As Supercomm gets ready to blow into Chicago, the signs of a telecom rally are everywhere. Telephony's editors investigate what the industry's biggest annual event is likely to hold in store for broadband, wireless, software and the new technologies helping telecom regain its winning form.

VIDEO: Triple play gets its second pitch

by Vince Vittore

If fiber to the premises was the marquee technology at last year's Supercomm, its ultimate application--providing the triple play of voice, video and data over the same infrastructure--is expected to take center stage at the 2004 edition of the event in Chicago.

In a town where the Cubs caused near city-wide hysteria by getting five outs away from the World Series, expect to see plenty of baseball imagery with some vendors focusing on the "home run," or triple play plus wireless, in recognition that the Bell companies are starting to take a serious look at some of the technology. Unlike past events, though, where triple play meant heavy doses of video, this year's event is going to focus on a blending of multimedia entertainment services and productivity voice and applications enabled by softswitches. Also anticipate plenty of scenarios in which vendors try to give attendees examples of how the services will roll out.

Nortel, for instance, will be offering up several user profiles to demonstrate a number of potential services that can be rolled out using its next-generation switching line as well as its myriad of data products, said Dave Hudson, technology leader of the vendor's data services unit.

"We're going to be showing off some multimedia communications capabilities for both consumers and the enterprise," he said. "We're going to have the soccer mom profile vs. the teen profile vs. the work-at-home user profile."

On the corporate side of the booth, the company is going to focus on applications like storage-area networks, business continuity and data recovery. Additionally, it will take part in a public display of interoperability testing of Ethernet over Sonet services. The demonstration, which is being directed by the Optical Internetworking Forum, will include AT&T, China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI R&D Laboratories, NTT, Telecom Italia and Verizon.

"There are going to be a dozen plus vendors interfacing into that," said Louis-Rene Pare, vice president of network architecture for optical networks at Nortel. "We're going to cover convergence and the capex and opex benefits of going through a common infrastructure."

Among the more traditional access vendors, triple play also will take on a new look with an increased emphasis on voice over IP.  Occam Networks, which has had its greatest success to date with Surewest's triple-play deployment, is focusing much of its Supercomm effort demonstrating how VoIP services fit into its broadband access platform.

"We today do convergence from TDM to VoIP in our [broadband loop carrier]," said Russ Sharer, vice president of sales and marketing for Occam.  "My customers are asking me if I can make a POTS line that comes into the box and a line from IAD look the same to them."

Supercomm also will mark the debut of Ciena as an access vendor after the completion of its merger with Catena Networks.

"We'll be announcing some pretty innovative extensions to our CNX products that allow carriers to migrate without ripping out a lot of their existing infrastructure," said Gary Bolton, vice president of product marketing for the newly christened broadband access group at Ciena.

Attendees also should expect to see a smattering of alternative approaches to fiber-to-the-premises. While the Bell companies have cast their initial vote with passive optical network vendors, those that believe the best bet is in placing active elements on the access side of the network will be making their case on the floor of McCormick Place. Among those making their Supercomm debut will be Covaro Networks, which officially emerged from stealth mode in May. In June, the company will be taking up the cause of Ethernet in the first mile with some technology innovations that focus on value-added services for enterprise users.

"There's going to be a big shift from frame relay to Ethernet," said Fred Ellefson, vice president of marketing for Covaro. "But if I'm a carrier, I don't want to change $30 billion in frame revenue into $10 billion in Ethernet revenue."

Also making its Supercomm debut will be BroadLight, which provides semiconductors, software and transceivers for FTTP. In May, the company opened a new worldwide headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Another newcomer, Amedia Networks, led by former Lucent optical chief Frank Galuppo, also will be putting in its pitch for active elements in the access networks, but with a decidedly more residential feel. The company, which has close ties to Bell Labs, has so far been concentrating its efforts on municipalities, educational campus markets and some independent telcos.

"The question is whether the RBOCs are going to be willing to change their minds [on their PON decision]," Galuppo said.

On the more traditional VoIP side, expect to see a full complement of softswitch vendors and their suppliers but in a slightly different configuration. While names like Gluon and Taqua have disappeared from the scene, attendees can anticipate seeing a big emphasis on residential VoIP from the likes of Lucent, Tekelec, Nortel and Siemens. The groundswell of interest from such traditional Supercomm name exhibitors comes in large part because this event marks the first such show in which names like Net2Phone, Skype and Vonage will be recognized by large portions of the audience.

"In the last six to nine months we've seen a real trend that everyone is going to voice over IP," said Lior Aldema, vice president of marketing and product management from AudioCodes, which will unveil some enhancements to it media gateway in Chicago. "The voice-over-IP maturity level with respect to the control protocols is something that is reality. Vonage also changed the mindset in the industry by being able to get so many customers in such a short period of time."

To be sure, the traditional data portion plus the glitz of the video leg of triple play will be on display at Supercomm, though the former will have increased presence of new concepts. Among them: loop bonding in which carriers use multiple copper pairs to increase the speed of their data services. Though traditionally limited to the independent telco market, according Haim Volinsky, vice president of sales and marketing for Spediant, larger carriers including Sprint are starting to issue RFPs for the technology.

"Having RFPs on the table means that not only mom-and-pop operations are able to use this technology," Volinsky said.

The same also could be said of video. Among the larger video-oriented vendors at the show, Thomson will partner with access king Alcatel to demonstrate an end-to-end video system. Additionally, Thomson also will be showing off some of its news compression gear including a demonstration of its implementation of Windows Media 9, a technology that is one of the key elements to large telco video deployments, said Keith Wehmeyer, general manager of Thomson's IP video group.

"For most of the big guys that is the technology that gets them over the hump," he said, noting that advanced compression gives DSL providers a 63% great reach over MPEG-2. "One of our messages for the show is that advanced compression is here probably a lot faster than anyone anticipated."

VoIP: The hype trap

by Kevin Fitchard

There's little to argue about--voice over IP will be the "hot" application at Supercomm this year. During the past six months the technology has taken off like a bottle rocket. Every telecom CEO and industry expert has given it lip service, either in tones of excitement or disdain, and every carrier has come out with some type of deployment roadmap for the technology targeting everything from enterprises to small businesses, to consumers to their own backbone transport.

In the last two months alone, Verizon has launched nationwide IP VPN to ferry VoIP to its enterprise customers and announced it would launch VoIP over DSL this quarter. MCI extended VoIP over its own DSL network. Covad Communications negotiated the purchase of GoBeam to create its own nationwide wholesale packet voice service. BellSouth deployed IP Centrex. Qwest Communications said it would stop charging termination fees for any VoIP calls culminating in its network. And Vonage, which brought the VoIP craze to the masses, announced it has 155,000 customers for its broadband telephony service.

"This year at Supercomm, we're looking to get some exposure for our new VoIP product," said Dave McMorrow, Covad's executive vice president for sales and marketing. "We're looking for validation from the market space and to see what the buzz is from all of our competitors."

According to Supercomm's own polling data from registrants, VoIP is one of the highest-rated technologies attendees at Supercomm are planning to see, second only to the more vague category "broadband systems." Fifty-nine vendors have registered to specifically demonstrate IP gear and 50 conference sessions at Supercomm are devoted to VoIP, IP technology and the business case surrounding them. Pulver.com will be hosting its Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Summit at this year's show and even this publication is getting involved: Telephony will host a VoIP For Service Providers Conference concurrently with the show.

The excitement surrounding VoIP might be almost palpable, but in the minds of many attendees it's also a bit worrisome. Supercomm has the tendency to drench a new technology in hype, which often does more to hinder technology than help by creating unreal expectations for its performance and mass deployment.

"There's been more hype than reality," said Blaik Kirby, analyst with Adventis. "People are talking about the massive growth potential with VoIP, but if you take a look at revenue growth, VoIP will actually cause revenues to shrink, not grow. It's not what many carriers would find that exciting."

For the ILECs in particular VoIP, while an attractive business proposition for their growing enterprise sales and domestic long-distance ambitions, is a curse for their core residential customer base, Kirby said. VoIP in the consumer realm will only drive down revenues, and while carriers will eventually enjoy greater savings from the efficiency of the technology, profits from voice will still go down.

"For the incumbents it's really a toss up," Kirby said. "Do they offer their own consumer VoIP solution or do they just reduce the price of their POTS service? In the end it has the same result on their profits."

But that hasn't stopped at least two of the RBOCs from moving forward on VoIP. Qwest already has a residential/small business VoIP service up and running in Minnesota, and Verizon has said it will launch its first initial foray into DSL-propelled VoIP by the end of June. The other two RBOCs, however, have been more skeptical.

SBC Executive Director for Managed Services Brian Buffington said SBC has made a definitive commitment of VoIP in the business world and softswitching at the core of the network. Enterprises have a definite need for the enhanced services and the cost savings VoIP provides, Buffington said, but those advantages transfer so easily to individual broadband connection.

"We're clearly seeing VoIP growing in the business world," Buffington said. "Where the jury's still out is in the consumer market and small business. The digital cable providers are really testing the waters right now. We'll be interested to see what results they have."

BellSouth has been even more cautious, remaining the last RBOC to announce its softswitching platform. The carrier hasn't been ignoring the technology though. It has deployed IP Centrex and is using Nortel tandem switches to take over some of its Class 4 core network burden, and Mark Kaish, vice president of next generation solutions, said BellSouth is finally prepared to announce its end-to-end VoIP and softswitch vendor this June. But for now anything beyond the enterprise isn't even on the radar.

"We're in the camp of 'let's make it work for the business customers first,'" Kaish said. "DSL still has performance issues. It's really a second-line service. We can't justify investing our energies there yet."

The IXCs, however, have other ideas. AT&T has launched CallVantage consumer service in markets in eight states and MCI opened up its Rhythms SDSL network to VoIP business traffic this month. The IXCs don't have the revenue base of the RBOCs to cannibalize, but MCI claims the appeal of VoIP on the individual line is in far more than just price.

"We're offering enhanced feature sets that were found only in big corporate PBXs to small businesses," said Linda Mills, vice president of business voice services for MCI. "There was a time when small offices just couldn't have this type of feature functionality, and now we can give it to them in one integrated package."

The market has yet to produce any results on the small business and consumer front though. With the exception of Vonage's Broadband Phone service, none of the service offers are old enough to produce tangible results and many carriers that have had service deployed for several quarters have held their numbers tight.

"Vonage, God bless them--they've done a great job at PR and creating a name for VoIP," said BellSouth's Kaish. "But look at their numbers. They have 155,000 customers now. There are 113 million access lines in this country. This technology still has a long way to go before it makes an impact."

BACK OFFICE: Inventory gains quiet speed

by Tim McElligott

There may be splashier pitches or louder show-floor trumpets at Supercomm this year than the one blown for network inventory, but no message will have more impact than the clock ticking on the wall telling service providers they have waited long enough to do something about their inventory and data integrity shortcomings.

Inventory should be, if not on everyone's tongue, at least in the back of everyone's mind as they ponder the stage-hogging network implications of voice-over-IP and fiber-to-the-X and broadband wireless. And it likely will be mentioned in every huckster's demonstration of the latest in service assurance and flow though activation and provisioning, because you can't have one without the other.

This June, inventory vendors still should be riding the wave of momentum created Telcordia Technologies' acquisition of Granite Systems last month and could be getting an additional boost from an unlikely source: the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

That an acquisition would translate to momentum in the OSS industry, which is more in need of a large-scale, public deployment, is curious, but even Telcordia's competitors think it's a positive development.

"It is a further validation of the value of inventory solutions overall," said David Sharpley, vice president of marketing at MetaSolv.

Cramer's senior vice president of OSS architecture, Brian Buggy, said that anything that draws attention to OSS and the inventory space in particular helps confirm its importance in the minds of executives.

As for Telcordia, the acquisition has already nudged one service provider's evaluation process in its direction. In a horse race with the usual suspects for a Tier 1 carrier's business, the carrier told Telcordia it would subscribe a lot of value to the fact that Telcordia now owns Granite's Xng product.

"They said the stability we bring to Granite was changing the weight of the whole procurement analysis," said Steve Noonan, chief marketing officer and vice president of product management at Telcordia.

The trio, arguably the top three vendors in the inventory space, also agree that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (S-OX) should have a positive effect on closing a few deals and getting people to think more seriously about their inventory capabilities--or the lack of them.

However, they are all treading lightly. "Sarbanes-Oxley is an enhanced requirement on an existing requirement. It's not as if the need suddenly appeared, although the penalty for noncompliance has gotten more serious," Buggy said. "We talk about it, but carefully, because it can be seen as if you are threatening a customer or trying to push them into something."

MetaSolv thinks there is an automatic tie-in between the act and OSS. "It has given the mantra for how particular certifications need to take place within publicly traded companies and it is going to require the things we talk about: having access to the information you need to make appropriate business decisions. It will be important to operators," Sharpley said.

But not so important that compliance is their top priority, said Scott Donahue, program manager for OSS at Stratecast Partners, in a report in November called, "Inventory and Asset Management Barriers To Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance."

"While many service providers are addressing the inventory management domain from a cost control and operations efficiency perspective, we do not get the sense that North American publicly listed service providers are overly concerned yet about [S-OX] compliance," Donahue said.

Nor does Donahue believe service providers can resolve the network inventory data discrepancies it must in order to become compliant by the time the bill is implemented in less than six months.

"But the folks who are mastering resources and taking it seriously are more in tune with where they are going to have to wind up in November," Telcordia's Noonan said.

Where they must wind up is in compliance, at least for the sake of this discussion, with Section 404 of S-OX, which mandates corporate fiscal accountability. Section 404 covers any internal process with material impact to a service provider's public disclosure. Provisioning services is one such process. The current 50% accuracy rate of the inventory systems used to provision those services isn't going to cut it in S-OX.

In addition to competitors agreeing that S-OX could help push some service providers off the fence and that the publicity surrounding Telcordia's acquisition is overall a good thing, they all say the hopper is full.

"There isn't a Tier 1 carrier we deal with in the marketplace that doesn't have a major initiative either deeply in the planning stage, procurement stage or starting implementation," Noonan said.

Buggy said that a lot of people in the industry are "re-realizing" the importance of inventory to their business. "There is definitely a climate that OSS will have more money invested in it relative to investment in the network," he said.

MetaSolv's Sharpley said that based on the number of engagements his company is engaged in, 2004 will match the consensus that OSS revenues are going to increase overall.

However, that's about all these three agree on. As the opportunities grow, fertilized by legislation, consolidation, new service introductions and the unending drive toward cost containment, the fun begins as competitors use outlets like Supercomm (and this article) to deride each other's strategies. Naturally, Telcordia as the dominant player gets it from both sides.

Regarding consolidation within the industry, Cramer's Buggy said it is centered on two different strategies. One, he said, is Telcordia's Elementive strategy, which he calls "a number of disparate products, differently built and architected by different groups." The alternative strategy--the one to which Cramer subscribes--is one that promotes the tight coupling of process and data and building a scalable architecture around that.

"It will be interesting to see as we go forward which will be seen by carriers to be the most powerful," Buggy said.

Both Cramer and MetaSolv recently released major new versions of their OSS platforms. Cramer's is a rather dramatic shift to an n-tiered, J2EE-based architecture with a fully functional thin client.

"They are finally catching up to where Granite was two years ago with its full J2EE, three-tiered architecture," Telcordia's Noonan said. "But they don't have the Tier 1 lessons Granite has learned over the last couple of years."

MetaSolv's new release, M6, focused heavily on the front end and creates easy access across the enterprise (not to be confused with the enterprise market) by providing a configurable navigation capability to everyone from the engineer to the C-level executive. It features rapid delivery and design of new services, automated provisioning for both optical and IP, and a multi-domain view of the network.

No argument there, but when asked, neither of the other two vendors could name more than two leading players in inventory. For its part, MetaSolv is correct in saying it has led consolidation in the OSS space. "You won't hear us complaining about acquisitions. We set out a very conscious strategy to round out our portfolio through acquisition and that has served us well," Sharpley said.

All three vendors, and presumably more, plan to use Supercomm to showcase their new and expanded approaches to inventory and associated solutions. With luck, and a little push from Mr. Sarbanes and Mr. Oxley, they just might have a couple of those real world implementations to talk about.

OPTICAL: Optics rule

by Ed Gubbins

"The most exciting things [at Supercomm], the biggest innovations, will be Infinera and Parama," said Infonetics Research analyst Michael Howard. Both companies recently emerged from unusually long stealth periods, and both promise disruptive technology.

Infinera made a splash earlier this month by emerging from a three-year stealth mode with an optical switch that replaces expensive photonic components with chips, thereby posing a decided alternative to all-optical switching espoused by vendors such as Calient Networks and Corvis. Infinera's DTN optical switch handles 400 Gb/s in a half-rack chassis, and it contains two key chips, also designed by Infinera: a transmitting chip, which does the work of 10 lasers, 10 modulators and a 10-channel multiplexer, and a receiving chip, which contains a 10-channel demux and 10 photodetectors. With highly integrated chips replacing expensive optical components, carriers need not use the tiny tilting mirrors of all-optical MEMs technology to avoid the high cost of optical components.

Parama Networks also claims a quantum leap in optical chip integration. The chip vendor made its debut in January, unveiling what it called an "add/drop multiplexer on a chip," an advance in optical chip integration that threatens to more or less commoditize the entire ADM product category, allowing vendors to compete on software features instead of hardware. Like Infinera, Parama promises to dramatically collapse the amount of space taken up by central office equipment.

Supercomm attendees are also likely to be looking into whether or not Cisco Systems will use the show to display its long-awaited IP core router, code-named HFR. Though Cisco holds a commanding majority of the global IP core router market, it has been vulnerable to the charge that its current products are not as advanced as those from new startups such as Procket Networks and Chiaro. HFR could be a resounding response to that charge. Cisco is mum on the subject, but although the HFR has been murmured about for months, rumors have been circulating recently that the gear could debut soon. A display at Supercomm would surely spark a lot of attention.

Show goers who like to gawk at the big boxes may also stop by the Nortel Networks exhibit to take a gander at the OpTera HDX optical switch, whose capacity was recently expanded to range between 200 Gb/s and 5 Tb/s (from 600 Gb/s and 1.2 Tb/s). Attendees are already assured to get a look at Nortel's newest platform, the MPE 9000 multiservice edge router previously code-named "Neptune." The MPE 9000 is aimed at converging Layer 2 and Layer 3 services--such as frame relay, ATM, IP/VPN and VPLS services--with the 99.999% reliability carriers expect from voice services. 

Supercomm will also feature a cluster of vendors all presenting gear based on the IEEE's 802.3ah standard, also known as the "Ethernet in the first mile" standard. The EFM standard, meant to allow reliable fiber and copper delivery of broadband Ethernet services, is expected to be ratified this summer, and a slew of vendors are already bringing to market gear based on it, including Hatteras Networks and Actelis Networks. Covaro Networks, which emerged from stealth mode in early May, will exhibit at the show. Adva Optical Networking brought its own EFM gear to the American market in May as well. Supercomm could bring even more surprise new entrants to the space, from startups to incumbent suppliers. There will even be a multi-vendor "super demo" of EFM gear at the show, according to Bob Mandeville, president and founder of testing lab Iometrix, which is participating in the demo.

And "Optics Rule" isn't the only discussion session for the industry's optical sector. Infinera CEO Jagdeep Singh will join representatives from Cisco, Nortel and Avici Systems in a panel chat about interoperable automated optical networks. MCI's distinguished technical member Daniel Awduche will present a speech about metro optical networks (MCI declined to offer specifics on the speech's content), and BellSouth research director Alan Blackburn will address the topic of optical services, architectures and applications. And Anda Networks director Karl Brown will join representatives from Juniper Networks and Sycamore Networks to discuss optical Ethernet networks.

WIRELESS: Watching for WiMAX

by Dan O'Shea

In the weeks before Supercomm 2003, operators of public networks were struggling to understand Wi-Fi, the high-speed access technology that was fast encroaching on their turf.

Telcos hoping to expand their efforts to deliver broadband to the home and corporate enterprise were starting to realize that Wi-Fi was too disruptive a technology to ignore in their strategic plans. They were beginning to formulate ideas on how to take advantage of Wi-Fi-by packaging it with existing services such as DSL, reselling Wi-Fi access from hot-spot operators such as Wayport, or working with vendors to create managed services for enterprise customers.

These strategies started to come to fruition in the months after Supercomm last year, and in some cases--with SBC being the best example--telcos pursued all three strategies. While telcos are still sorting through their Wi-Fi plans, perhaps wondering how much to participate and where, Wi-Fi has undoubtedly helped broadband wireless become a top-of-mind issue for them.

Competition and cost pressure also have spurred telcos to consider--or more accurately, reconsider--the viability of broadband wireless. The trend of customers "cutting the cord" and replacing wireline service with wireless, something that was once unthinkable, has become a real concern for telcos. Right now, it's more of a voice trend, but to keep mobile carriers at bay, telcos might want to demonstrate their ability to compete in a wireless world. Also, the pervasiveness of Wi-Fi around the world is putting new pressure on telcos and other service providers to develop lower-cost backhaul transport options for Wi-Fi hot spots.

All of these factors point toward one word you will likely hear over and over again at Supercomm 2004. That word is "WiMAX."

Based on the 802.16 standard and its subsequent revisions, WiMAX is sitting on the horizon with all the hype of Wi-Fi, but superior bandwidth benefits, and much less mystery about how service providers can take advantage of it. The WiMAX Forum is guiding the industry in its development of interoperable standards-based gear for commercial WiMAX deployment (For more information about WiMAX technology, applications and forum efforts, see the special supplement packaged with this week's issue of Telephony.)

As of press time, just a handful of broadband wireless equipment vendors--including Aperto Networks, Alvarion and Redline Communications--were scheduled to exhibit at Supercomm to show their current gear. However, these vendors expect that WiMAX will be one of the most-talked-about technologies at the show, as service providers look to better understand the solution and where it fits in their network deployment roadmaps.

"The early read on Supercomm is that WiMAX has stirred a lot of interest among carriers so far," said Keith Doucett, vice president of marketing at Redline Communications. "Carriers see that there will be broadband wireless products that are standards-based, and we believe they are now ready to spend money on their networks again."

Doucett doesn't exactly expect to leave Chicago at the end of Supercomm week with a pocket full of purchase orders, but he does expect to walk away from the show with solid interest from carriers in pursuing field trials.

Redline will have its 802.16a product, among the first such products on the market, on display at the show. The AN 100 system is on a migration path to become WiMAX Forum-certified for interoperability by early next year. Doucett said most serious WiMAX purchases won't happen until later in 2005.

Without tipping his hand too much, Doucett also said Redline will have some new product announcements at Supercomm that target frequencies the vendor has not addressed with previous equipment.

Aperto Networks, the gear manufacturer that unveiled its WiMAX strategy just last week, is looking at Supercomm as an opportunity to answer carrier questions about WiMAX, said Alan Menezes, vice president of product management at Aperto.

"We'll show carriers our WiMAX product roadmap, but we'll also be talking to different service providers about products for a wide range of frequencies," he said. The company will have its PacketWave system on display and will talk about fulfilling existing market needs for the 2.5 Ghz, 3.5 Ghz and 5Ghz frequency bands.

Alvarion will have a WiMAX-ready system for 2.5 GHz, called BreezeMAX, on display. The product will officially unveil at this week's WCA show.

"Broadband wireless for the last 10 years has really been a vendor technology push," said Carlton O'Neal, vice president of marketing at Alvarion. "Getting carriers involved now is key."

Further reflecting that attitude will be a Supercomm Industry Updates session on Monday, June 21 titled, "Fixed Wireless Broadband: Its Time Has Come." The panel session will be chaired by Andrew Kreig, president and CEO of the Wireless Communications Association International. It will include, among other panelists, Graham Barnes, president and CEO of wireless ISP NextWeb, one of the companies that is aggressively staking a claim in broadband wireless ahead of larger carriers.

Whether or not broadband wireless' time really has come may not necessarily be any clearer after Supercomm than it appears now. After all, this particular industry sector has let people down before. But there is new hope in the industry, based on new technology and a more organized effort to make it commercially viable. Even if commercial deployment doesn't explode in the week after Supercomm, you can expect to be hearing a lot more about WiMAX in the future.