[March 30, 2005]

Two Triple-Play 'Firsts'

By David Sims, TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist

Wave7 Optics Inc., a supplier of point-to-multipoint Ethernet FTTP fiber-to-the-premises systems for residential and business services, has announced the completion of the first “single-fiber” FTTP network providing the triple play of voice, RF video and data services in Japan.

Single-fiber systems such as Wave7’s “Last Mile Link” equipment are less expensive to deploy and maintain than dual-fiber systems, which load upstream and downstream traffic onto separate fibers.

Undertaken as a joint project between the municipality of Taki-Cho (Shimane prefecture) and Izumo Cable Vision in October 2004, the $6.2 million project covers a region of 44 square kilometers, and now connects more than 1,300 homes. This figure represents more than 90 percent of the municipality’s homes, and full Taki-Cho coverage will be available soon.

The municipality and Izumo embarked upon this project because, for one reason, most of the region is in a “blind spot” to terrestrial digital broadcast television.

Current services include 35 television and two FM radio channels, symmetrical high-speed Internet connections, an interactive community teletext system and Voice over Internet Protocol telephony based on the latest version of Session Initiation Protocol and its extensions, which means Izumo can offer the full complement of telephone features such as call forwarding, caller ID and “follow me.”

The Last Mile Link also supports Media Gateway Control Protocol and Network-based Call Signaling.

And at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, 13 companies have completed a week-long test at the UNH InterOperability Laboratory that assayed voice, video and data across a wired and wireless network simulating the mixed traffic characteristic of larger companies beginning to deploy VoIP and wireless.

Until now, the “triple play” technologies of voice, video and data have rarely if ever been combined in an open test and demonstration network simulating how they would actually be deployed in a large corporate LAN serving several offices on a distributed campus.

The test bed included VoIP, VoIP-over-wireless, voice clients (software and hardware), session initiation protocol proxies, PDAs, bridging protocols, call generation/termination, voice quality analysis, routers, multiple wireless access points, laptop, streaming media servers and a mix of security protocols.

Participating companies included Aruba, Azimuth, Cisco, ClearSight, Dell, Empirix, Fluke Networks, Hirschman, IBM, Ixia, Sifos, Spirent Communications and Veriwave.

“Enterprises are already deploying VoIP, wireless, and even triple play by adding to their networks piece by piece, but until now there hasn’t been a neutral proving ground where all the companies could put aside their differences and make sure they work with each other,” said Gerard Goubert, manager of the UNH-IOL wireless and Voice over Anything consortiums.

“Obviously, these are very heterogeneous, complex networks. What’s needed to instill confidence on the IT side is a forum ground where the vendors can come together in a realistic mixed environment and fix anything that’s less than optimal, ideally before their products get into the field,” Goubert added.

The test marks the first time that three distinct UNH-IOL testing groups, the laboratory’s bridging, wireless and VoX consortiums, were involved in a single event. In addition to running test events such as the triple play enterprise security and services group test, these groups perform industry testing year-round, providing one-on-one product testing, debugging and troubleshooting in a leading-edge test bed.

David Sims is contributing editor and CRM Alert columnist for TMCnet.

To discover how contact centers can save money and increase productivity by making the switch to IP Telephony, be sure to attend TMC's IP Contact Center Summit May 24-26, 2005, in Dallas, Texas. IP Contact Center Summit is co-located with the Speech-World conference, where you can get expert guidance in the deployment of speech technologies to strengthen customer relationships.