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By Wedge Greene and
Barbara Lancaster
The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive.
A Decade of “Writing on the Wall”
Perhaps the first person brave enough (or crazy enough) to voice the implications of the power of edge based services within the Internet, and what it might mean to Service Providers, was David Isenberg. He wrote The Rise of the Stupid Network in the summer of 1997 (10 years ago) and soon thereafter departed AT&T. This article was controversial and still is – in fact Isenberg has become something of the “Alan Ginsberg” of the Internet. The implications were very clear: the trends David identified would kill service provider business models and maybe the companies if service providers could not respond.
Wedge Greene debated David that fall at the IETF – arguing that a different, software-based, smart network was possible and could save Service Providers. In fact, both were right and wrong. Wedge’s stated vision of many small interacting software services hosted on platforms is sweeping the Internet; however, service providers are not driving this deployment or even benefiting from it. David seems to be right that these trends are outpacing the ability of the service provider to alter its business model. What both engineers predicted correctly was that edge user-developers would become legion. Swamping in game theory is an effective strategy, but will the Stupid Network prevail in the long run? Will the good of the many outweigh the good of the few?
Can Spock... I mean the ‘intelligent network’... be resurrected?
Today this debate rages. Partly this debate is about business models, partly about legality and regulation, partly about what technology to allow and to leverage, and lastly it is about consumer and business desire for services. But what does this mean for the management of networks, for OSS & BSS? What is changing? What is no longer realistic and what new opportunities are opening up? How can intelligent planning, good policies, proper technology and well crafted processes turn the tide of operator fear toward operator profits?
Users simply want to have access to their favorite services at any place from any consumer equipment they own. It is increasingly hard to tell a consumer that it is economically different to connect to the network via a land phone, cell phone, or computer. In fact, younger users fail to separate out the three networks, inside their head, as separate networks. Thanks to cyber-punk science fiction and popular
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But will the Stupid Network prevail in the long run? Will the good of the many outweigh the good of the few? |
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movies, they see not a layered and interconnected series of discreet networks, but one organic whole network. Service providers long have counted on the steady delivery of access and core services that everyone will want and use regularly, and that, most importantly, will have enough economic life-span to justify service development, management development, and network tailoring for best delivery. Unfortunately, today’s users just are not waiting on this service delivery model. Traditional, solid NPI soon may be obsolete. As Japan saw with the introduction of DoCoMo, services today are very much like fads, racing like wild-fire through the user community. Many are short lived; most are displaced by marginally better or cooler services. A few become mainstays of user utility. What these have in common is offering no direct control by service providers, or generating any new revenue for network operators.
What is OTTS?
Over-the-top (OTT) services is the buzz-expression for services carried over the networks, delivering value to customers, but without any carrier service provider being involved in planning, selling, provisioning, or servicing them – and of course without any traditional telco booking revenue directly from them.
Currently, according to the Alexa Global Traffic Rankings the major destinations for traffic in the internet are, in order, Google, Yahoo, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Windows Live, eBay, Wikipedia.org, msn.com and Craigslist. All of these portals are not owned by networks and most host OTT services which provide value to end users, and for which the traditional carriers get no specific revenue. Portals are receiving revenue for advertisements but many critics maintain they
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