Getting Schooled at Harvard with Acme Packet
In mid-March, Pipeline had an opportunity to attend "Acme Packet University" at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, Mass. The one-day event was chocked full of deep-dive sessions on everything from session border control, to IMS, to LTE and more. We heard from Acme Packet, GSMA, Infonetics, and other industry experts through this day-long informative session.
Pipeline left (after a quick stop in Harvard Square) with several key impressions. The first of which was a better understanding of Acme Packet's history of innovation. The second, and perhaps more prominent impression, was how incredibly well poised Acme Packet is to capitalize on many of these current market trends. If it's any indication, Acme Packet was upgraded shortly after the event by attending analysts such as Catharine Trebnick from Northland Capital Markets who writes, "Fundamentals are solid and we expect the company will be back to 20 percent growth in 2013. We are upgrading our opinion to Outperform from Market Perform." In today's market, it doesn't get much better than that.
Isn't It Too Early to Talk 5G?
Since only a sliver of people on the planet are on 4G networks, and truth-be-told, none of them meet the ITU definition of 4G (100mbps), isn't it a tad early to talk 5G?
Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent, and Telefonica don't think so, and they held a press event at Mobile World Congress to outline the fifth generation of mobile. First of all, don't hold your breath; 2025 is the posited drop date for 5G. Still, what does 5G look like?
"5G is more about providing the services people need at the appropriate Quality of Service," said Marcus Weldon, Alcatel-Lucent CTO. It's not so much a new speed potential as it is the correct speed for the application. This is increasingly important as we experience the "rise of the machines." Mobile traffic today is driven by somewhat predictable activities: making calls, receiving email, surfing the web and watching videos. Over the next 5 to 10 years, billions of new devices with less predictable traffic patterns will join the network including cars, M2M modules, sensors, and the like. This might take the form of video surveillance requiring 24/7 bandwidth, or it may be a bio-hazard sensor sending tiny bits of data daily. Stir in the effects of the meteoric rise of cloud computing, and it's easy to see why new network strategies will be crucial to the fifth evolution of mobile.
5G represents a convergence of network access technologies. According to Ian Miller, Director, Radio Access Networks, Telefonica, "It's about how we stick these varying access technologies together seamlessly—right now it's a little clumsy."
Additionally, baked into the idea of fifth-generation wireless is customer experience. While past "Gs" seem focused on network abilities, 5G is focused on always offering the right network ability for the right service. "Of course, there will be substantial speed increases," said Tod Sizer, Head of Bell Labs Wireless Research. However, sewing different access technologies together in a seamless fashion and creating smart gateways that choose the "best" connectivity for a given situation (and in a transparent manner) will be the DNA that gives life to 5G.
The Battle for Video Heats Up
Video is a perennially hot topic. It's the largest strain on mobile networks, it's consumed as never before, and the players along the value chain are in flux. Telcos, cablecos, CDNs, and OTT players alike are joining forces to create video ecosystems in a strategy some have termed "coopetition." I don't necessarily like that term, and not just because spell check will never recognize it. Since business is inherently competitive, a simple (and real) word like "partnership" seems more appropriate.
At the IP&TV World Forum last month, representatives from Verizon, Deutsche-Telekom, and a slew of other top-tier CSPs made the case for partnerships, and the creation of unified content ecosystems. Telcos are aiming, in part, to become mediacos, and they're having some success. In fact, at the event, the award for Best TV App didn't go to a cableco, a broadcast network, a content network, or an OTT player, but to AT&T.
