John Roese’s Blog CTO, Nortel

Since it’s the beginning of a new year, I thought I would go out on a limb and posit some predictions on what we might expect to see in telecom and IT in 2008. As with all predictions, these are at best qualified guesses, but let me try to explain why I think they might happen.

#1: WiMAX (production) and LTE (trials) will get some real air time and more people will see that they offer fundamentally different experiences and have different ecosystems than either cellular or wireline networks.

Today, far too many people look at emerging 4G technologies and try to compare them to 2G and 3G cellular networks. The challenge with that is that the total experience, ecosystem and focus of these new systems differ dramatically from any network deployed before them. GSM, UMTS, CDMA and other existing cellular networks were designed, built and used to make phone calls and to provide narrowband data and some other services to users of mobile devices that mostly resembled phones. They all do a good job of this, so if you wonder why you need a new network to support your mobile phone to make phone calls and do “phone stuff” when you’re mobile, you are not alone. If all that 4G results in is a better 3G network, it is most certainly not worth the effort.

But, the good news is that 4G isn’t about just a better phone call. It is about mobilizing the Internet, to the point where anything you can do on a WiFi network comes together with anything you do on a cell phone to create a fully mobile experience that approximates the performance, latency and flexibility of traditional wireline networks, but with the added value of mobility.

In 2008, the first WiMAX networks will start to become mainstream and many of us will get a chance to experience the new devices and services that will be enabled by these networks. With that, we will begin to understand what we have to look forward to as 4G matures over the next several years. By the end of 2008, we will stop debating why 4G matters and start discussing how and what we can use it for, in order to do some novel and transformational things.

#2: Unified Communications will eclipse VoIP.

In 2008, many more people will begin to understand the power of Unified Communications – the pulling together of a set of IT and telecom services to create much richer, more interactive/collaborative experiences.

Today, many are still ambiguous about the true value of U/C because they have not yet seen enough real examples of software and interfaces that make it possible to accomplish complex communications tasks in extremely simple ways.

In 2008, however, we will start to see communications functions begin to pervade desktop software, web-based portals and interfaces and even consumer electronics and entertainment systems. The line between a telecom application and an IT one will blur and, with that, the ability to move from information to interaction within the same interface will become real. By the end of 2008, we will realize, maybe suddenly, that IT and telecom functions have become closely coupled, co-resident and inseparable.

#3: Spectrum policy will become so complex that we will realize that global harmonization will not be possible, nor really necessary.

If you consider the allocation and sale of spectrum in the world today, 2008 will expose huge amounts of spectrum to a host of fairly diverse technologies. WiMAX alone, for example, is targeted at the 700 MHz, 1.5 GHz, 1.7 GHz, 2.1 GHz, 2.3 GHz, 3.5 GHz, and 5.1 GHz bands, among others. LTE will have equally complex spectrum options, and new dialog about the use of underutilized spectrum (white spaces) will create even more diversity in terms of where a service can live within the frequency spectrum.

This does not mean there will be an absence of spectrum regulation, just that the idea of a common worldwide and uniform use of spectrum for a wireless technology will become less important. The burden will shift to end systems that can support multiple wireless technologies and adapt to systems that are available, without exposing the end user to the reality of the differences between the underlying networks.

Today, with the iPhone and other WiFi phones, the idea of a multi-technology end point is reality. With WiMAX, I assure you that every WiMAX product targeting consumers or business for Internet mobility will most likely have a WiFi interface. Additionally, every LTE or WiMAX device targeting more traditional mobile phone or smart phone experiences will have GSM or CDMA contained within the device. In 2007, we saw this end point multi-network capability emerge with the iPhone, the Blackberry 8830 World Edition and other devices, but in 2008 we will expect that to be the norm for the new networks we participate in and, as such, will expect end-point flexibility to be more important than global spectrum harmonization. 2008 will be the tipping point, and 2009-2012 will be the mass shift in thinking.

#4: Wireline and optical networks will take a major speed step forward and, with that, the fixed Internet experience will create new economic and experience options.

2008 will be the year where mainstream 40-gig capacity per wavelength becomes available to the optical network DWDM systems in mass, and greater-than-100-meg service to the end user becomes reality in multiple consumer and business offerings (DOCSIS 3.0, GPON, WDM-PON, Metro Ethernet, …).

When available capacity increases by an order of magnitude, two things happen. First, the economics change, so we should expect to see new pricing models (or at least a new high end in what premium capacity levels top out at) to connect to the Internet both at work and home. Second, we will see new offerings and applications emerge to consume that capacity. The single biggest driver of innovation in the Internet has been the pervasive availability of abundant bandwidth. Every time the capacity increases significantly at a similar economic level, we find ways to utilize that capacity. This next wave will be no different.

On the consumer side, 2008 will see new innovation of content, specifically video delivery. Video download offerings from Netflix and Apple are moving to an all-you-can-eat model and that is made possible because capacity exists to make the experience tolerable. If the capacity expands further, the experience will become preferable to mailing a DVD or going to a store, and that will be revolutionary.

On the enterprise side, the availability of dramatic increases in capacity in the MAN and WAN via Ethernet and optical enhancements means that site-to-site and business-to-business connectivity will come to resemble the capacity and costs of a LAN. Once that happens, we will become open to sharing and distributing high-capacity traffic services to our business partners and our total “extended” enterprise. That will result in adoption of more federated communications and interaction models, which in turn will drive the need for the technologies that make Unified Communications possible (such as presence, identity, conferencing, call control, video, voice, collaboration interfaces…).

By the end of 2008, the abundant core and access capacity in many markets will stimulate another round of Internet innovation, and corporate use of communications will expand to the total value chain.

These four predictions are just a sampling of the changes I believe we can expect in 2008 (time will tell if I’m right). The reason I am reasonably confident in this thinking, however, is because never in my career have I seen so many new technologies being introduced across all aspects of telecom and IT at the same time. When such a huge volume of new technology occurs, the end result can only be a revolutionary user experience.

I’d be interested in hearing your own predictions...