June 28, 2007

There's a Gadfly in the Industry Agreement

By Jim Barthold

Unlike cable, the telcos let dissenting or contradictory voices be heard, even at the highest levels.

Matt Bross, group technology officer at BT, added both a bit of levity and contrariness to a panel of heavy hitters presented by the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS). While Chris Rice, CTO of AT&T; Pieter Poll, CTO of Qwest; and Mark Wegleitner, senior vice president-technology and CTO of Verizon, sounded remarkably like their cable counterparts in their agreement and admiration of each other, Bross added just enough dissent to amuse the audience and annoy his more serious-minded fellow panelists.

The panel's subject was "What's NEXT is NOW: Delivering Telecom's Converged Network and Entertainment Experience," and everyone agreed that fiber is the way to go. How to get from point A to point B - from being a phone company to an entertainment megaplayer, however, was a more interesting and pointed discussion.

"Building the IP core is the foundation of what needs to take place," said Rice.

OK, said Bross, but "infrastructures don't move in the same time scale as customer expectations." Telcos, he said, must build out their networks to answer and stay ahead of consumer demand, not as part of a larger profit & loss methodology that looks first at the potential return then puts forth the investment.

IMS - pros and cons

When it comes to converging the technologies, the accepted - so far, at least - method to bring together fixed and mobile is via IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). The hot topic a couple shows ago, IMS has been languishing because there's "a lot of work yet to be done to get where it needs to be," said Rice.

IMS proponents believe things are moving along just great. If it's quiet, it's because the effort has moved from the hype-filled marketing phase to the reality of being developed as a usable specification.

"Bringing everybody together from a common point, interoperability, is still the biggest hurdle for IMS. We're still trying to move a lot of pieces in the same direction," said Manuel Vexler, chair of the IMS Forum Technical Working Groups, speaking before NXTComm. "We're trying to move convergence of different broadband networks, fixed-mobile cable, DSL-mobile cable, some of the Wi-Fi-WiMAX. Trying to move customers to roam freely and is a massive undertaking."

That means it will happen slowly, said Poll.

"I don't believe IMS is a big bang that's going to happen in the network," added Poll.

Bross, of course, disagreed: "What's happening isn't convergence - it's an innovation big bang ... and you heard it here first."

Let's talk about IPTV

Finally, there was the topic everyone had printed on wristbands and cheatsheets, with a yellow highlighting emphasizing "TALK ABOUT THIS."

IPTV, said Rice, is "a little bit more than TV ... a different level in video than just traditional video or TV."

But, said Wegleitner, reining in the emotions, linear television is not dead; appointment TV still works for the broadcasters; and the "pendulum (toward user-generated content) is only going to swing so far" toward on-demand and personalized viewing because "it won't become an on-demand Internet experience."

Bross, of course, kicked it up a notch.

"It's Innovation Possible TV," he said. Providers should be "using it for innovations that were not possible with TV. It will be well beyond TV."

In a surprise that almost rivaled the audacity of AT&T unveiling a two-way video phone that doesn't work on the same network as the over-hyped iPhone, Rice agreed with Bross. IPTV, he said, is "a customized experience for each user," and "time-shifted viewing comes into play with IPTV more than any other kind of video medium."

Contradiction. Contrariness. Opposing ideas. Now there's something you don't see at a cable show anymore, with or without Playboy bunnies.

 - Jim Barthold