July 21, 2011

NTT America Highlights Key IP Transport Trends

Michael Wheeler, vice president of NTT America’s Global IP Network business unit, outlined the following developments that will continue to affect the IP transport industry throughout the remainder of 2011:

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Consolidation:
As IP transit providers continue to struggle with constraints on capital following the global financial crisis, industry consolidation will continue. Already this year, the industry has seen this consolidation several times over, with CenturyLink/Qwest/Savvis, Terremark/Verizon and Level 3/Global Crossing most notably.
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Emerging technology: 
IPv6 will remain at the forefront of industry discussions, as the transition will be extremely gradual. While NTT America’s IPv6 traffic on its NTT Communications network nearly doubled on World IPv6 Day, many content networks and service providers will still be slow to adopt the new protocol permanently.
 â€¨However, the seemingly infinite amount of addresses provided by the new protocol have the potential to pave the way for new opportunities for existing technologies such as digital rights management (DRM) and radio-frequency identification (RFID) devices. It is these opportunities that could propel a faster transition.
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Customer landscape:
Demands on the Internet will continue to grow as the application of video evolves and people continue to increasingly visit sites like Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. Overall, Internet usage is transitioning from cache and storage to real-time and over-the-top (OTT) content.
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Global developments:
Latin America continues to rise in prominence as the next big emerging market, and with Netflix’s recent announcement that it will begin offering service in the region, many industry researchers are suggesting that streaming content from the company could overtake cable in terms of adoption.