Mobile Backhaul, Next-Gen Switching: Taqua Takes the T7000 in New Directions

NEXT GENERATION NETWORKS — May 2011

The Death of Least Cost Routing

This increase in the number of interconnects - combined with the fact that carriers are constantly changing their rates - means carriers need new tools that give them the ability to change their LCR strategies quickly and easily to capitalize on the lowest cost for transport and termination…

Feature Articles

North Carolina Becomes Epicenter of Community-Owned Broadband Network Debate
The cableco and its incumbent service provider allies in early April were successful in their push to get North Carolina's House of Representatives to pass legislation (in a 81-37 vote) that will make it much more difficult for municipalities to deliver broadband. Specifically, the legislation aims to block municipal entities' ability to borrow money to fund broadband efforts without voter approval and to block them from providing such services below cost or using city funds.

Securing Content on Carrier Networks
Anonymous used application-layer attacks late last year in an attempt to bring down Amazon.com, MasterCard, PayPal, Visa and others that played a part in trying to stop WikiLeaks' online operations following the site's infamous release of U.S. government communications with other countries. But these are just some of the more high-profile instances of application-layer attacks, which Rakesh Shah, director of product marketing and strategy at Arbor Networks, says are on the rise.

Telcos Continue to Buy Into the Cloud
Fresh off from closing its purchase of Qwest, CenturyLink Inc. last month announced plans to buy Savvis Inc., a leader in the cloud infrastructure as a service and web hosting space, for $2.5 billion. The deal - which involves cash, stock valued at $40 per share, and the assumption of approximately $0.7 billion in debt - is just the latest move by a telco to purchase a web hosting company.

What the CenturyLink, Qwest Combo Means for Business Customers, Partners
For business customers and channel partners of the newly joined entity, the deal means the on-boarding of the former Qwest's significant data center assets and cloud-based services to the CenturyLink product portfolio; a broader service footprint; and a bigger company with greater financial scale, which can as a result leverage that cash flow to invest in the products and services customers desire, says Christopher Ancell. The president of business markets with CenturyLink also tells NGN magazine that the company expects to introduce new cloud and managed services in the not too distant future.

Next-Gen OSS: LTE Puts Planning and Policy Center Stage
Indeed, demand is booming. The latest Cisco Visual Networking Index forecasts that worldwide mobile data traffic will increase 26-fold between 2010 and 2015, which would represent a compound annual growth rate of 92 percent over the same period.

Entrepreneur Applies Telecom Lessons to Online Discount Site
You've heard about, and probably even used, online resources like Groupon, Orbitz and Priceline to find deals on travel, meals, spa services and the like. Well, just last month yet another online discount outfit joined the pack. It goes by the name bidmyway.com, and it's run by John Shave, the guy who built Globalcom into a multimillion-dollar business.

Columns

Publisher’s Outlook

Cablevision iPad App Review
The battle to take control of TV 2.0 continues with a new application (iPad link) from Cablevision allowing customers with iPads to view about 300 channels and 2,000 videos on demand from anywhere in the house…

Editor's Notes

Broadband Atlas
Broadband Wars was the headline of NGN Magazine's last cover story, which published in January. It talked about how big cable TV companies…

Eye on the Money

Beyond SDPs
Years ago, The Economist famously defined a product (as opposed to a service) as "something that can be dropped on one's foot." We are in a similar definitional situation with one of the industry's most important concepts - the service delivery platform.

Guest Room (with Diane McCarthy of Verizon)

Digging In on Digging Safely
Before reaching for that shovel to start digging, these homeowners - and professional excavators - should call 811, the national call-before-you-dig number. 811 is the free, nationwide number established by the Federal Communications Commission in 2005 to prevent the unintentional strike of underground utility lines while digging.

Hot Topic (with Laura Marriott of NeoMedia)

How to Achieve Success with Mobile Barcodes
The integration of mobile barcodes into marketing and advertising initiatives is an ideal way for a brand to activate a campaign, making it engaging and interactive for the consumer. Mobile barcodes open up new opportunities for marketers to build lasting relationships with consumers in a targeted and measurable way. Consumers can connect with their favorite brands quickly and easily - not only participating in interactive communications at the moment of impulse to help foster the feeling that they are a valued customer but sometimes even helping them to make informed purchase decisions by providing comparative pricing, detailed product specifications and so on.

Mobile Services - Beyond Voice

A New Voice Being Heard?
Analytics Research forecasts that mobile phone data traffic will increase tenfold through 2015, and this is expected to continue throughout this decade.

Next Wave Redux

Measuring Broadband Speed
A recent paper, "Understanding Broadband Speed Measurements" by Steve Bauer, David Clark and William Lehr, reports on their review of 400,000 tests made using the M-Labs network diagnostic tool. Fully 38 percent of those tests never managed to fill the access link. This means 38 percent of the tests never measured the available speed!

From the Desk of Michael Khalilian

Will Your Apps Work with New Converged IP Broadband?
As telecom service providers we are concerned how new applications will perform over the next generation networks to attract subscribers and enhance the user experience. Users have embraced new applications such as games, social media and content delivery and have periodically experienced lack of quality of service with the performance of such services.