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> Broadband Gear Report's VoIP Alert for February 14, 2006

Up Front

Tear Down the Wireless Wall: IMS-sentials for the Quad-Play

Just when you thought that the triple-play was "the bundle," everyone's talking about making the quad-play happen — and soon. Just offering video, voice and data over your HFC net isn't going to cut it when dealing with your competition. You've got to add wireless.

That's why talk of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) has popped up so much lately. It's being touted as the answer for ripping down the walls between wireline and wireless by offering a single enhanced services architecture to deliver any service to your subs customer no matter how they connect — when roaming or from their home networks. The IMS architecture uses a VoIP implementation based on a 3rd Generation Mobile System (3GPP) implementation of SIP, and runs over standard IP. It supports both circuit- and packet-switched systems.

Hitching IMS with PacketCable

The developing CableLabs PacketCable standard is at the center of cable's moves toward the quad-play. However, combining PacketCable with IMS isn't a cinch. "If cable companies can't overcome potential IMS hurdles, which include meshing the standard with PacketCable specs to take full advantage of the multimedia capabilities offered by SIP, they may find themselves behind the IMS power curve over the next two to three years," research firm IDC warned recently.

CableLabs is on the verge of releasing a draft version of the PacketCable 2.0 spec — probably later this year. Its moves to implement IMS will be closely scrutinized. "Over the long term, if PacketCable successfully adopts IMS, this will open up the market to a broader range of softswitch and call session control function (CSCF) providers," Tom Valovic, program director of IDC's VoIP Infrastructure service, says.

IDC's research shows that U.S. ops are leading the charge in terms of softswitch deployment. It also believes that the early movers in the specialized PacketCable-compliant market — Nortel, Siemens and Cisco — will likely maintain traction and market share.

Stand and Deliver

Nortel, in collaboration with IBM, just made an announcement that indicates it's looking to be proactive and ahead of IMS demand. The two companies just announced they are working together in one of the first IMS enablement and innovation centers to bring to market a customer-focused approach to testing, development and delivery of IMS services. The new IMS demo center is located within IBM's Telecommunications Solutions Lab in Montpellier, France.

"The work we are doing together in the lab, demonstrating a truly integrated IMS solution, is an important step towards removing cost and complexity barriers for service providers," Sandy Aitken, IMS Solutions, IBM Communications Sector, says.

The facility features a live IMS lifecycle solution comprised of Nortel's commercially available IMS core products and applications and IBM's standards-based service creation and delivery platforms.

Initial applications to be supported in the Montpellier center include call tones that allow callers to initiate a multimedia session with a customized greeting; mobile multiplayer gaming to enable online play of a variety of multiplayer games accessible from PCs and mobile devices; immediate conferencing that gives users ability to instantly launch a conference call to a group of people across a variety of devices and push to content that allow users to trade files, media or website with the click of a button.

Nortel plans to expand its Customer Technology Innovation Center in Richardson, TX, this year with IBM's service creation capabilities to create a similar IMS enablement and innovation center.

In the Know

How Upfront Work Ensures VoIP Success

Cedar Point Communications offers voice and multimedia switches that it says "provide cable system operators with cost-efficient, less complex VoIP alternatives to distributed soft-switching cable telephony options." The company's SAFARI C³ multimedia switching system is PacketCable qualified and supports legacy circuit and PacketCable voice services, as well as video telephony and nontraditional SIP-based devices.

Broadband Gear Report's VoIP Alert recently spoke with Cedar Point's Dave Spear, EVP, Strategy and Market Development.

BGR: About how many cable media switching systems does Cedar Point have installed, and with which MSOs?

Spear: Through the end of 2005, Cedar Point had shipped systems representing more than 900,000 lines. (Cedar Point does not break out systems shipped.) Announced customers in the United States include:

• Atlantic Broadband
• Bresnan Communications
• Buckeye Cable Systems
• Charter Communications
• Comcast
• Insight Communications

Announced Caribbean and Latin American customers include:

• Amnet (El Salvador and Honduras)
• Cablemas (Mexico)
• Cable Pacifico (Colombia)
• Caribbean Cable (Anguilla)
• Costavision (Colombia)
• Grupo TVCable (Ecuador)
• Liberty Media (Puerto Rico)
• Omnivision (Argentina)
• Promision (Colombia)
• TVCable (Colombia)

BGR: What are some of the specific technical lessons learned by Cedar Point and its MSO partners so far when it comes to packet-based voice switching in the HFC space?

Spear: In general, our success with our customers both here and abroad have reinforced our belief in the simplicity of our concept: That integrating all of the elements of the Class 5 switching architecture creates a less complex, less costly infrastructure that speeds the delivery of voice services to subscribers.

One of the specific lessons has been that individual HFC plants sometimes require certain levels of upfront work to ensure that they can support voice services. We've found that through detailed site surveys, planning and testing by our technical team, in conjunction with our customers engineering and operations groups, have significantly improved deployments. This has limited the number of problems that we otherwise would have had to deal with.

BGR: Tell us about 'SIP triggers' and their importance in today's telephony environment.

Spear: "SIP triggers" support the next extension of SIP-based services by giving cable system operators the ability to integrate multi-vendor feature servers seamlessly. By supporting them, we give our customers the ability to deliver an increased number of options, some native to SAFARI and some hosted on third-party feature servers.

BGR: Where do you think the industry is in terms of applying all the promises of PCMM? What do you think we'll see in the PCMM arena in the next year? What about five years from now?

Spear: The adoption of PacketCable Multimedia has been slow to date. Part of the reason for this is in the rush to meet the tremendous demand for VoIP services operators have been reluctant to add another layer of complexity to the network. Currently, they are solving the problem by over provisioning bandwidth. This is not the most efficient way to solve the problem long term.

Making existing bandwidth more efficient by using techniques like PCMM is a more cost-effective way to go. Over time — probably a two- or three- year process — operators will increasingly stress the creation of QoS in the bandwidth they have so that they can deliver more bandwidth-intensive applications.

Gear Watch

What's New and Who's Buying What

• Amnet Telecommunications will deploy Cedar Point's SAFARI C³ multimedia switching system in its networks serving El Salvador and Honduras. Amnet's systems will utilize the integrated system to deliver residential and business telephone services.
• Charter Communications and Level 3 extended their relationship with a multiyear agreement under which Level 3 will support Charter's expansion of consumer and small business telephone services. Level 3's (3)VoIP Enhanced Local service will enable Charter to reduce the time-to-market associated with its deployment of VoIP-based services.
• Atlantic Broadband has partnered with Net2Phone for VoIP. Net2Phone assumes the role of PacketCable integrator and telecom administration agent, taking accountability for the telephony deployment together with the Cedar Point SAFARI C3 multimedia switching system and the provisioning and management of the PSTN elements including local, domestic and international long distance, operator services and directory assistance.
• Nortel and Microsoft announced the general availability and customer deployments of the Converged Office solution, which essentially ties Nortel's VoIP technology into Microsoft's Office software. In a sign of the desktop and networking worlds coming closer together, users will be able to place voice calls from their Microsoft Outlook, and have access to click to call, remote communications and email notifications of missed calls.
• Sigma Systems announced the availability of the Sigma Voice Client Services Centre (CSC), which provides VoIP users with an easy online alternative to speaking on the phone with contact centre representatives. Targeted at VoIP service providers offering NCS- or SIP-based telephony services, Voice CSC serves as a self-service Web portal. With its API, Voice CSC can also be configured to integrate with a service provider's web portal environment.
• In the "beyond voice" IP space, TANDBERG Television said will acquire SkyStream Networks, an Internet protocol TV (IPTV) infrastructure solutions company. SkyStream's high density Mediaplex-20 and iPlex switched digital video headends for MPEG-2/MPEG-4 AVC encoding and transcoding are used by IPTV operators in Asia, Europe and the US.

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