Carphone Warehouse goes all-IP
28 June 2006
Carphone Warehouse's network operating subsidiary, Opal Telecom, on Tuesday announced a contract with Sonus Networks to deploy a converged IP network to the UK market, with IMS functions.
The move comes soon after Carphone Warehouse (CW) announced 'free' broadband DSL service with its TalkTalk fixed-line phone package and represents an effort to migrate all its existing TalkTalk users onto DSL.
Hassan Ahmed, Sonus CEO, described the new network as "a new primary line service for households" and claimed that only Sonus' carrier VoIP products support the full UK Class 5 signalling feature set, including functions like 1471, 1571 and call waiting. The new network is to be based on Opal's upgraded backbone, which has recently replaced its SDH fibre with MPLS over 10Gigabit Ethernet.
"We're aiming to get 50 per cent of the TalkTalk customers on broadband this year," said Clive Dorman, technical director of Opal. "Our objective is to be the first alternative to BT."
The decision to describe the firm's DSL offering as 'free broadband' is significant, as CW is trying to sell the applications rather than the connectivity. "The foundation is that you're paying for applications and services, rather than the network connection," he said.
This represents a move towards a so-called Telco 2.0 strategy on Carphone's part. The introduction of IMS functions to the system offers possibilities beyond just VoIP, too. Dorman suggested that a GSM 'femtocell', or one-building base station, might soon be on offer as a fixed-mobile convergence play.
Regarding other possible mobile services, he said that CW was indeed interested but "primarily the mobile networks won't give us access." Now, however, "the balance has swung - we are more important to them than they are to us." This kind of value-adding may be crucial, as, according to Carphone executives, "until LLU became a viable business model, most ISPs were losing money on broadband."
However, serious questions remain about IMS, and the Sonus systems Carphone is buying are no exception. "We can take our network to IMS compliance with just software upgrades," said Ahmed. If they can take the network to IMS compliance, it's not IMS yet.
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