Dileep Agrawal, CEO, WorldLink, Nepal

If you have recently been frustrated by buffering while watching an HD video-on-demand stream, then hold that thought. For those in the less developed parts of the world, watching HD video at all, is, quite literally, something of a pipe dream.  In these countries, for those fortunate enough to be able to move past existential concerns such as food and housing, internet connectivity and bandwidth is still a mere fraction of what those in developed countries are used to. It’s a pain point of which Dileep Agrawal, chief executive of Nepalese ISP WorldLink, and a speaker at the Broadband ip&TV Asia conference in May, is only too aware.

WorldLink has been serving Nepal with internet connectivity since 1995 and owns 90 per cent of the infrastructure that it uses to deliver services. This is a network consisting of Ethernet and optical fibre to both consumers and enterprise customers. ADSL however, if off the table, as the incumbent Nepal Telecom has not agreed to unbundle its network for others to use, and as such dominates that market.

Nevertheless, as of February 2012, WorldLink has a total of 22,000 customers and in addition to providing basic internet access offers VoIP, web hosting, network integration and support services which Agrawal sees as being all part and parcel of being a modern data services company. “Nowadays, it’s not just providing simple internet but providing value added,” he says. “Providing just simple internet services is a difficult job in any economy now.”

The major challenge facing WorldLink is dealing with the high prices it has to pay for backbone internet access compared to developed nations and the fact that it is land-locked that ensures that prices remain very high. As a result its customers on average pay for a relatively lowly sounding 384Kbps service. In practice WorldLink delivers a one megabit connection, consisting of 512kbs of international bandwidth and 512Kbps of local bandwidth. Agrawal admits this isn’t fantastic compared to more developed economies. “Penetration is traditionally lower [here] and the speeds are terrible,” he admits frankly.

The customer experience is boosted at least by the fact that Google has installed local caches in the country. It’s not purely for altruistic reasons though as Agrawal is quick to explain. “It’s for YouTube. [Google] wants YouTube to stream better. Its gives a better experience to get more people watching. They want advertising .” Still, he’s not complaining. “It’s nice that they have put servers in our country as our customers don’t complain to us that there’s too much buffering.”

But what about content located in other parts of the world? “Getting higher speeds [for customers] directly impacts us as we need to buy more upstream bandwidth to the internet. That’s the only limitation. And that upstream bandwidth is still not at the price levels that people buy at in Europe, America, or Singapore; any places where bandwidth is available in plenty. In major areas it would be US$5; we pay US$100.”

Worldlink buys most of its international connectivity from Indian operators Airtel and at present there’s a lack of competition to bring prices down. “It varies because there aren’t many operators selling bandwidth to Nepal, so the competition there is less,” Agrawal explains.

“We have connectivity to China but it’s not too reliable, and it’s not operational yet. So we have very few choices of who we can buy from on the Indian side, because there are very few people that have built their network up to the border of our country.”

There’s no immediate technical solution to this situation, but time and political stability will eventually enable a more competitive market to spring up. “It’s down to the political will on our side to negotiate with the government of China. We have not tried, as politically our country has not been that stable in the last few years.”

However, it’s clear that progress is being made. Where Nepal was paying US$300 per meg a few years ago, it’s now at US$110 and Agrawal believes that in five years it will be down to just US$5-S10, which is level at which developed countries would expect to pay now.

He’s keen to see that future pay dividends both for his company and for the prosperity of his country. “We still haven’t been able to experience the transformational benefits that have occurred in more developed economies where internet penetration is higher and the bandwidth higher”. Things are changing though, as those who are able to afford it, and those who live in coverage areas are turned on to the benefits of connectivity.

“I’ve been in the industry for 15 years now and initially it was just mail that people used. We could see people who did international business had a competitive edge and were able to close more deals. With the advent of the internet it’s given them a new edge in terms of being able to advertise and promote themselves globally.  And I’m pretty sure that with more bandwidth people will be able to access internet resources in a much better way. And once you have access that there’s a lot of educational content that you’ll be able to access and society will benefit from that.”

With ADSL blocked off by the incumbent, WorldLink has three methods of connecting up its customers, Ethernet, fibre and fixed wireless and Agrawal explains the technical reasons behind ow it makes the choice of what to roll out.

“The Ethernet service for residential customers is theoretically capable of delivering 100Mbps in the last mile, but the network is not reliable enough to deliver an enterprise grade service.  We pull fibre to the node, and from there, we pull outdoor (shielded) CAT5e cable on utility poles with outdoor switches at every 100 meters.  The switches are cascaded in series and then further branch out to extend the network into streets and lanes. A customer is connected to one of these switches using outdoor CAT5e cable.  The switches are powered using DC voltage passed through the CAT5e cable.  [However], we experience periodic cable cuts or switch and power failures, resulting in service outage.

“For enterprise customers, we pull optical fibre cable from the node to their premises.  This is more reliable as it is not dependent on any intermediate switches or power failure.  Fibre media is more reliable as well.”

WorldLink is inevitably keen to explore any means it can to reach its potential customers,  and as such, has two fixed wireless technologies in its portfolio. The Motorola Canopy for its Enterprise customers, and a lower cost device from Ubiquity Networks for home users. Neither are based on WiMAX or LTE. “Both are proprietary,” Agrawal says. “We would love to roll out WiMAX but the spectrum for that is not available.”

With the proximity to India spectrum this is a situation that’s not likely to change anytime soon due to the recent political scandals round telecoms licenses. “The stumbling blocks are surrounding India today is that people are scared of spectrum. It’s a dirty work after what happened in India. Politicians are very scared of taking any decisions on spectrum issues for fear that it might backfire on them in the future.”

This leaves WorldLink to focus on rolling out its existing technologies to other areas outside the main areas of Katmandu. “We are moving our focus to underserved , semi-rural markets where we can get some customers who are happy with the fixed wireless that we provide. Katmandu is 60 per cent of the market and rather than just focus on it we’re trying to shift outside.”

With so many challenges, Agrawal is keen to come to attend the Broadband Asia conference to meet and talk with others to explore ways to innovate out of the constrictions it faces to improve its service and grow its customer base. “I’m looking forward to understanding what the feelings around Asia for broadband growth. What works; what doesn’t work? What business models are coming in? TD-LTE is coming into the picture and we’d like to try and meet different ISPs and operators that we can collaborate with.”

Armed with first-hand knowledge of how things are going in other areas of the world, Agrawal is confident that he’ll be able to improve things for WorldLink and its customers. “It’s a very exciting time but when things don’t happen fast enough it can get frustrating.”

The Broadband Asia conference is taking place on the 15th-16th May 2012, KL Convention Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Go to the website now to register your interest.

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