What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs?
Some Food for Thought!
Robert Shaw
Deputy Head, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit
Workshop: What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs?
23-24 March 2006
The views expressed in this presentation are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the ITU or its Membership.
Agenda
• Drivers for this workshop
• Some “Food for Thought”!
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Drivers for this Workshop
• On NGN technical standardization,
ITU fully engaged
• However, clear that convergence
generally and IP-enabled NGNs
means wave of major challenges for national policy
makers and regulators
• We want to build an international dialogue on these
issues including:
– building understanding of impact of convergence & NGNs
– sharing of national experiences and approaches
– assistance in capacity building with developing economies
in transitioning to this new paradigm
– understanding how policy & regulatory requirements
impact ITU’s NGN Global Standards Initiative (NGN-GSI)
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Some Food for Thought!
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The Impact of New
Communications Technologies
• Technology-driven industries like
telecommunications historically
characterized by steady growth
punctuated by “giant leaps” forward,
usually when “new” technology is
introduced
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This has happened a number
of times
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1840’s: telegraph
1865: ITU Created
1870’s: telephone
1890’s: radio telegraphy or “wireless”
1920’s: radio broadcasting
1950’s: television broadcasting
1960’s: geostationary satellite communications
1970’s: computer communications
1980’s: optical communications
1990’s: internet and mobile
2000’s: IP-enabled NGNs or Next Generation
Internet?
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Current big picture trends
• Birth of Broadband
• Growth in wireless networks and mobile data
services
• Mobile overtakes fixed
• Convergence of IP-based networks with
telephone & mobile networks
• End game: towards ubiquitous,
pervasive, grid, mesh, wireless
networks
– anywhere, anytime, anything
– positive side of “Minority Report’
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Predicting the future from the past…
• When we look back over history at
any advancement in electronic
communication networks, we tend
to forget about the highs and the
lows, the boom-bust cycles and
the failed predictions about likely
usage
• Is the internet killing the phone
business?
• Or is the internet killing itself?
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History of the Internet
1990’s
• Growth throughout OECD countries
• Begun “privatisation” of backbone
• Primarily a channel for the Web and email
• Wide disparity in connectivity
• “Dot.com” mania rules
• Some thought internet was suitable platform to
subsume all existing networks & services
• Cocktail of over-investment, hyper-competition and
technological change lead to telecoms & internet
recession
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Today (2006)
• Internet demographics shifting rapidly to
Asia-Pacific (largest share of Internet &
mobile users)
• Continued rapid innovation:
– XML, Ajax, RSS, Torrents, Podcasts,
Web 2.0
– Voice is just another application
– but a number of clouds on internet
horizon
• if not “Perfect Storm”
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Top Problems of the Internet
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authentication
security
spam
scalable configuration management
robust scalability of routing system
compromise of e2e principle
why so persistently unsolvable?
dumb network
measurement
rooted in non-technical issues:
patch management
economics, ownership, and trust
“normal accidents”
growth trends in traffic and user expectations
time management and prioritization of tasks
governance
intellectual property and digital rights
interdomain qos/emergency services
inter-provider vendor/business coordination
Source: K.C. Claffy at http://www.caida.org/publications/presentations/2005/topproblemsnet/topproblemsnet.pdf
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Perfect Storm?
• “It's time for a clean-slate approach”
– MIT's David D. Clark
• “If fails to fail often enough so it looks like it works.”
– Mike O’Dell
• “The Internet is Broken”, David Talbot, Technology
Review, Dec 2005/Jan 2006 in three parts: Part 1, Part
2, Part 3
• E2E architecture means intelligence at edges of the
network
– so security is every user’s problem
– Internet evangelists: “the internet empowers users to do
anything you want!”
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“O.K. I chose not to get spam”
• Is this supposed to be the critical information
infrastructure of tomorrow?
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Are we approaching
inflection point?
• Deployment of new communications
technologies is typically a series of relatively
short cycles of one or two decades’ duration:
– beginning with invention
– early stages of rapid innovation and application
– typically over-hyped and not used for original
purpose intended
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took 30 years for telephone killer app to emerge!
– finally deployed in method that scales to support
broader market acceptance and
commoditization
– it may not end up being platform for techies or
innovation
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Source: “The Transformation of Communications, Commerce & Society”, Stratton Sclavos, Verisign,
Progress and Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit — August 2004
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So how do IP-enabled NGNs
fit into this?
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ITU-T Definition of NGN (Y.2001)
• Next Generation Network (NGN): a packet-based
network able to provide telecommunication services
and able to make use of multiple broadband, QoSenabled transport technologies and in which servicerelated functions are independent from underlying
transport-related technologies.
• It enables unfettered access for users to networks
and to competing service providers and/or services
of their choice.
• It supports generalized mobility which will allow
consistent and ubiquitous provision of services to
users.
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Some different NGN visions
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PSTN on steroids? Internet on steroids?
To fix the internet mess?
Revenge of the telcos? Walled gardens?
The mobile operators got it right…
Attempt to move “up the value chain” into
data and audiovisual content
– chasing video franchises
• A public infrastructure instantiation of the
internet?
– replacement, evolution, co-existence?
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NGN Intelligent Infrastructures
• NGN core and access network infrastructures
will be supplemented with an “intelligent
infrastructure” or a “business layer” for IP
networks capable of providing QoS, reliability
and security assurances for multiple service
scenarios across carriers
• With security problems, imagine this will
necessarily emerge “out-of-band”
• Basis for identity, authentication, DRM,
access to resources
• And intercarrier/service compensation
mechanisms…
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NGN Public Infrastructure Requirements: what are
some of capability requirements likely to be
required?
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Availability, Security and Legal
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Filters (DoNotCAll)
Aids (CallerID)
Law enforcement/judicial/national
security assistance
Cybercrime mitigation
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analysis of network metrics and
outages
Network attack mitigation
Priority access during emergencies
Alerts and notices during
emergencies
Restoration after emergencies
Personal emergency services
Preventing unwanted intrusions
Forensics capability
Fraud detection and management
Digital rights management
Universal access
Competition Requirements
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High availability
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Unbundling
Service interoperability
User/subscriber access by service
providers
Default service and routing options
Nomadicity
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Operations Requirements
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Number portability
Roaming
Payment method flexibility
Directory access among providers
Intercarrier compensation
Transaction accounting
Other Consumer Requirements
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Disability assistance
Universal Service
Customer Proprietary Network
Information (CPNI) protection
See Tony Rutkowski’s presentation “Update on NGN Regulatory Issues” submitted to the workshop
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Other visions of next generation
service providers?
• Mega-internet service providers?
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Google, MSN, eBay and Yahoo
strong brands, deep pockets
entering voice markets
making forays into competitive
infrastructure provisioning
– has market already spoken?
– but who pays for the underlying transport
infrastructure?
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Source: Geoff Huston, Convergence at http://www.ptc06.org/program/public/proceedings/Geoff Huston_slides_M21.pdf
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And they also appear to be moving
moving intelligence back into the center of
the network…
• Applications moving from PC to network core
of network
– do you use Windows or Linux? Think!
– Google office suite, e.g., Writely
– Microsoft Office Live
• Is this the commoditization of the net?
– Don’t have to worry about those backups!
– Advertising driven (like TV & Radio)
– Déjà vu all over again?
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http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.05/dejavu.html
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Interconnection
• Technologies and architecture of IP-enabled
NGNs are fundamentally different from the
PSTN
• This means new network topologies,
associated costs and commercial models
• It is also likely to lead to the development of
new IP-based interconnection arrangements
that are service-based, rather than capacitybased, particularly for latency-sensitive
(isochronous) traffic.
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Many issues…
• What will be the impact on current
interconnection arrangements?
• What does interconnection mean in a multiservice NGN environment?
• Is there a need for mandated wholesale
interconnection regimes?
• See Scott Marcus’ excellent extensive
background paper reviewing PSTN & Internet
interconnection to be presented here…
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a fundamental question
• In a multi-service communications
environment, does it make sense to
distinguish voice (including VoIP) as a
service needing to be treated with a
distinct set of policy, legislative and
regulatory provisions?
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Forebearance please…
• Incumbent carriers state that commercial
models for IP-enabled NGNs are at an early
and evolutionary phase and that it is too early
to discuss open access or wholesale
mandated interconnection regimes.
• Also argued that IP-enabled NGNs,
particularly the deployment of high-speed
access networks (e.g. VTTx, VDSL), require
massive investments and that “national
regulatory moratoria” for incumbents are
appropriate
• Capital markets seem to agree…
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Others say not so fast…
• Competitive providers argue the opposite,
saying that regulators need to ask whether, in
the absence of wholesale economic
regulation, will market dynamics be sufficient
to ensure a competitive environment?
• They are worried that without immediate
attention by regulators to NGNs, carriers will
rapidly vertically integrate services and that
bottlenecks will emerge for delivery of
audiovisual content…
• Is it just the traditional carriers that we need
to be worried about?
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Double standards?
• “Let's see if I can summarize [network
neutrality debates].
– BAD: Verizon and SBC want to charge
for "premium" access to their network.
– GOOD: Yahoo and AOL want to charge
for "premium" access to their
network/servers
What am I missing here?”
• Rick Adams, founder of UUNet, first US ISP
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Further down the road:
Content without Frontiers
• Convergence is setting two very different regulatory
cultures on a rapid collision course: the highlyinterventionist regulatory culture of broadcasting and
less interventionist (at least with regard to content)
culture of telecommunications
• Particularly sensitive topic as the regulation of
audiovisual content industries is culturally embedded
and tied to national regulatory regimes consistent
with cultural and religious values
– What about advertising, public broadcasting, content
diversity (e.g., support for national content production),
licensing, quality, decency and protection from abusive
uses and community standards?
– What are the implications for trade in cross-border audiovisual services?
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To sum up, it looks like we have
much to talk about!
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Thank you
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Helping the world communicate
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