Next Generation Networks now

Heard that Next Generation or 21st Century Networks are on the way?

 

There was a time when the vast majority of organisations wanted nothing more from their telecoms supplier than a reliable phone service. Today, expectations are much, much higher. In the post-internet age we expect to talk to colleagues via video-conferencing, transfer data between remote offices in an instant and transact with our customers via the net. Even for the humble telephone call, expectations are changing, as a growing number of businesses turn to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solutions as a means to control costs and increase flexibility.

 

The upshot is that, over the past few years, the volumes of data being transferred across public and private networks has risen to levels that would have been unimaginable 10 or 15 years ago. The response to this from service providers has been to move towards Next Generation Networks (NGNs). Though the title smacks of science fiction, it’s a simple enough concept. Rather than routing different classes of data and service – voice, video and transactional information for example – onto a range of dedicated networks, next generation technology allows everything to be converged onto a single infrastructure. So the network that carries voice calls will also carry, say, CCTV pictures and financial data.

 

Where's the beef?

What will all this mean for business customers? After all, telecoms companies have managed perfectly well in the past with multiple networks. So if you’re talking on the telephone while simultaneously accessing a database in New York from a desktop PC in Aberdeen, does it really matter that the call is being carried on one system and the data on another? Should consumers be as excited about the prospect of NGN technology as the engineers and strategists?

 

The short answer is that NGNs can deliver tangible benefits for all of us. One of these can be cost savings, as multiple networks are rationalised into single channels, generating savings in management and maintenance. At least some of those savings should be passed through to the customer from the network providers. Industry regulator Ofcom is taking an active interest in ensuring that this is the case as BT, for example, progresses its NGN project. NGNs can also have a real benefit in terms of reducing downtime. The benefit of the packet switched environment is that each packet can find its way through the network in the most efficient way, avoiding areas in which there is high traffic or which have experienced a fault and are in need of repair. Referred to as ‘self-healing’, this architecture allows for the network to recognise a problem and route around it automatically, meaning fewer, or potentially zero, service outages.

 

Crucially, in an NGN the transport layer (the connectivity component of the network) and the applications and services that run on it are separated. The practical effect of this is that new services and applications can be laid on top of the network easily and quickly. To put it in the simplest terms, the network is a track on which many trains can run. Changing the colour, length or speed of a particular train doesn’t require any physical change to the track it runs on. According to George Wareing, ntl:Telewest Business Head of Strategy and Marketing Communications, networks based on packet-switched architecture enable much greater flexibility. ‘NGNs make it possible to give customers greater control of their solutions,’ he says. ‘They’ll be able to scale the bandwidth of the services they use, monitor and control performance and enable applications remotely and seamlessly.’ This opens the door, for instance, to the ability to instantly increase or reduce bandwidth to locations as they need it, perhaps as employees are added to a site or relocated to meet growth or decline in business activity. It could let you enable streaming video or other converged benefits for your workforce at the touch of a button, or to control any number of IP CCTV cameras from one location.

 

Sound familiar?

In the UK, the most publicised NGN project is BT’s 21CN. This will replace more than a dozen old systems with a single high-bandwidth, multi-purpose architecture based on packet switching and fibre. BT expects to complete the project some time in 2012 and has put a significant amount of effort into it – including a major marketing push to consumer and business customers. ntl:Telewest Business is one of the many UK providers working with BT to ensure the smooth implementation of 21CN.

However, 21CN, once it is up and running, will be only one of many options in the marketplace through which businesses can capitalise on packet-switched technology to provide innovative services and products. In fact, as you are reading this article you may already have begun to get a sense of déjà vu.

While BT's project - and the full realisation of its benefits to business customers - is years away from completion, ntl:Telewest Business has invested over £13bn building what is the UK's largest Next Generation Network and is already providing an illustration of how converged solutions can provide enhanced services to customers while keeping the costs affordable. ntl:Telewest Business hasn't chosen to take the 'Big Bang' approach as BT has, moving in one huge step to a single network, with the potential for disruption that this entails. Instead, it has chosen to employ a separate voice network alongside its next generation infrastructure. However, it does now offer a unified platform designed and built to carry every class of data.

 

‘We believe that our customers are more interested in next generation services than the set-up of the networks themselves,’ says George, ‘and many of our customers are benefiting from those next generation services today.’

The ntl:Telewest Business offering has been designed with business users firmly in mind and is already enabling innovative converged solutions such as Internet Protocol (IP) CCTV, IP Virtual Private Networks (IPVPNs) and IP Multimedia. A key part of these innovations is Ethernet, the technology that underpins local area networks (LANs) all over the world. The evolution of the Ethernet technology has allowed ntl:Telewest Business to build an Ethernet network on a national scale. This Ethernet capability is primarily intended to allow businesses to extend the network functionality they enjoy on internal LANs to remote sites. There are a number of Ethernet-based products on offer from ntl:Telewest Business, all operating on the same network architecture. Metro Ethernet VPN enables connections between two or more offices located in the same city. On a larger scale, National Ethernet is aimed primarily at larger organisations with operations that require a presence in more than one city. In the past, these businesses would have had to use Leased Lines to get this kind of high-bandwidth connectivity, which would have come at a high price. Now, because ntl:Telewest Business can connect them using its own Ethernet network, high-bandwidth networking is within the reach of many more businesses.

 

Premium product

At the top-end of the Ethernet spectrum, a premium Wavelength product offers higher bandwidths of up to 10GB. This solution is particularly appropriate for organisations that deal with enormous volumes of real-time data, such as financial services organisations. The product allows organisations a networking facility that can be configured to the customer’s requirements. For instance, if certain members of staff move from office to office, not only can they plug in their laptops anywhere and log on, but their phone numbers can follow them around. If there is a requirement for audio/visual applications such as video streaming, bandwidth can be allocated accordingly.

So, while the route taken to providing next generation services by providers may not be exactly the same, the end product they are hoping to offer is more efficient, more cost-effective networks, offering organisations and consumers an increasingly wide and flexible range of services. For customers of ntl:Telewest Business, the wait is over.

 

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