Pipeline Publishing, Volume 4, Issue 6

	This Month's Issue:
	The Shifting Market

NGN Strategies:
Why One Size Doesn't Fit All

By Justin Norris

As true Next Generation Networks (NGNs) and services are finally becoming a reality, service providers are required to carefully define their strategies and technology roadmap in order to adapt to the new environment.

So what do we know about NGNs today?

We know that NGNs support single signalling and transport architecture for multiple multimedia services, including voice and video, messaging and presence, integrated communications and IT applications. This is achieved by the SIP session control and RTP media transport. Service providers are then able to overlay that network with value-added applications that can be rapidly introduced (and removed if required) across any type of network, fixed, wireless, or mobile. NGNs are being developed and deployed now. There may still be technical issues to resolve – either at the design or at the implementation and integration level – but the fundamentals are already in place.

The specific technical choices may vary depending on the network operator or service provider in question. Large European incumbents like BT, France Telecom, Telecom Italia, and Norway’s Telenor, for example, have committed to large-scale IMS network architectures. As the dominant fixed-line operators in their respective markets, they face a number of challenges: reducing infrastructure costs, competing with the influx of new and agile competitors, countering fixed-mobile substitution with fixed-mobile convergence, and re-creating themselves as content players, either as aggregators or ultimately as owners. The aim of the game here is long-term viability, not short-term returns.

Mid-tier operators, meanwhile, are likely to be more cautious on their commitment to major NGN and IMS investments, though equally keen to exploit the cost and revenue benefits of IP. Local market conditions will determine their particular requirements, but a common factor behind mid-tier operators migrating to NGN is the declining revenues of voice minutes, which are quickly becoming a commodity thanks to VoIP. This threat, spearheaded by VoIP providers such Skype, may have once been limited to fixed-line but is now appearing in the mobile environment too.

Mobile operators are already tied to an existing separation between their circuit-switched and packet data access networks. The principle migration path is to follow the 3GPP route from R4 circuit-switched and packet data access, to R5 IMS, and ultimately to the all-IP R6 network. Mobile operators are trialling IMS networks, but there remains a short-term investment challenge between rolling out the

There may still be technical issues to resolve - either at the design or at the implementation and integration level - but the fundamentals are already in place.

new infrastructure and launching new self-contained services, such as mobile TV.

Smaller service providers will focus on their specific markets, such as prepaid or business services, and will look for immediate cost minimisation and immediate revenue returns. A single multi-service platform supporting PSTN and IP carrier interconnection with least-cost routing, service access, validation and control, real-time rating and charging, service creation and web-based customer self-care, provides the ideal basis on which to enter a market. Such a solution supports the SIP signalling and multimedia capabilities of NGNs, but also directly addresses the integration overheads of multi-vendor solutions.

But no matter what the size of the operator in question, it will need to deal with the fact that IP has been able to break open the tightly constrained communications market at all levels. New infrastructure solutions have become available from alternative vendors, dramatically reducing network costs. Network integration models have changed from PSTN interconnects to internet peering, opening up networks to new players and new value chains. New application providers are able to enter consumer and business markets to challenge traditional telcos with different communications models and a diverse range of services. IP also underpins the World-wide Web and the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) for application development, integration, and delivery. So, while the investment community may have initially over-heated the valuations of companies working in this new arena, there is no denying the radical impact of the technology.

Unknown quantities

While it is important to acknowledge the various different considerations and

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