(Editor's Note: This article refers to a video interview shot at CBX 2010. To view TMCnet's entire library of videos from CBX and other industry shows, demonstrations and interviews in our in-house studio, visit our Video News home page.)
At the Telex CBX 2010 Event, TMCnet CEO Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) interviewed Michael Wheeler, vice president of global networks at NTT Communications. Below, I've taken the liberty of transcribing some of their conversation. The full video clip is available at the end of the article.
Michael: NTT (News - Alert) is one of the Tier-1 providers globally, we're part of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone group out of Tokyo - we're in a network that spans four continents.
Rich: In terms of 100 gigabyte Ethernet power, are you seeing your customers move more to that technology? Can you sure your plans on what you're doing?
Michael: We recently made an announcement regarding our deployment of the Cisco (News - Alert) ASR 9000 platform. We've been putting that network in over the last three months. We spent about a year or more testing that platform among others, and we really selected it because of the scalability as well as the port density we would get for ourselves and our actual customers. Today, we have a number of customers who are running much more than 100 gigs of capacity in total. And we believe that the next stage of that kind of requirement in the marketplace will be moving from the 10-Gig E Ports today to 100 Gig E Ports. We didn't forget about 40 Gig E, just in case you were going to ask. But we kind of really felt like the bundling of 10 Gig E's that exist today, allows us to get most of the advantages of that platform. And so we really move directly to the 100 Gig E environment. So we have that available. It's not available today, we can't actually turn on a 100 Gig E Port through the ASR9000 yet. But later this year that will be capable. And going into 2011 and 2012 it will be a really important part of the strategy and design of the network overall for our customers. We really think it is comparable to the move from single Gig E to 10 Gig E that you heard about four years ago, in the 2006 timeframe. And we really saw an exponential growth in traffic, customer demand and the requirements coming from the marketplace then and we think this will be a similar kind of experience.
Rich: So in terms of the last few years where we've seen some financial ups and downs and all sorts of things happening, more recently in Europe, with the oilspill in America, etc. -- are geopolitical events affecting the demand for bandwidth from your customers?
Michael: They're probably affecting demand in a positive way. When these kinds of events happen we tend to see a spike in traffic and usage. A good example was last year, when the Swine flu epidemic was happening. We saw a large amount of customer requirements from some of our customers in South America, particularly Mexico. When these kinds of events occur, it shows a spike of usage instead of a reduction in usage. So that's a good thing I guess, when there are tumultuous events occurring in the world. We really get a chance to see it on a global basis, not just the United States' domestic basis because the network really is a global network in a sense. It does span the world for us. So we can see the different areas of the world drawing traffic in a specific way if it's a regional issue versus a more global issue such as the inauguration event that occurred the last year.
Rich: As more and more news becomes video and video becomes news, people are able to consume more of their news whenever they want to consume it and that's when those videos begin to suck up more bandwidth worldwide.
Michael: There are the live events that occur like some of the things we've been talking about, but there's also "time shifted" video viewing. Whether its looking at it, or storing it, or looking at it another time, or looking at it from different parts of the world six hours later or twelve ours later. And those continue to have an effect on the requirements of the network.
Rich: And there's still streaming radio and things like that that continue to suck up bandwidth as well?
Michael: Sure they do, but in relative terms, audio is so much less of a requirement than video is. Especially when you start looking at HD video. There's a percentage of overall utilization that's still quite a bit smaller. But it's an important part of it and it continues to grow as well. Internet radio is a real growing environment.
Rich: When I'm working I typically have multiple news stations up and I'm streaming radio and our own TMCnet videos. As a percentage, I tend to listen to radio more frequently throughout the day than I watch videos…
Michael: Radio tends to happen more in the background, kind of like you're describing. And it's a lower bandwidth sort of thing. Video tends to be more time sensitive at least as far as initial downloads go. So we see that kind of requirement from the market as well. I'm similar though - if I'm not in a conference call I tend to have some kind of music playing in the background. That's comfortable for me and a lot of people are comfortable with that kind of application, running multiple kinds of things at the same time on their PCs.
Rich: Now are you seeing any specific kind of companies that are looking for more bandwidth than others? Or is it just generally across the board from your customers?
Michael: I think it's across the board in general terms, but certainly what we tend to term as internet-centric businesses are the biggest drivers.
Rich: Social networking searches, things like that?
Michael: Anything in the Web 2.0 umbrella, social networking, ecommerce, has become more and more a demander of bandwidth and capacity. Certainly for our customer base and for ISPs that are drawing large amounts of traffic. Anything in that range, "internet-centric," is a term we use internally to cover that sort of customer. Wholesale doesn't quite cover it. I don't think that's a good or broad enough term.
Rich: What's next for your company?
Michael: 2010 has turned out to be a good year. You've mentioned the economic challenges that have happened. Europe is still going through some of those things specifically right now. With traffic comes revenue, but it's one of those things we have to manage a business.