Live from Stavänger - Part 2

The second session of the OECD workshop focuses on demand for high-bandwidth networks. We have Kjell Arne Yttervik (IBM), Bas Boorsma (Cisco) and Richard Clarke (AT&T).

Kjell Arne Yttervik focuses on contant and how it drives bandwidth demand. This is not a truly new argument, and even though Kjell Arne's presentation is more concrete, it's not very far from the metrics used by Brett Swanson at the opening session of the FTTH Council 6 weeks ago. Basically, content stored and circulated will generate bandwidth demand explosion. HD will drive higher bandwidth demand, etc. One interesting point, and something I've thought and said for a while (and neither am I the only one) is that TV-Centric doesn't necessarily mean content. TV-Centric services can be much more than content, and that will likely be as big if not bigger a driver.

I'd already seen most of what Bas Boorsma from Cisco had to present on their Connected Urban Development projects in Amsterdam in November. Still, a few interesting points and some new elements there. Essentially CUD is Cisco and various cities looking at how to use ICT to promote sustainable urban development. One the significant projects is the concept of Smart Work Center as being trialed in Almere, Netherlands. The idea is that in order to diminish physical displacement of workers that generate a lot of carbon emissions, homeworking is often seen as a solution.

Homeworking has its drawbacks though: desocialisation of workers, no access to quality IT infrastructure (printing, etc.) and so on. The Smart Work Center is a local community center with flexible work stations, telepresence facilities, a lounge and various amenities like kindergarden, etc. are offered. This is, by the way, a commercial project, not a publicly financed one. I don't know if it can work, but being a frequent homeworker, I can vouch that I would like being able to rely on such a center once in a while...

Incidentally, Bas also mentioned the effects of Cisco's internal roll-out of their telepresence solution; it's present in 190 facilities worldwide, Usage is considerable (44% usage rate 24/7), and has saved over 75 million US$ in avoided travels to Cisco. The solution requires a 20Mb/s symetric connexion, and Cisco is working on a home version.

Finally, Richard Clarke explained the reasoning and economic model behind their hybrid FTTN/VDSL rollout. This was quite bold at an FTTH conference, and a very interesting case. Basically, faced with cable competition only in the regulator designed monopoly, I felt that you couldn't really fault AT&T for choosing that track. It allows them to invest in stages, even if the ultimate goal may still be FTTH. Instead of being in the situation to have to drive demand, U-Verse allows them to wait for demand to pick-up. Of course, it's AT&T's competitive environment that allows them to do that, with a main cable competitor that has a limited capacity to provide higher grade services. Of course, there's an element of religion in these conferences, and a lot of people were quite adament that it was a wrong choice. From a technology standpoint,there's little doubt that it's an inferior choice, and less future-proof, but it felt to me like a sound b usiness decision. Ultimately, if cable gets it's act together, AT&T may still have to move to FTTH faster than they think.

Overall, this was another good session, with one striking point though: everybody is completely hung up on content as the driver, and I think that's both short-sighted and misguided. Because IP has tended to commoditise historical communication services doesn't mean there's no value in communication, and one of the great promises of FTTH is that it will enable the next generation of communication services. Herman touched on this in the first session, saying that latency might be a bigger technical driver than bandwidth because it will enable communication.
 
Again we're back at this thing that carriers examining FTTH are not very insightful when it comes to service innovation. To say the least...