Mobile operators are moving to IP backhaul to deal with explosive growth in data traffic

Russia’s mobile operators are moving to IP backhaul to deal with explosive growth in data traffic. Leading Russian carrier MTS (Mobile TeleSystems) said this week that it is expecting 86 per cent growth in Russian data traffic by 2015, forcing a strategic focus on network transport.

According to MTS, an upgrade to Ethernet and IP as a backhaul carrier is the best way the operator can maintain service quality going forward. MTS has partnered with Tellabs and local telecom solutions provider Intracom Svyaz to undertake this upgrade.

In a double win for Tellabs, smaller Russian player MegaFon is also planning to build a countrywide IP mobile backhaul network with the aim of reducing costs, increasing network capacity and ensuring a smooth migration from legacy technology to an all-IP transport platform. In this case Nokia Siemens Networks will be performing the systems integration.

“We aim to build a unified mobile backhaul to facilitate faster rollout of 3G services such as HSPA and prepare a converged IP transport network for fixed and mobile services for millions of people in Russia,” said Valery Ermakov, chief operations officer at MegaFon. “This will help us keep pace with the exponential increase in the data traffic while significantly reducing our capital costs.”

Feature: Many operators are pushing core capabilities out to the network edge

Telecoms.com recently looked at how operators have moved on from addressing shortcomings in their radio access networks, which are being relentlessly battered by the demands of smartphones and tablets, with network congestion is moving ever closer to the core, where it becomes increasingly expensive to manage. The consensus is that the best strategy is to deal with the tidal wave of data moving towards the core before it even gets there, by keeping it as close to the network edge as possible. According to the industry pundits spoken to for this feature, operators worldwide are rethinking their network topology, especially with regard to the design and implementation of the last mile.

A light burns in the long, dark tunnel of disintermediation that the telecom industry is currently lost in. It’s called Connected Verticals. A ‘connected’ vertical is an industry – like Healthcare, Transport, Energy and Broadcast – that stands to be transformed through a strong injection of telecom innovation.

Really, telecom innovation?
Telecom innovation like M2M, 4G, Ethernet and cloud computing (heads up: without a network there is no cloud) is triggering the emergence of new business models, revenue streams and powerful efficiencies in several connected, adjacent industries. 

The problem: There’s vast potential for the telecom industry to mess up. Disagree? I invite you to complete Informa’s Vertical Markets Survey to tell me otherwise.  

Messing up will be for the usual venal reasons: Money, and who gets it. Are Connected Vertical opportunities the remit of Enterprise divisions, Wholesale divisions or warrant entirely new teams? And are the most prominent Connected Verticals right for every telecom industry player to target?

Don’t wait too long to decide
There’s still a hard road to travel to build trust with Connected Verticals. But I warrant that it’s a critically important issue that the telecom industry simply can’t afford to get wrong.

Nortel delays optical network and Carrier Ethernet auction

Canadian vendor Nortel has delayed the next stage of its fire sale until later this week, giving potential bidders for its Optical Networking and Carrier Ethernet businesses and extra few days to get bids together.

The auction was previously scheduled to take place last week, but will now take place on Tuesday of this week.

This development suggests that carrier network specialist Ciena, which forged an agreement with Nortel to acquire the exiting firm’s optical networking and carrier Ethernet assets in October, has some competition.

The assets are owned by Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) business and include the firm’s long-haul optical transport portfolio, metro optical Ethernet switching and transport solutions, Ethernet transport, aggregation and switching technology, multiservice SONET/SDH product families, and network management software products.

Is control plane technology ready for IP & Ethernet?

Thursday 10^th September 2009 – 11.00 BST, London

Duration: 30 minutes + Q&A session

Join us to evaluate the business case for enabling automation and intelligence in the network, including expert views on the following questions:

• Who is already using Control Plane automation and for what applications?
• How has Control Plane automation already improved the economics of networking?
• How will Control Plane automation develop in the future – what are the benefits for operators who embrace a convergence of control functions between optical, IP and switching layers?

Hear how Ciena are opening up new options for operators by enhancing their portfolio of control plane based products with Ethernet and OTN fucntionality.

Hear how Ciena are opening up new options for operators with their upcoming portfolio of control plane based products including the CN 4200 and the CoreDirector Family and Ethernet and OTN functionality.

As more and more customers embrace flexible optical networks, we’d also like to hear your views and experiences of network efficiency and cost savings, in our post discussion Q&A session.

To submit your questions please email them to: support@telecoms.com or fill out the comments box at the bottom of this page.

Webinar Poll:

Speakers:

John Paul Hemingway

Dr. John-Paul Hemingway

Chief Technologist EMEA, Office of the CTO

Ciena EMEA

John-Paul Hemingway was appointed as Chief Technologist for Ciena EMEA in October 2006. Working closely with Ciena’s Chief Technology Officer, he is responsible for guiding future product development in Europe as well as ensuring that Ciena’s solutions meet the specific requirements of customers across the EMEA region.

John-Paul first joined Ciena in 2001. He spent five years working within and Managing the Systems Engineering department, focusing largely on designing next generation network solutions for customers across Europe. Prior to joining Ciena, John-Paul worked for BICC/Corning Cables and Netscient in fibre research and network design software roles.

Mr. Rob Dutton

Head of International Infrastructure, Configuration Planning and International Network Planning

Cable&Wireless Worldwide

Chaired by:

Mark Lum

Mark Lum

Independent Consulting Analyst

Mark Lum MA MSc is an independent consultant, focusing on Carrier Ethernet, Optical, Metro, FTTx next-gen broadband and Storage networks and services, with experience spanning Ethernet, SDH/SONET, OTN-WDM, MPLS, ATM and GPON technologies and their associated global standards development.

His international clients include service providers, equipment vendors, start-ups, regulatory agencies and the financial community. Mark studied Natural and Electrical Sciences at Cambridge University and was awarded his MSc in Telecommunication Systems after beginning his career in the Harlow research labs of ITT-STL, developing the very first optical systems.

Mark developed his experience and expertise at Tektronix as Telecoms/TV Market Development Manager, at Nortel Networks as portfolio manager for next-generation optical metro networks and at RHK as program director for European optical network research and analysis.

During his career, Mark has also taken an active role in global standardisation, having led Tektronix’ program at ITU and ETSI, chairing an experts’ committee at ITU-T as Rapporteur and contributing as technical editor for several standards. With many papers published on carrier network strategy and evolution, he is a well-known and frequently-requested speaker and chair at industry conferences, including IIR’s market-leading Carrier Ethernet, Packet Transport and WDM Optical events.

The evolution of Carrier Ethernet

Carrier Ethernet is no longer the new kid on the block. Its many virtues, from flexibility and scalability to lower operational costs and greater simplicity and interoperability, are now well understood and widely attractive to carriers and, more importantly, their customers.

A number of business trends have emerged that are changing the traditional nature of telecom products and services and driving new demand curves. For example, the maturation of virtualisation and cloud-based applications is driving significant changes in user behaviour and network resource utilisation.  Since virtualisation is a demand trend that is shifting IT resources from the Local Area Network (LAN) into an operator or application service provider’s network, it stresses the network to adapt and scale quickly while ensuring quality and performance, particularly for those mission critical applications for which the enterprise user is now trusting someone else to support.  Service providers are left with no choice but to evolve their business model to one that more effectively manages the demand for new services and network traffic distribution as well as bandwidth growth requirements, all of which can be addressed with Carrier Ethernet technology.

The MEF groundwork

While initially attractive due to its cost, Carrier Ethernet’s adoption is now primarily driven by the shift in emphasis to top-line revenue growth through the creation and deployment of new Ethernet services with greater velocity, automation and customisation.

For this to happen effectively, operators should build on the foundations laid out by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) and work with the industry to focus on a comprehensive and sophisticated form of Carrier Ethernet that addresses operational complexity.  If done successfully, operators will have open to them new levels of speed, differentiation, operational scalability and reliability in delivering revenue generating Ethernet business services.

The MEF laid the foundations for Carrier Ethernet by establishing five areas which distinguished it from LAN Ethernet. These are: Standardised Services, Scalability, Reliability, Quality of Service (QoS) and Service Management.  These attributes provide carrier-class capabilities to transform traditional LAN Ethernet into a technology suitable for deployment in service provider Metro and Wide Area Networks (MANs and WANs). Providers can use Carrier Ethernet-based business services to deliver these capabilities while minimising the cost of delivery, compared with other technologies.

The MEF also defined three key service types associated with Carrier Ethernet:  E-Line services to provide a secure, point-to-point connection between two customer locations, E-LAN services to enable an extension of a business LAN to multiple locations and the emerging E-Tree service type supports multicast services, such as business IP television (IPTV).

With the breadth and flexibility of the key Ethernet business service types, service providers have the means to customise a wide range of value-added Ethernet applications and services that can drive top-line growth and profitability.

Building on the standards

The Carrier Ethernet story is today moving on.  New capabilities and features are being deployed that go further than the minimum requirements established by MEF, ushering in the age of what we at Ciena define as True Carrier Ethernet.

In a nutshell, True Carrier Ethernet goes beyond standardised service definitions into technology and operational advancement that improves an operator’s ability to deploy, provision and manage cost effective Ethernet based solutions.  True Carrier Ethernet brings about additional benefits in each of the core five Carrier Ethernet qualifiers set out by the MEF.

For Standardised Services, True Carrier Ethernet enables operators to optimise bandwidth, network paths, and reliability alternatives without sacrificing service quality or selection.  This is enabled by supporting all MEF services across any topology and different tunnel encapsulation formats. True Carrier Ethernet supports 802.1ad Provider Bridging and can deliver and transport MEF services using MPLS/ H-VPLS and PBB-TE technologies, along with SDH-like 50ms restoration capabilities.  By supporting these important technologies, True Carrier Ethernet enables carriers to leverage existing network investments and select, mix, and match the wide-area services that best meet their needs today and in the future.

Network and topology limits are easily overcome through True Carrier Ethernet, addressing the scalability requirements of the MEF standards and building on them and including features such as ‘discovery’ and ‘automated service activation’. Bandwidth can scale to very large capacity, but in very granular steps. It is still in its early days, but virtual switching technology will play a big part in this and will enable flexibility and interoperability with existing and emerging technologies.

True Carrier Ethernet improves reliability for the service. By using a multi-tiered tunnel approach, operators can add, service, and upgrade sites without having to touch all layers of network elements. Only the lowest tier of PBB-TE tunnels must be reconfigured. This capability simplifies the provisioning and ongoing maintenance effort, reducing operations costs while still easing the transition for those trained in SDH management environments.

The fourth MEF standard, QoS, can be built upon further by delivering unprecedented levels of service classification, enabling rich service stratification for broader customer appeal and higher revenues. This can be achieved through service aggregation switches that allow for up to 64 service class levels.  Additionally, QoS can be improved by segmenting bandwidth using hierarchical QoS enforcement at each level: service category, customer, department or user, and application.

Finally, there is service management. True Carrier Ethernet dramatically improves the time to discover network elements and resources, and to provision services and tunnels. This ability enables rapid and accurate provisioning of flexible services. Service provisioning has been simplified through the use of provisioning wizards. For instance, an operator can select two endpoints for a point-to-point service and run the provisioning wizard to set service-specific fields, automatically creating the service and configuring any intermediate elements. Service attributes, such as QoS parameters-committed information rate, excess information rate and burst parameters-can be configured and later changed automatically through the use of service templates defining those parameters.

With True Carrier Ethernet advances delivering a wide range of capabilities and features that enhance the key Ethernet business service attributes, service providers can realise new levels of speed, agility, and performance in the deployment of revenue-generating services.  Ethernet has already proven itself as one of the most successful networking technologies ever in the LAN space and it has now proved that it can mature into a true carrier proposition.

Vinay Rathore is senior marketing director at network specialist Ciena