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42 Wire & Cable ASIA – January/February 2014
Telecomnews
Ericsson’s high-level
vision of making networks
more relevant is being
moved, cautiously, into
demonstration mode
“After nearly a year since he
introduced the term ‘Service Provider
Software-Defined Networking,’ Ericsson
According to the 2013 State of Broadband Report from the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU), last year the nation with the highest
percentage of people using the Internet was Iceland, with a 97 per cent
usage rate. The top 10 countries all had usage rates above 88 per cent and
all but two – New Zealand and Qatar – were in Europe. With its 81 per cent
rate the US ranked 24th worldwide in the percentage of residents who use
the Internet, the ITU said. As noted by Joan Engebretson of Telecompetitor
(22nd September), the ITU “got a lot of attention” with its report for 2012 of
twice as many mobile broadband subscriptions as fixed broadband sub-
scriptions worldwide. A year later, it was projecting more than three times as
many mobile subscriptions as fixed subscriptions globally by the end of 2013.
The new ITU research, presented on 22nd September in New York at a
meeting of its Broadband Commission for Digital Development, identified
five countries with mobile broadband penetration rates above 100 per cent,
indicating that people in substantial numbers have more than one mobile
broadband connection. Singapore, topping the list with a mobile broadband
penetration rate of 123.3 per cent, was followed by Japan, Finland, the
Republic of Korea and Sweden. The US ranked ninth worldwide in mobile
broadband penetration, behind several Asian and European countries and
Australia. Just under three-quarters (74.7 per cent) of American citizens
use mobile broadband, the ITU said. Writing that the report “contains some
interesting data to illustrate the positive economic and societal impact that
broadband can have,” Ms Engebretson cited these highlights of that data:
Ø A 2013 study from the mobile operators’ association GSMA found that
mobile health (patient-oriented health-care apps) could save developed
countries $400 billion in 2017
Ø Small and medium-size enterprises that spend more than 30 per cent of
their budget on web technologies grow their revenue nine times as fast as
SMEs that spend less than 10 per cent, according to 2012 research from
the global management consulting firm McKinsey
Ø According to research conducted by Arthur D Little and Chalmers
University of Technology for Sweden’s Ericsson, a doubling of broadband
speed can increase GDP (gross domestic product) growth by 0.3 per
cent on average in member-countries of the Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development. The OECD includes the world’s most
developed nations
Ø The Little and Chalmers research found an average rise in household
income from an upgrade of 4-8 Mbps in broadband speed of US$120
per month in OECD countries. The research also indicated that, in
OECD countries, the greatest increase in income may be expected in
households that go from being without broadband to having 4 Mbps.
Such households gain $182 per month, the researchers said. The
threshold to higher earnings is a broadband access speed of between 0.5
Mbps and 2 Mbps.
ITU: Broadband speed – key to growth and prosperity
for nations and households – is on the rise worldwide
CTO Ulf Ewaldsson is ready to
provide an update on the Swedish
vendor’s vision of the programmable
wide area network (WAN) and what it
will mean for OSS platforms.”
Contributing editor Michelle
Donegan of Light Reading was
reporting on her interview with Mr
Ewaldsson on the sidelines of the
recent GigaOM Structure Europe
conference in London, in which he
asserted that Ericsson had moved
beyond vision into demonstration:
of service chaining and a variety of
opportunities with customers who
“can be unleashed by being able
to programme the network.” What
remains to be done, he said, is “to
connect into real big clouds with this
kind of technology.”
That blending of carrier and cloud
network functionality is still some
way from being realised, Ericsson’s
chief technical officer acknowledged.
The aim of Service Provider SDN – to
provide opportunities for networks
inside the cloud to be connected to
the WAN while letting the WAN be
controlled from applications in the
cloud – is “something that is totally
impossible today,” according to Mr
Ewaldsson. (“Ericsson CTO Bangs
SDN Drum,” 16th October).
At the heart of Service Provider
SDN is software and a major
transformation of the OSS layer,
which would morph in its role to
include control over the network
in addition to operations and
maintenance. Ericsson envisions the
evolution of the OSS into a control
plane for the entire network.
Mr Ewaldsson urged that this not
be misinterpreted as a centralised
control point. Rather, he told Ms
Donegan, the OSS software will be
distributed across all the elements
in the network – as in radio base
stations, routers, or datacentre
equipment. The network elements
would house software that is part
of the OSS system, he explained,
while there would also be a more
centralised management capability.
“That’s different from a datacentre,
where someone says ‘I’ll sell you an
SDN controller,’ and what happens is
a piece of hardware sits somewhere
in the datacentre,” he said. “That’s not
the vision that we have of how this will
be realised.”
Ø Ericsson is not, of course, the
sole telecom equipment vendor
with this kind of vision for SDN in
carrier networks, notes Caroline
Chappell, a senior analyst at
Heavy Reading. In her new
report “Managing the Virtualised
Network: How SDN & NFV Will
Change OSS,” she puts Ericsson
— along with Alcatel-Lucent,
Cisco Systems, Inc, and Nokia
Solutions and Networks in the BigStockPhoto.com • Photographer: Krishnacreations