Dr. Yrjš Neuvo Grins Disingenuously about Avoiding Forklift Upgrades
>> Top Technology Key To Service Provision
John C. Tanner
Global Technology Editor
Telecom Asia
August 2002
telecomasia.net
Carriers are more concerned about new revenue-generating services than next-generation technologies these days. Ironically, however, they need next-generation technologies to enable their networks to support new revenue-generating services.
Two chief technology officers representing the wireline and wireless sectors - Dr. Yrjš Neuvo of Nokia and Greg Mumford of Nortel Networks, - talk to global technology editor John C. Tanner about the state of technological play in service-enabled networks
Dr. Yrjš Neuvo, Nokia EVP & CTO of Nokia Mobile Phones
Telecom Asia: Two years ago, hardly anyone was talking about EDGE. Now most major vendors are committed to it and operators are demanding it - what happened?
Dr. Yrjš Neuvo: People are now starting to understand that EDGE is a natural evolution to higher data rates than GPRS. You can offer many of the same services with EDGE that you could with UMTS. I think EDGE has turned out to be a better standard than any of us who were developing it had thought at the time.
Telecom Asia: In what way?
Dr. Yrjš Neuvo: I think it's better in the sense that when we first started developing it, we thought we might be able to reach a certain data rate, and now the numbers have turned out a little better, and it's easier to implement, because it's also more backwards-compatible to GSM. The other understanding was that the speed of W-CDMA take-off would be faster than it turned out to be. So it's an interesting development.
Telecom Asia: GPRS rollouts have also been slower than anticipated, which has enabled the CDMA camp to rollout in-band next-gen services first with cdma2000 1x. Could GPRS have done better to be first, or is that even an issue?
Dr. Yrjš Neuvo: I don't think it's that much of an issue. A much bigger issue is having the applications in place, having the users getting used to these applications and services. They're still in a phase of transition in many countries moving to some kind of data service, so there's no point in trying to do too much when there's no readiness for it. GPRS is the first step, and that provides already higher data rates and higher capacity. But now we're approaching the application era where packet radio starts to make sense, and then it's a relatively simple upgrade from there. I think the discussion gets a little too focused on the maximum peak data rate. You can have a car that goes 300 miles an hour but if there's no road where you can drive that fast, it's not a big selling point for the car. So really the more important thing is to develop applications and get those up and running, so you can create the appetite for these kinds of applications.
Telecom Asia: What do you make of GSM 1x, the CDG's proposed cdma2000 1x upgrade for GSM operators?
Dr. Yrjš Neuvo: Why would anyone do that? [grins disingenuously]
Telecom Asia: According to the CDG, the benefits are better spectrum efficiency, handset availability and they can use existing spectrum.
Dr. Yrjš Neuvo: I don't quite follow that. GSM operators use different frequencies from CDMA, so I don't think it's clear how to do it yet. I think there's lots more details that need to be thought out, and in practice these kinds of hybrids are not usually the best solutions. It's really better to continue on an evolution path where there's a solid standard where compatibility problems are easier to solve. It gets much more complex when you bring in another standard. It's easy to say, but implementing it is a different story.
Telecom Asia: Nokia and other vendors have been talking up all-IP wireless infrastructures in recent weeks. Commercial deployments are obviously still years away but how much closer are we to that?
Dr. Yrjš Neuvo: All-IP comes in steps also. You can have non real-time IP services, and you can have real-time IP services, which are much more challenging, so it has to be evolutionary. It's also good to remember that when we are speaking about cellular standards, the IP-based networks have to co-exist with what we have today and what we will have tomorrow. But it's an interesting issue, because it's an important development for simplifying the end-user experience - making it richer and helping them cope with multiple services quite easily. But it's a bit of a challenge for the technologies involved. For example, it takes a lot more from the handset side in terms of processing power. Also, if you compare data to speech traffic, the way we run speech communication over the cellular network today is quite spectrum-efficient. But IP wastes spectrum if you try to run it over the speech network, so IP starts to benefit only when you have more rich communication and you can run non-real-time data alongside speech, or maybe video, which is a big enough challenge in itself because of all the jitter problems.
Telecom Asia: Bluetooth products have been late getting to the consumer market, and now technologies like UWB and Wi-Media are closer to commercial availability. Has Bluetooth's window of opportunity been narrowed as a result?
Dr. Yrjš Neuvo: No, those technologies are much more future-oriented. We're talking about them now the same way we were talking about Bluetooth several years back. Now we're seeing real volumes for Bluetooth, so it's a different story. The problem with Bluetooth is that you need two devices to connect, and we're only just now entering that phase. I have built-in integrated Bluetooth in my laptop, and now I have a phone with Bluetooth, so now my personal challenge is to get them to talk to each other! [Laughs] I've gotten to the phase where I can use it, but many other people are not in that situation yet, so it takes some time. Having a Bluetooth headset with a phone may be of value to some people, but not others, so it may take awhile for them to find a way to use it. It's steadily moving forwards, but people need time to understand it. When the technology has been created and standardized and commercialized - that's where we are now, and the applications are the next phase. And this is the only technology that's there.
Telecom Asia: Nokia's been promoting SIM-based roaming for WLAN users, which would allow GSM cellcos to offer roaming for WLAN customers using their existing roaming infrastructure. Does SIM-card-based roaming offer any advantages over a clearinghouse model such as those used by GRIC and iPass?
Dr. Yrjš Neuvo: The clearinghouse principle is one way of doing it, but GSM roaming is a clearinghouse that's established already. When you look at all the GSM roaming agreements in place now and the billing platforms in place, it's a huge clearinghouse! But I do believe there will be competition between this and other approaches, where you're targeting corporate customers, perhaps. It's difficulty to say. The point is that for this type of roaming, unless it's properly done, wireless LAN will not take off, because there will be too many people using it, and the network will be slower, so we may not see any great take-up unless it's well done. The way I see it, roaming is one of the key steps that would make wireless LAN fly. There isn't a business case for building a wireless LAN network and just charging access fees, so I think this is the only way you'll be able to make a viable business case for it. And for GSM operators, it's a natural extension of what the operator is already doing.
Greg Mumford of Nortel Networks
Telecom Asia: The telecoms industry is more focused on services than technologies these days, but at the same time they have to know what technologies will deliver services. Is it now a case of services driving technology rather than the other way around?
Greg Mumford: I think it's really clear what both carriers and enterprises need - they need clear utility and more services. They must get more value from their networks that enhances the top line and at the same time they must drive out both operational costs and capital costs. Both carriers and enterprises need that to come in evolutionary form. They cannot afford at this juncture to create whole new networks, they need something that can evolve and keep cashflow intact. To the extent that the technology does that, the technology is useful. If it doesn't, or it requires a huge negative cashflow to get there, it's not useful.
Telecom Asia: Which technology areas contribute to this evolution?
The industry is focusing on some key areas right now. One is wireless data - call it 3G wireless if you like, but it's a transformation of wireless to a wideband data network. Another is voice over packet (VOP) - to take voice and make it a Layer 7 service so you can run multimedia networks, and thereby attack the trunking and switch costs by having softswitches, but also the revenue opportunity - the opportunity to have new services, to have your telephone environment follow you wherever you go and all you need is a headset on your PC.
The next one is intelligent edge - the ability to personalize the network through VPNs, but also through firewalls, security, privacy, directories, or application accelerators - like our Alteon product learns how users go for Web page information and [thus] eliminate router hops. The next thing is what I would call a carrier-grade data network - an intelligent edge supported by a core network that's capable of the performance needed to run VOP and multimedia services. Then there's the whole investment around the metro network. It's part of the whole multiservice carrier-grade network, but it's also about optical Ethernet - a combination of the economics and scale of optical with the simplicity and universality of LANs.
And finally, optical switching to drive the economics and capacity of long-haul optical as well as metro optical. You know, it was only about five years ago when 70% of all the long-haul optical cost was in the line, and 30% was in the node. Today that's reversed. With optical switching technology, that flexibility point and aggregation point and traffic grooming point can be addressed, and photonic switching will come over time.
So what you come out with is a network that's got an intelligent optical foundation for scale and economics, a carrier grade packet core for multimedia and revenue generation, compared to an IP best-effort network, and then it's got intelligent edge devices to provide personalization in the network, and that network is the same whether it's a wireless or wireline network. The wireless network is a carrier-grade data core, and it's a VOP system that just happens to be [third-generation] CDMA, and whether it's an enterprise or a carrier.
Telecom Asia: You list wideband wireless data as a key focus area, but 3G has fallen out of favor for the time being, so how key is it ultimately?
That's a good question. I think that there's no stopping wireless data. People value mobility, and being reached or being able to reach out from wherever they are - not just for voice transmission, but data too, and we need 3G to get that, with that kind of economics. The other thing is, wherever somebody hasn't got an infrastructure built up, your code division schemes are much more efficient than earlier schemes, and therefore 3G has just plain got more spectrum at a lower capital and operating cost. So those are the two forces. 3G and wireless data networks will come, it's just a matter of time, and people are sorting through the capital outlay and the maturity of the standards and other things. They just have to make the business case work.
Telecom Asia: You said this evolution path is the same for wireline and wireless network operators. Does that also apply to scalability, since wireless operators arguably are facing a comparatively faster ramp-up to data services?
Different networks test scale on different parameters, but what's really clear is that a wireless network is first and foremost a data core, so you need a carrier-grade data core. The next thing it really needs is VOP for cost-effectiveness. Those are capabilities that weren't required in 2G wireless networks. But your point is really valid - as data takes off, of course, it will drive the scale of the data core tremendously. It also drives the scale of the optical core network. What I've just described is no different than a landline network, which is a multimedia network - data core, VOP, optical foundation, and then depending on the service set, it's going to test the scale of different elements of the network. There's no question that a wireless network tests the scale because of the whole set of logic that identifies where users are and follows them, and so on. But when you look at a network that way, it's the same core.
Telecom Asia: Will the next-generation edge routers we have on the market now be able to handle the scalability demands of wireless networks?
The edge equipment needs to scale up to work better. Our approach has been what I call "purpose-built" machines. If you have an intelligent edge that's there to interface with VPNs, create the firewalls, the security and so on, it has routing [capabilities] in it, but it doesn't confine itself to Layer 3 - it can work on whatever layers it needs to suit that purpose. That's the roadmap that we're following. We understand purpose-built equipment and we understand the need to scale.
Telecom Asia: Will Metro Ethernet access be limited by the slow rollout of fiber in the last mile, or could it possibly accelerate those rollouts?
Well, optical Ethernet is a label - it's not limited to only where optical is. There's nothing that stops you from extending its reach through frame [relay], or through DSL. What we envision is Ethernet everywhere, and in the core where there's optical, you end up with broadband Ethernet capability so you can really drive the cost out, and where you need to reach the branch, you can reach it via Ethernet driven over DSL. If you step back from it one step further, you end up with a service set that you can run over any access, constrained only in its performance by the performance of the access. But whether its 10BaseT or 10GigE, it's still the same simplicity, the same service set and the same reach. <<
- Eric - |
