IP is the driver of the future

By Rodney Weidemann for Telkom
Johannesburg, 09 Sep 2003

"A future communications network will be driven by Internet Protocol (IP), as this will provide the fabric which will be the essential element in moving to a truly converged set of services," says Telkom`s CTO, Reuben September.

He was speaking to delegates at the SA Telecommunications, Networks and Applications Conference, held this week at Fancourt Hotel in George.

"The point of convergence is to be able to communicate how you want, regardless of whether you are at home or in the office, operating locally or internationally, in a rural or urban environment or working from a wired or wireless system," he said.

"With IP we have the ability to bring services together, to bundle services and take large levels of traffic across a network - the evolution towards the ultimate communications fabric will see widespread and varied technologies being driven by IP."

September said IP is the glue that is bringing communications services, such as fixed wire telephony, wireless mobile and Internet, to name just a few, together.

"In order to provide appropriate access for people, we need to ask ourselves what is the best access technology, and the answer is, it depends," he said.

"It is dependent on factors such as cost (is it affordable?), capacity (do we have enough?), functionality (can it operate when and where we want it?), geography (can we deliver to the region?) and management (can it be managed effectively?)."

He said Telkom is focusing on the future by seriously investing in the commodity of knowledge, thanks to its research and development programmes - which are about turning money into knowledge - coupled to innovation, which is about turning knowledge back into money.

"We are aware of how big IP is going to be. The impact that the switch from a manual set-up to an automated one had on business and communications systems was big, while the switch from automated to digital was even bigger, so the switch to IP is going to be the biggest yet," said September.

"In essence, what it amounts to is IP over everything, and everything over IP."