Broadband World Forum 2013

History keeps repeating itself…

Structure

• G.Fast review – still the same powering issue from 20 years ago

• Home Gateway – 20 years old and still unclear why its needed

• WiFi, HomeSpots, and Anyfi – challenging mobile broadband economics

especially HetNets

• A few painfully contrived NEP (Network Equipment Provider) slides I include to

poke fun at

o You’d think by now I’d have learned to only attend the Telco presentations

• Some SDN slides including OpenDaylight Project

o Before Informa took over the running of the BBWF, the conference was run by the IEC

and called SofNet in 2008 – focused on the software defined telco.

• A few of the many excellent Telco presentations

o PSTN Migration from Deustche Telekom

o Mobile Backhaul from EE

o Real world network policy from Plusnet

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© 2010 Alan Quayle Business and Service Development

G.Fast was one of the themes of the show, with much discussion on the economics versus fiber to the home. 20 years ago the discussion was FTTC (Cabinet) vs FTTH (Home) and the winner was unclear. FTTP (distribution Point / Pole) was the more expensive option of the three. What’s changed? Need for more speed beyond FTTCab, Moore’s law, and

opex savings of FTTH are not that great as a cable cut is a cable cut regardless of technology. The next slide shows the architecture and number of nodes across these

options for the UK, which is common across most developed markets.

To the subtitle of this deck, history keeps repeating itself, these are the same issues from 20 years ago….

I include these slides to provide a little more info on G.Fast as its likely going to be a hot discussion point through 2014/2015 as telcos examine how to plug the speed gap in FTTCab

I already have a broadband home, as a customer I’m unclear what a home gateway offers. I was circumspect on the home gateway 20 years ago and still HGI continues to exist with

limited deployments (unless you label a STB as the home gateway).

What’s the end-customer benefit? I have tens of devices and hundreds of services running in the home without the need to a gateway. Any project requires a clear end customer

benefit state, else it simply shouldn’t exist. Al the web-guys have in their first slide the end-customer benefits of their tech/service before that presented anything else.

I liked this presentation and thought it worth highlighting the role of WiFi and Video in the evolution of the network.

I partially agree with the vision, the challenge is over what timeline, likely >10 years

This trend in using WiFi can Homespot is growing strong and extending across Europe and other densely populated countries.

I think we will see an interesting discussion on mobile broadband economics in the coming years versus WiFi

Anyfi provides an interesting model

The first step is zero sign-on, next using policy to improve performance, and lastly security as shown in the next slide.

An example of how WiFi aggregation can at least partially meet customers mobile broadband needs.

For MNOs the focus is HetNets, and KPN gave a good summary of the challenges – site acquisition remains top.

Contrived analysis of the incumbents. These are not new trends! Mobile networks have provided national coverage for decades. Broadband and Cloud (Hosting)

have been around over a decade, SFDC was founded in 1999 (nearly 15 years ago). Industry regulation blocks opportunities and regulators are politicians nearing

retirement and even more detached from what competition means than the telcos. This is not trend spotting, this is just contrived thinking.

This is missing the point, its diversity. Text has evolved into: Whatsapp, IM, tweet, email, snapchat, post.. Call to Poke? Poke is now out of fashion, and Call is so much more than

a poke. Call has evolved – Viber, Skype, Whatsapp... The phone has become part of a handheld computer – the weakness of their analysis is shocking. And what the hell is app

coverage! We use services, an app is a container like an Android app, iPhone app, iPad app, web app, HTML5 widget, etc. for Facebook or Netflix, or Mahjong. The NEP

presentations left me annoyed and frustrated.

Self Aware? They must have been watching Terminator before writing these slides. Self healing is decades old see SDH. Sliceable, I guess they’re trying to

create the next greatest thing since sliced bread!

I’m unclear on how the network takes center stage, the network is a utility. Plusnet did a great presentation which I’ll review later that recognized the

telcos role and focused on delivering what the customer wants.

A recurrent theme was framing arguments to make the web service providers look like they are taking advantage of telcos, its silly self-serving analysis and

will not change the situation – focus on customers

Its all about the capex – everything else is spin. M2M already exists, monetize what? They say service velocity – the key term is services…

SDN came up again and again – this slide is simply for definition

Keep an eye on the OpenDaylight Project – it could deliver some of the the savings telco are demanding

I thought a little bit of reality would bring us back to Earth – yep most telcos are managing IP migration of their PSTN.

If only the vendors could be so clear

Even DT will not have completed migration until at least 2018!

Again simple and clear, 30% cost saving – most from energy!

And some basic offer capabilities that should have been available a decade ago

Telcos continue to lead in provide frank and insight presentations

Contention is small cells are a 4G issue

Great review of the backhaul challenges the people working in the RAN face

Included to show a trend in moving base stations out of the cell sites

Centralized RAN is interesting, though economics and operational issues exist

I really liked this clear and frank presentation

Clear and frank explanation of how policy really works!