This new world will have software and content play a far more important role than they have in the past where the phone was a closed system. There will be two key drivers: the mobile as an increasingly open development platform, and the need for centralised (server-based) software to complement the phone. Together, they will usher in a new set of services some of which will migrate from the PC world, while others will need to be created afresh for a world in which every mobile user is reachable 24x7.

Tomorrow: Mirror Worlds (continued)

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TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: Mirror Worlds (Part 2)

Over the past decade, we have been spending an increasing amount of our time in so-called cyberspace. Companies and individuals have created virtual representations of their products and services. Our communications have also moved to conversing with identities (email IDs, IM monickers, SMSing to mobile numbers) rather than directly with people. David Gelernter’s idea of Mirror Worlds takes this to its logical conclusion: we will have a parallel world that we will increasingly inhabit which is a copy of the real world. Today, maps can provide us the spatial copy. But they do not give us the real-time component. That is where a mix of next-generation mobiles, sensors and user-generated content will come in and embellish the other world. So, Mirror Worlds are microcosms of all that we see around us as updated as the real world that they resemble. These Mirror Worlds are accessible to us through screens on the devices we have our mobiles, computers, and perhaps, networked TVs.

Steven Johnson wrote about Mirror Worlds in Discover in May 2003:

In a true mirror world, data would be mapped onto recognizable shapes from real life. For instance, to find information on a local hospital, you would locate the building on a computerized map and click on it with an "inspector" tool. Within seconds, the big-picture data about the facility would come into focus: number of patients and doctors, annual budget, how many patients died in operating rooms last year, and more. If you were looking for more specific information—say you were considering giving birth at the hospital—you could zoom in to the obstetrics department, where you would see data on such subjects as successful births, premature babies, and stillborns. Information about how the hospital connects to the wider city—what Gelernter calls topsight—could be had by zooming out.

Another key feature of Gelernter's vision is what he calls narrative information systems. The data in a mirror world are time-based: The mortality rate at a hospital varies from month to month and from year to year, and a mirror world would record those changes. So with any variable—or combination of variables—you could reverse the data stream to see past conditions. This is a tool not only for making sense of the past but also for predicting the future: If you're in the middle of an economic downturn and you're thinking of moving to a new neighborhood, you might like to see how the real estate values fared during previous recessions. With a mirror world, you would select a neighborhood (or a city block, if you wanted that much detail) with the inspector tool and shuttle the data stream to 1990 or the mid-1970s or the late 1920s, as though you were rewinding a VHS tape.

"My life, like your life, is a series of events in time, with a past, present, and future," Gelernter says, sitting in a conference room in the New Haven offices of Mirror Worlds Inc., the software company he cofounded. "And that's the way my software ought to look. The mirror worlds approach to organizing information is based on reality, as opposed to an engineer's or a computer scientist's fantasy. I don't want my personal life to be stored in an arbitrary UNIX file tree; I want it to be life-shaped—the shape of the way I live it."

Mobiles and next-generation networks are what will make all this possible. For the first time in human history, we have a device that is part of our body it travels with us everywhere. It is a two-day device in the sense that it has both eyes and ears, along with an output mechanism. We also have increasingly ubiquitous networks. What has been missing are the applications to leverage this emerging new order.

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