Access the battleground for telecommunications dominance

The field upon which the battle for dominance of the global communications market will be fought is "access networks", driven by competition and deregulation and aided and abetted by the data explosion, the Internet, "digital home" technology and interactive television.

The world market for access products last year (1999) was US$11.3-billion. By 2003 it will have almost doubled to US$21.6-billion.

Global communications and IT company Marconi plc, which last December sold a 25% equity stake in its South African subsidiary Marconi Communications South Africa (MCSA) to local black empowerment company African Renaissance Holdings, believes this adds up to many more opportunities, many more customers and an over-riding need for more bandwidth.

MCSA technical director George Debbo said, it was noted that the broadband market internationally was growing at a staggering 68% within an intensely competitive environment.

"The clear message is that access networks are the battlefield and that whoever cracks access will lead the entire telecommunications market. Now is the time to be riding the access wave, and so it comes as no surprise that Marconi is making large investments and focusing R&D efforts in this area," said Debbo.

He added that the spotlight was on unscrambling today`s complicated networks and the emergence of next generation networks (NGNs) that will be unified, multi-service, carrier class, scalable and evolvable to achieve a deliverance of 5 Megabytes of bandwidth right through to the consumer`s home.

"Deregulation is fostering an environment in which things can change very quickly, forcing incumbent local exchange companies (ILECs) to reassess their positions. The primary challenge they are facing is that they are now carrying more data traffic than voice traffic.

"Voice has traditionally accounted for between 70% and 80% of ILEC revenue. With technology advancements, residential voice revenues will sooner rather than later become part of a bundled service offering voice, video and data. There is currently no status quo in that respect so unless operators are able to deliver data and video to residential subscribers they will lose their voice revenue."

The options open to ILECs are to exploit the existing copper wire infrastructure and hold the customer base until fibre optic cable can be deployed. This is where companies like Marconi, which is committed to developing affordable optic fibre broadband network systems and taking the technology into the home, come into the picture.

"Technologies like DSLAM (digital subscriber line access module), that gives a plain and simple pair of copper wires the ability to carry 8 Megabytes, and Deep Fibre SDB (switch digital broadband) will allow ILECs to tap into existing copper wire infrastructures and go right to the home.

"They will also have to look at delivering fast Internet access, providing video services and pushing fibre deeper into the access network using very high rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) for the last one kilometre," said Debbo.

"Deep Fibre HFC (hybrid fibre coax) is a technology that gets to within 150 metres of the home on small distribution nodes that carry up to 48 subscribers. The capacity of copper at distances of up to 150m is huge, allowing a host of data, voice and video services to be piped into the home."

The challenges for CLECs (competitive local exchange companies) wanting to enter into the deregulated markets include the lack of legacy access infrastructures, the problems associated with how new broadband services will be delivered and the need to provide toll quality voice services.

CLEC options include radio technology for rapid deployment, fibre to the building for business customers and fibre to the curb for consumers, using multi-service distribution node (MSDN) technology for flexibility and future-proof networks. CLECs can also consider local loop unbundling by installing central office DSLAM systems to exploit the copper infrastructure of the ILECs, or they could lease capacity from ILECs.

For suppliers like Marconi, the challenge has been in developing a broad portfolio of products, including broadband, narrowband, wire line and wireless for end-to-end next generation network solutions, all supported by a common network management system that will increase revenues while reducing operational costs.

"Of all of these, the network management system is critical. Hence within our broadband solutions R & D work, a priority focus has been on the development of an integrated network management system called ServiceOn Access, for all of the access networking products, including wire line and wireless.

"The ServiceOn system supports standard protocols, gives access to devices and provides end-to-end access trail management and full element, network and service level management through a user-friendly, graphical interface."