Glenn, and All,
Hope you are all ready for a lot of wild speculation as to how this thing will work. Let's have a little bit of fun with it, and see if we can guess what's behind the curtains.
Today's FON release is intentionally mysterious, IMO, in several ways. They make an allusion to the use of cell based technologies. This can be taken two ways, and I think that the kicker is that they 'meant' it two ways: (1) ATM Cells and (2) Cellular radio distribution, as one of the means of their deploying ION, a la cellular phone technologies, using cell-based ATM, again. This would be similar to some recent wireless CLECs' deployments of wireless ATM data services in several metropolitan markets.
While they downplay DSL's "bandwidth-only" characteristics, I think it's clear that DSL is behind a great deal of this, and they are cagily differentiating theirs as one that supports ATM as the Layer Two protocol, as opposed to "simply" being a Layer One physical medium. And I have to surmise that they are banking on unbundled loops becoming a realilty pretty soon, coming from the LECs, and from the Cable TV community, they are looking forward to ready access to IP, or more likely, ATM, streams (Com21 <?>) in Cable Modem deployments.
The ability to hold multiple conversations over a single line _schtick_ can be achieved through the use of low bit rate voice, or 8 kbps xx-CLEP compression techniques, which are ripe for deployment now, like GDC's announced Voice-over-ATM that hit the press yesterday, and the variants that Nortel has been using in their Magellen line for some time now. And ATM is, after all, what they are promoting here. Why not make the maximum use of it through the use of compressed voice? Everyone else is!
And low bit rate voice devices? Where do they come from? Well, I have to surmise that that's where RadioShack comes into the picture.
It doesn't surprise me that they would keep this whoole affair mysterious from the outset. The chef at the Waldorf seldom tells the chef at the Plaza anything either. But a good nose is all you need sometimes to figure out what went into the sauce.
I thought it was particularly interesting and testicular grande, how FON slammed the emerging IP fiber barons, don't you? Yet, they made minimal (if any) reference to Internet access, preferring to tout the voice and integrated legacy data aspect as one integrated stream, being the grand theme of the offering.
Also interesting, IMO, is the feature that enables them to collect data about customers vitals, something akin to a directory service file of their own, whereas in the IP world, aliases suffice since ISPs dole out IP addresses on the fly once a connection is made to the remote access server in their POPs (for dial in users). I guess what they are referring to here is a massive route server architecture, a necessary ingredient in any ATM platform.
It appears that they will face a kind of problem that has existed with the VoIP folks, where a link to SS7 has been one of their missing pieces from early on. VoIP may go the way of gatekeeper functions, melded with a little bit of SS7. This is still unfolding in the IP world. Here, with ATM, the route server just referenced above would likewise need to be linked to SS7 for cross-referencing, in order to harness directory number information and call set up capabilities.
Whoaa! Now I'm "really" thinking out loud. So please don't take any of this as gospel. I'm just speculating, like the rest of you, until I hear it from the horse's mouth as to what really lies behind the curtains on this one...
Regards to All (and I guess we'll be seeing a bit of each other here for a while, at least until we decipher this one),
Frank Coluccio |
