John Roese’s Blog CTO, Nortel

In the past several months, I have been involved in a number of discussions around the world, where governments are trying to push for “next-generation” broadband as a government-sponsored initiative. The reason for this is that in the last decade many countries have used broadband roll-out as a way to stimulate economic development and GDP growth. In fact, many studies and reports (including the data in the graphs below) show clearly that where Internet and data services have been deployed, the GDP has expanded at a significant rate.

Source: Michael Minges, TMG Telecom, and ITU World Telecommunications Database Statistics, 2003.

It is also clear that many countries have claimed bragging rights on broadband penetration and adoption. Northern Ireland, for example, talks often about its target of becoming one of the first countries to have 100% broadband access penetration with ½ a megabit of capacity per user. Korea and many of the Nordic countries also talk about significant milestones in broadband penetration and capacity. And Singapore speaks of its fiber deployments and broadband penetration as a competitive advantage. The list goes on.

The question now is: “Given that there is significant broadband penetration, what is the next step to further capitalize on technology for GDP growth, attracting business and differentiating one country or region from the others? In other words, “What is the definition of “Next-Generation Broadband”?

First, I will tell you what – in my opinion – it is not. It is not simply about scaling up the capacity of existing systems purely from a bandwidth-per-user level. The reason I do not view this as true next generation is that if we look at any broadband system, inevitably we have seen incremental technology improvements that boost the speeds in the technology. DSL, for example, started at a few hundred kilobits per second and then evolved to the point where today we can deliver megabits or even tens of megabits of capacity per copper line. I doubt anyone would consider the DSL evolution as a true next generation of broadband; it is simple an improved model of the current broadband paradigm. Similarly, DOCSIS 3.0 by itself is not next-generation broadband; it is simply the same paradigm at a higher capacity. My intent is certainly not to belittle these advances – without a doubt they are significant in terms of both technical merit and customer impact – but when a country states that it is going to launch a “next-generation broadband effort” in my view it has be transformational not simply incremental.

So, how should “next-generation broadband” be defined? I am sure there are many transformational aspects of broadband and that a uniform view of “next generation” is probably not easy or even possible to agree upon. For the purposes of starting a dialog, though, let me throw out two significant changes that if applied to broadband systems and services might meet this threshold. 

1. A wavelength to every person or business. In this paradigm shift, the value of the optical network is applied to access. In such a service, rather than users sharing a packet network for broadband access, the principles of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) could be applied to access, and each user or business would be given a wavelength (or lambda). Because dense WDM (DWDM) systems can scale to huge capacities (up to 40 or 100 gigabits per second per lambda in core systems), the result would be a revolutionary change in capacity. Additionally, because optical is a physical layer network, the types of traffic over the system could be extremely flexible. It could be IP- or Ethernet-based but it could also evolve to include any communications technology that can run over optical networks. Additionally, the characteristics of optical networks are such that symmetrical capacity can be delivered. Today, most broadband is asymmetrical, in that downstream capacity is usually far greater than upstream capacity. That works fine in older Internet models, where consumers predominantly consume content, but in Web 2.0 and 3.0 we will see far more user-created content being sent into the network and that will require symmetrical bandwidth systems. Today, there are some early technologies being tested and deployed that provide this type of broadband experience. The most prominent is WDM-PON (Wavelength Division Multiplexing - Passive Optical Networking) but other models may be possible assuming they deliver flexible, ultra-high capacity, symmetric broadband services.
2. Multi-network mobile broadband. Today, there are many broadband offerings to the populations of countries but most of them are focused on delivering a single network to homes and businesses. These are usually known as “fixed broadband” systems, such as cable and DSL. Additionally, there are some emerging wireless broadband systems, such as WiMAX and eventually LTE. These wireless systems provide broadband over the air. Sometimes it is to a home, much like fixed broadband, but in some cases it is to a mobile device such as a phone. One could certainly consider mobile broadband as “next generation” and I would be inclined to agree, but the real revolution will occur when we recognize that the future is not about a single network providing all Internet services but rather about a set of networks working together to deliver a complete communications experience.That’s why I believe that the other true “next generation” broadband system will be one where fixed and mobile networks begin to act in concert to create a seamless user experience. Some early models of this are known as Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC). These technologies make possible things like the handoff of phone calls between an enterprise PBX and a mobile device, but they could be expanded to include making a single identity and subscriber set transferable across any network access. Imagine if you could interact with a network that understood who you are, where you are located and within what environmental context (e.g., in close proximity to something or someone; available or not available to accept calls, etc.), and then used one of many possible network connections to deliver communications to you. Take that forward and imagine that you could use your mobile phone to control your television or a video conference without forcing the devices to exist on the same type of network. This model recognizes that a plurality of networks will operate in a coordinated fashion to deliver complex and immersive – yet transparent – communications, entertainment and business functions. As we consider “next-generation broadband” maybe it is less about a single physical network and more about a multi-network experience. If that is the case, then governments must consider that their role may be to facilitate interaction rather than to partition the industry into segments based on connection type. In this model, broadband suddenly becomes bigger than transport, and policy related to it must now include a much broader set of industries.

There are undoubtedly other definitions of next-generation broadband, but for the purposes of starting a dialog I put forward the two options above. The only aspect of this dialog that is critical in my mind, though, is that if we are to really call something “next generation” it seems that we should have greater aspirations of change than simply increasing the capacity of an existing system.  

I welcome your thoughts on this