Keynote session
(France Telecom, Director, Network Strategy and
Architecture)
FT/Networks and Carriers Division ITU-T WORKSHOP on NGN (Geneva 9-10 July 2003)
- D1 -


A very competitive environment
 Keeping network costs as low as possible
 Faster return on investment is needed
 A strong pressure to tariff decrease

PSTN traffic slowly growing
 Shared now between several competitors

A steady data traffic demand growth resulting from Internet traffic demand
 Started with dial up access
 Increased with broadband access offers
FT/Networks and Carriers Division ITU-T WORKSHOP on NGN (Geneva 9-10 July 2003)
- D2 -


A large ADSL deployment :

End 2002 :

2000 mdf (out of 12 000) equipped with DSL serving 21 millions lines
 1.4 million users connected

A rapid growth: more than 2 millions users end June 2003

Packet backbones deployment

Expansion of ATM network to collect traffic from DSLAMs

More than 400 ATM cross connects (starting from 80 in 1998)

An IP backbone deployed serving around 60 PoP in 30 towns

With ADSL a new type of mass market access network is being built

To meet an actual and ready to pay demand: the second time in telecom history after telephone service
FT/Networks and Carriers Division ITU-T WORKSHOP on NGN (Geneva 9-10 July 2003)
- D3 -


Stable telephone network

Reduced number of core switches from ≈ 900 to less than 600 end 2002

Decrease of the number of transit exchanges
 To face evolution of interconnection traffic scheme
 And reduce network costs (energy, m², taxes…)

A limited number of new facilities to be implemented (in general IN based)
 Reduction of software releases to be deployed

A good quality of service

No short term obsolescence of switching equipments

But a part of local exchanges are now roughly 20 years old
–
Renewal imagined starting in the second part of the decade

Which technology for the future telephone service?

TDM network renewal strategy
FT/Networks and Carriers Division ITU-T WORKSHOP on NGN (Geneva 9-10 July 2003)
- D4 -


Through its increasing bandwidth, xDSL gives the potential of new services

New multimedia services integrating voice, data & video could be provided,

These services are now appearing on the Internet (videophony & videoconference, streaming of video clips, Web TV, …), but with uncontrolled QoS
 xDSL opens the door to residential and SME voice services migration to packet networks
 xDSL deployment shapes the future access network architecture

ADSL, ADSL2+, SDSL, VDSL interfaces provided by the same DSLAM

End user fiber connection to DSLAM with ATM traffic concentration

Integration of video functions
 Digital TV program broadcasting and channel zapping

In some DSLAM implementations POTS connection are or will be provided
 DSLAMs as the future “universal” customer connecting unit?
FT/Networks and Carriers Division ITU-T WORKSHOP on NGN (Geneva 9-10 July 2003)
- D5 -


What provides NGN concept ?

A unified packet transport layer for all types of services

A session based control architecture
 For person to person voice or video services over a packet infrastructure

FT expectations from NGN

Be the support of new multimedia services combining voice data and video

To generate new revenue streams

In addition be the future infrastructure of telephony services
 Shared with multimedia services

To face the need for renewing PSTN infrastructure (when obsolete)
 While securing voice revenue stream

Be able to combine Internet services and more traditional communication services

Interest for NGN focussed on access systems
FT/Networks and Carriers Division ITU-T WORKSHOP on NGN (Geneva 9-10 July 2003)
- D6 -


Need for interoperability between equipment providers

Commonly agreed functional and organic architectures needed

A set of standardized interfaces and protocols to be agreed upon

Ability to serve several kinds of access network

Fixed copper, fiber, wireless..

Mobile

An open services architecture

Standard interfaces open to third party service providers

Allowing for Interaction between Internet access services and other multimedia services
 Probably more a question of role of actors than a technical issue

An architecture based on UMTS (Release 5/6) architecture principles

Including some mobility features at the fixed access: user nomadism

Providing minimum service continuity between fixed and mobile access through
VHE
FT/Networks and Carriers Division ITU-T WORKSHOP on NGN (Geneva 9-10 July 2003)
- D7 -


Need for QoS differentiation

Services like voice, video, need QoS control mechanisms

Especially at the access level
 Limited bitrate access shared between several services
– upstream ADSL channel for example
 Need for bandwidth allocation mechanisms

A set of management functions shared between different services

Self-provisioning, usage metering for billing, QoS monitoring, statistics..

A common technology for transport layer

IP and MPLS seem the good candidate for such a layer
 Large world industrial support and good evolution speed
 ATM for bandwidth sharing on copper to provide QoS to voice and video services

Significant efforts of standardisation/ selection of relevant standards work still to be done
FT/Networks and Carriers Division ITU-T WORKSHOP on NGN (Geneva 9-10 July 2003)
- D8 -

Service X Service Y
OSA/WebServices
?
Open interfaces
Management
H323/SIP ?
Separated control
FMC ?
NB Wireless
MGCP/H248 ?
QoS mechanism
?
Usage measurement
?
ENUM
?
BB Wireless
Unified transport :
BB Wireline
IP/ATM/MPLS ?
Bandwidth sharing
?
FT/Networks and Carriers Division ITU-T WORKSHOP on NGN (Geneva 9-10 July 2003)
- D9 -


There is an opportunity window for NGN architecture implementation

Obsolescence of TDM systems started to be deployed in the early 80s

Two key questions:

True multimedia capability of this architecture

QoS benefits provided by NGN compared with ISP-like architecture

Some challenges:

Keep an integrated architecture open enough
 To make it capable to quickly and easily evolve

Achieve the necessary industry consensus

To meet the interoperability requirements
FT/Networks and Carriers Division ITU-T WORKSHOP on NGN (Geneva 9-10 July 2003)
- D10 -