August 1998

• WINDOWS NT ENDORSED BY NORTEL FOR CARRIER NETWORKS
• NEW SOHO CALL WAITING SWITCH ANNOUNCED
• VIENNA COLLABORATES WITH ACC
• A MODULAR ENHANCED SERVICES PLATFORM FOR NETWORK OPERATORS
• BROADBAND SERVICES FOR BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS

WINDOWS NT ENDORSED BY NORTEL FOR CARRIER NETWORKS

BY RICH TEHRANI

I recently wrote about Rockwell choosing Microsoft Windows NT as the basis for their new PC-based ACD, known as Transcend — a great endorsement for Microsoft Windows NT. Having Rockwell in their camp is truly a testament to how important telecommunications companies perceive Windows NT to be in their telecommunications future. Now Nortel is endorsing NT as well; not in the business market, but in the carrier market.

So far this is only a pre-announcement, but it seems that the next generation of Nortel Internet telephony applications will be based on Windows NT. Of course, Nortel is not the only carrier solution that will be based on NT. There are many NT-based Internet telephony gateways currently deployed in carrier networks.

Only the carrier market can decide which operating system it prefers. At the moment, the majority of vendors I speak with think NT will eventually supplant Unix in the carrier market. Only time will tell. For more information, visit Nortel at www.nortel.com.

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EXCEL ANNOUNCES INTERNET TELEPHONY CAPABILITY WITH ONE ARCHITECTURE

Excel recently showcased their ONE (Open Network Expansion) Archi-tecture’s ability to enable voice over IP, plus multiple other enhanced services, to run in Excel’s carrier-class switching environment (Figure 1). The system is managed by EXS (Expandable Switching System) Manage, Excel’s OAM&P (Operations, Administration, Mainten-ance & Provisioning) software, and runs under EXS Call Control, Excel’s open programmability environment. With this system, carriers can combine network infrastructure routing, multiple enhanced services, media support, and Internet telephony in a single switching solution that can scale to over 30,000 ports.

Excel’s switching platforms allow carriers to deploy a single switch for enhanced services, as well as network infrastructure. Applications such as voice over IP using Natural MicroSys-tems’ Fusion, and debit card and voice messaging applications from Priority Call Management, will be integrated in a single switch that could also be used to provide the carrier’s infrastructure switching service. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.xl.com, or call 508-862-3145.

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NEW SOHO CALL WAITING SWITCH ANNOUNCED

A common problem that SOHO workers face is that of sharing a few phone lines with multiple devices. It is not uncommon to have a line used for fax, Web access, and also voice calls. The Call Waiting Switch (CWS) from Computer Peripheral Systems is a small device about the size of a paperback novel. The device can work in various configurations, but its most interesting configuration comes into play when the subscriber has caller ID or call waiting. In this case, a person logged onto the Web can see who is calling, and at the touch of a button can connect to the calling party. For more information, contact the company at 800-888-0051, or visit their Web site at www.cpscom.com.

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VIENNA COLLABORATES WITH ACC

Vienna Systems recently announced that they are collaborating with ACC to provide a carrier-class gateway for service providers. Vienna is well-known for providing PC-based Internet telephony gateways and has announced deployments in some high-profile companies such as Qwest Communications.

With an onslaught of competitors emerging in the carrier-class space — such as Nortel/Cabletron and Cisco — it is imperative for Vienna to work with a company that gives them access to a high-capacity routing product family. Expect the Vienna/ACC gateway to support H.323 and up to 1,500 ports per shelf. This is another example of the many alliances and acquisitions taking place in the telephony and data communications arena. For more information, visit Vienna’s Web site at www.viennasys.com.

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A MODULAR ENHANCED SERVICES PLATFORM FOR NETWORK OPERATORS

In the aftermath of deregulation and privatization, the public network market faces a new set of challenges and opportunities. Once, reliability was enough, and stability — both in terms of services delivered and revenues received — was the ultimate goal. Now, however, the watchword for the industry is competition, which creates a much more dynamic environment for network operators.

As they prepare to compete, network operators find themselves casting about for ways to differentiate themselves. But how? One way is to offer a broader array of services. However, taking this route requires that network operators continue providing basic services in addition to rolling out new, enhanced services. And that’s not all. Not only must network operators enrich the existing service matrix, they must find ways to manage it, giving users unprecedented freedom of choice while coping with all the complexities user freedom engenders.

Given this new mandate — delivering more and doing it better — network operators often respond by acquiring enhanced services capabilities from specialists. One such specialist is Glenayre Electronics, Inc. This company, through its Integrated Network Group, provides products that help network operators deliver enhanced services. These products also encompass the planning and managing of network operations, and the anticipation of further service development and deployment, through analysis of subscriber utilization. Thus, the Integrated Network Group’s products, that is, the Intelligis products, help network operators explore new opportunities.

Whether they are identified via Intelligis or some other entity, new opportunities emerge as a consequence of subscriber demand, which grows more elaborate as new technologies enter the market. Subscriber expectations, it scarcely needs noting, have never been higher, and are likely to climb higher still. End users, accustomed to rapid innovation from experience with the computer and Internet industries, look to their telecommunications service providers to quickly implement emerging technologies such as speech recognition and unified messaging. Indeed, subscriber attitudes with respect to technology tend less towards awe and more towards impatience. Thus, while delivering enhanced services probably won’t result in paroxysms of gratitude among end users, it may, at the least, help carriers survive.

But what exactly are enhanced services? Everyone seems to talk about them, but hardly anyone goes into detail. Well, a quick review of the enhanced services from the Intelligis line should help us move from the abstract to the concrete with respect to enhanced services. The line’s Modular Voice Platform, which lets service providers choose the number and combination of enhanced services, includes:

Voice Messaging: The user listens to a message and then presses a key to immediately reply back to the caller. The user can also forward a copy of a message to others.

Unified Messaging: The user can access a voice mailbox through a personal computer via the Web. This service may be used by the provider to generate a monthly premium and promote customer loyalty by enabling subscribers to open, read, and print faxes and monitor voice mail messages from their PC.

Voice Dialing: The mobile phone user places calls by speaking a name, telephone number, or a command.

Direct Dial: Subscribers make multiple calls, including long-distance calls, directly from their voice mailbox without hanging up between calls.

Automatic Callback: The subscribers return voice mail calls with a single keystroke.

Fax Messaging: Enhances customer loyalty by enabling subscribers to capture a fax in their voice mailbox, then conveniently and confidentially direct the fax to any fax machine when the subscriber is ready.

Short Message Service: Displays text messages to a mobile phone, including the number and type of message.

Single Number: Subscribers combine all phone numbers — business, mobile, home, fax, voice mail, and pager — into a single number so they can be reached virtually anywhere.

Wireless Prepaid: This service enables wireless service providers to capture lost revenues from credit-challenged clients and past denials, and addresses the needs of the cost-control subscriber, gift-giver, and student markets.

Prepaid Calling Card: Users place calls against a prepaid account, which the provider tracks and decrements in real-time.

Postpaid Calling Card: In this competitive market, key concerns include call scripting, fraud prevention, corporate card functionality, and subscriber feature set.

Of course, integrating all these new services into existing operations poses an administrative challenge. There are, however, packages that carriers can use to plan, build, and manage their networks and businesses.

One such package, Glenayre’s Options, is an integrated software solution that allows network operators to improve network reliability and efficiency. Components include:

BOS (Basic Operating System): A real-time monitoring and maintenance tool for wireless communications, BOS monitors network elements such as voice mail systems and databases.

WiNGS (Wireless Network Graphics System): This RF propagation tool is designed to facilitate network planning and expansion. By dragging and clicking, engineers can configure hypothetical wireless networks or analyze existing ones using actual data.

Traffic Tending Tool: This tool uses information gathered by WiNGS and BOS to anticipate potential problems and opportunities before they occur. It is designed to inform decisions about network, marketing, finance, and customer service issues.

To sum up, carriers eager (or even not so eager) to embrace change can take advantage of products that will make them more competitive. Such products can elaborate on existing services, creating enhanced services, while simplifying and optimizing network operations. For more information, please visit www.glenayre.com.

Crossing the Shadow Line
The last notebook entry suggests that carriers can no longer content themselves with providing one-size-fits-all solutions. Rather, through the implementation of enhanced services options, carriers need to attend to individual customer preferences. Since these preferences are presumably related to customer aspirations, we could say that carriers need to start thinking of ways to help customers achieve these aspirations, which means that carriers need to start thinking of themselves as sharing these aspirations, of having a joint mission, of being, in a sense, partners.

Customers as partners. It’s a theme familiar to enterprises, if not carriers. But carriers are beginning to sound this theme, too. Thus, carriers are beginning to act more like enterprises.

Now, if it could benefit a carrier to act like an enterprise, could it also benefit an enterprise to act like a carrier? It could, if the enterprise were large enough. A large enterprise is in the position of providing enough sheer capacity to meet corporate demand, which can be a daunting task, given the rise of bandwidth-intensive services, including high-speed Internet access and video-on-demand.

Basically, the line between carriers and large enterprises is blurring because they face a similar challenge: managing networks of massive scale while attending to individual user needs.

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BROADBAND SERVICES FOR BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS

If you thought I was leading you somewhere when I brought up "crossing the shadow line," you’re right. It was my way of approaching a discussion of the broadband services strategy recently outlined by Fujitsu Business Communications Systems. Fujitsu, it is clear, intends to focus on large enterprises that act like carriers.

If we could sum up Fujitsu’s broadband strategy in one line, it would be: Sonet networks aren’t just for carriers any more. According to Fujitsu, Sonet — a WAN transport standard for fiber optic networks — is rapidly working its way from the public carrier networks to private campus and metropolitan networks. In support of this claim, Fujitsu cites a Frost and Sullivan study, which indicates that the compound annual growth rate for Sonet is nearly 20 percent, with enterprise Sonet equipment and service spending reaching $2.23 billion by the year 2003.

Large organizations are implementing Sonet technology for several reasons:

• Decreasing equipment costs (over 50 percent through 2003).
• Rapidly growing bandwidth requirements, concomitant with increases in computer processing, Internet access, and LAN traffic.
• The trend toward consolidating voice, video, and data onto a single network.
• The need for more reliable, scalable, open, and flexible networks
• The option of using fiber-based infrastructures to explore new markets.

There are yet other indications of a favorable future for Sonet. For example, Fujitsu notes that standards bodies are considering proposals for Sonet to the desktop, that Point-to-Point Protocol over Sonet is emerging as an Internet trend, and that Sonet lends itself to interworking with ATM and wavelength division multiplexing.

Typically, enterprise demand for Sonet originates from companies with large private LANs. Such enterprises include financial institutions, insurance companies, manufacturers (especially those in high-tech fields), healthcare institutions, universities, government agencies, and transportation authorities. Other non-telco implementers include cable TV companies and utilities, who intend to use Sonet to become alternative telecom service providers. For example, by implementing Sonet, cable TV companies position themselves to offer a wider variety of services, including local telephony and Internet access.

Sonet also promises to hasten the availability of fast packet data networks. Already, data networking companies such as Cisco, Bay, and 3Com have Sonet interfaces on their equipment. When asked whether data networking companies would forego existing technology, and instead develop independent fiber technology, Fujitsu again refers to research conducted by Frost and Sullivan. According to this research, the development of complete product lines may be so costly that data networking companies would sooner enter into integration/development agreements.

According to Fujitsu, next generation routers and switches will support plug-and-play interfaces and a myriad of high-speed network access options. Emerging high-speed Internet access and gigabit switching products provide direct Sonet connections to transport IP traffic, allowing simplified management and integration while building networks for enhanced reliability and mission-critical data applications. The emergence of wavelength division multiplexing coupled with Sonet gives both carriers and users a way to build efficient, high-bandwidth, fiber-based network designs.

Fujitsu’s interest in Sonet is clear. It owns 30 percent of the U.S. Sonet transport market. It provides an extensive range of Sonet and ATM equipment and services. Fujitsu’s broadband offerings include network design services, project management, Sonet/fiber optic multiplexers, ATM WAN switches, and ATM access devices. For more information, please visit www.fbcs.fujitsu.com.

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