Hi Ken,
>>Nortel's 1-Meg Modem, a high-speed access technology that integrates into a DMS-100 switch, also is being offered as part of an integrated voice and data strategy under the Extreme Centrex marketing banner. <<
Sounds good, and similar to an initiative that LU currently has in their # 5 family. The 1Meg option may be limited, however, due to a dependency on metallic loops. Most large centrex users derive their services from on-site channel banks and remote switching modules /concentrators which are fed by T1s.
Unless, of course, the vendor hopes to convert these, too, to DSLAM-enabled devices. Hey, they've come this far, why not?
I would look to this 1 Meg feature to be more widely accepted in the residential last mile where the DMS is the switch of ILEC choice, in other words, than I would in the Centrex mode. My local BEL CO in Brooklyn, for example, uses a DMS 100. I could see this possibility, real well, as a potential knock-out punch to Time Warner (who, I might add, are dragging their feet, unforgivably). I wouldn't mind being among those beta-testing this for BEL in my residential area, in fact.
Beyond the raw transmission power enabled by the 1 Meg feature, a lot would also depend on what kind of back-end (towards the cloud's core) provisions the DMS allows, and much, if not all, of this is an ILEC-determined marketing call.
The transparent wirelss feature I'd have to look at more closely. The look and feel of this, packaging, in other words, may be a difficult nut for them to crack.
The IP roaming capability seems to be more relevant, but this too will require a large degree of orchestration... lining up the stars and the planets just right... and not forgetting to include every asteroid and meteroite in the process.
The concept has been discussed for a long time (in Internet Time terms). If it could be implemented with significant numbers, in order to consider it a success, it would indeed portend to blur the lines, i.e., make the VoIP and PSTN seem more whole, for certain applications.
But given the time for acceptance, digestion, and eventual implementation by the largest ILECs [that so-often-spoken-about chasm ] where this would be pertinent, I would look to other similar capabilities coming from smaller startups [perhaps ISPs and ITSPs} to come across the finishing line first. And whose service would this be? The ILEC who sells the centrex, or the ISP or ITSP or the remote ILEC's?
When the less significant forms of service providers (ITSPs and the majority of the aspiring next gen telcos) have almost bled to death bringing home this proof of concept, then the big boys will be ready with the much larger and more robust LU and NT solutions. IMO. Of course, this all assumes that centrex will continue to survive the test of time that this will take in order to come to widespread fruition, and that centrex itself will not be replaced or supplanted by new modes of voice services by then.
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Happy Thanksgiving, Ken, and to All here in the "Last Mile" Thread. |
