The Telecommunications Challenge Changing Technologies and Evolving Policies: Report of a Symposium (2006) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 117-146
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From page 117... ...
Panel III -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- - The Waterfall Effects INTRODUCTION Cherry A Murray Lucent Technologies While Dr.
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This transition was being made possible by grid computing, autonomic computing, pervasive computing, and open standards, all of which he planned to address further. The initial 20 years of the Internet, Dr.
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In addition, since the systems involved in grid computing are more tightly coupled and more general-purpose, they can do more.
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Nelson said, because by running "software that ties their systems together they can double or triple the amount of computing power they get out of their existing equipment." IBM tests some of its chips, using what is called the "download grid," whereby employees all around the company back up their laptops and desktops. Although the application may be regarded as mundane, it can be carried out much faster and more economically thanks to the grid.
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IBM had just started some demonstration projects in this area; for one of them, the "Smallpox Grid," about 10,000 IBM employees had downloaded software enabling their computers to do modeling designed to determine whether a particular drug molecule might be used to block replication of the smallpox virus. The project had generated millions of dollars' worth of free computing power for Oxford University, which as a consequence had identified 10 or 12 drugs worthy of further investigation.
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In what he referred to as "this new vision of the future," acquiring the computing power sought will take a "few hours, or even a few minutes -- just as, today, if you need some extra electricity, you can just plug something in." The vision, IBM's response to its customers' demands for less complexity, more reliability, and improved security, will require better networks, he acknowledged. Pulling out another of his "bumper-sticker" phrases, Dr.
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THE WATERFALL EFFECTS 123 hundreds," he predicted, adding: "No matter how you measure it, we're just at the start of this." Increased Activity Assured, New Policies Needed Offering a formula to aid comprehension, Dr. Nelson advised those in attendance to "take everything that's already happened -- all the new applications, all the new content, all the new money that's been made, all the bankruptcies -- and multiply by 12." Realizing the vision of The Grid and the next-generation Internet will require some new technologies and significant investment, he cautioned, as it will entail providing whole neighborhoods with gigabit-per-second networks that are as affordable and reliable as they are ubiquitous.
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From page 124... ...
Mamakos endorsed Dr. Murray's assessment, noting that there had already been quite a bit of uptake of voice over Internet Protocol technology, and said he would be speaking about how the market for this service had developed.
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Such innovations as the World Wide Web and email had been the product of extensive experimentation rather than of "people going off into a room, thinking really, really hard, and coming up with the answer." This had also been the case with voice over IP, which he described as "something familiar cast in a new light." Markets, Services Increase with Broadband Penetration An important enabler had been the growth of broadband. But while broadband is a prerequisite for any such multimedia service, his own company's offering, and voice over IP service in general, are fairly insensitive to the type of technology over which they are run as long as capacity is adequate.
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126 67 2008 59 2007 50 2006 Year 41 2005 33 2004 transformation 25 this 2003 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 millions) (in driving Growth Broadband U.S.
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THE WATERFALL EFFECTS 127 900,000 800,000 700,000 795,000 Lines 600,000 of 500,000 400,000 542,000 Number 300,000 381,000 200,000 252,000 100,000 0 2004 2004 2004 2004 First quarter Second quarter Third quarter Fourth quarter (est.) Quarter FIGURE 38 Growth of U.S.
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128 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE figure out," he explained that, nonetheless, "someone has to write the code, and, more important, once you've actually done interesting features like this, you need to be able to expose them in a way that is easy for a customer to manipulate." It is the Web interface that allows Vonage to augment the richness of the services going to market. Areas of innovation in which Vonage had recently been active included a mobile 911 service akin to that available through a cell phone and E911 capability, which had been the subject of some early trials Rhode Island.
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From page 129... ...
THE WATERFALL EFFECTS 129 capacity. Thanks to the interconnects between the Internet and the PSTN, a voice over IP customer can call ILEC customers who have the same legacy phone service that's existed for the last hundred years as well as other Internet-connected VoIP end users.
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130 547 2004 Third Quarter 413 2004 Second Quarter 302 2004 First Quarter 185 2003 Fourth Quarter 120 2003 Third Quarter 0 600 500 400 300 200 100 millions in Minutes 137 2004 Third Quarter 105 2004 Second Quarter 72 2004 First Quarter 45 2003 Fourth Quarter 30 2003 Third Scalability. Quarter 39 0 80 60 40 20 160 140 120 100 (millions)
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THE WATERFALL EFFECTS 131 · that, as a "disruptive technology," it "has irrevocably changed the telecommunications landscape"; · that "pricing pressure" it has exercised "continues to challenge the voiceservices models [that] incumbents have relied upon for centuries"; and · that it is "challenging the regulatory framework, forcing new thinking with regard to subsidies, E911, and packet prioritization." Offering an example of the Internet's ability to render geography "irrelevant to a large extent," he recounted that he had transferred his home phone service from Verizon to Vonage and taken his Area Code 301 phone number with him when moving not long before from the Washington, D.C., area to New Jersey.
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132 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE Monetization a Key Problem for Content Providers The public's desire to consume music had never been greater, observed Mr. Schuon, pointing to robust sales of portable music devices, some of which allow users to take an entire music collection with them anywhere they go.
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Music: the Entertainment Industry's Guinea Pig Mr. Schuon portrayed the music industry as a guinea pig that had been obliged to "take its hits" while business models, rights issues, technology, and other aspects of the new, digital entertainment market were getting ironed out.
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134 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE Content Licensed to, Originated by Consumers Avenues would have to be found for licensing content to consumers because consumers would pass content around among themselves in any case.
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THE WATERFALL EFFECTS 135 had the power to attract millions upon millions of viewers. Accessed through a link that had been passed around "virally" through email, JibJab might in the future turn into a network seen via an Akimbo box or on a cell phone.
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households had become broadband customers that AOL "decided maybe it wasn't just an early-adopter, propeller-head type of a product and [the company] should start paying a little bit of attention to it." Its response was to import its business model for dial-up service into the broadband business.
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THE WATERFALL EFFECTS 137 side, we were able to acquire network connectivity and to handle the customer care into networks that had a high level of visibility down to the home," Ms. Hook explained.
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138 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE firewall, I've got anti-virus, I've got the spyware protection, but I'm dying here. Can you put it altogether so that I have one click into my system?
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GDP at $1.25 trillion dollars. Half of that came from the "core copyright industries," those he had just mentioned; the rest came from other, "copyright-dependent industries" including the segments of the retail, transportation, and distribution businesses devoted to copyrighted materials.
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140 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE said he looked forward to the growth of broadband's presence in the United States. At the same time, he cautioned, "we know there's going to be a certain amount of pirate product coming through the pipe, and anybody who tells you that there's any realistic strategy to eliminate piracy on the network is fooling themselves or attempting to fool you." The hope, he said, was to achieve a relatively low level of piracy and a very high level of legitimate products; the concern, of course, was that the exact opposite might result.
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This new broadband market was analogous in certain ways to a large, new geographical market: He drew a parallel between it and the Chinese market, which the copyright industries had been trying to reach with physical goods and where they had encountered a significant piracy problem. While remarking that many steps had been taken to combat piracy in China, Mr.
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A petition was then pending before the U.S. Supreme Court asking that the case be reviewed, and legislation had been proposed in the Congress that would address the matter, although it was unlikely to be passed during the current session.
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The copyright industry was unlikely to achieve or even to advance its objectives in any of the above areas, he said, in the absence of cooperation with providers of networking services on the one hand, and, on the other, better communication with policymakers and people such as those attending the symposium who were "seeking to understand what all these developments are leading to." DISCUSSION Philippe Webre of the Congressional Budget Office noted that Cisco's claim to have sold "a couple of million" IP telephones contrasted with Mr. Mamakos's estimate that, at 300,000, Vonage held half the VoIP market.
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New Services: Identifying the Showstoppers Evoking the term "showstoppers," used by the semiconductor industry for potential obstacles to the continuation of progress at the pace described by Moore's Law, Dr. Charles Wessner of the STEP Board asked Dr.
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"It's a feature," he said, "not a bug." Dr. Nelson observed that while many old laws assume that a company is located in one place and that a transaction occurs in one place, The Grid might have data coming from Brazil and computing power from Canada and Germany while the user was somewhere in Belgium.
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From page 146... ...
146 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE the distance between home and work, for instance, more often elicits an answer expressed in time than in space. Examining the reason people respond this way leads to a profound insight: There have always been 24 hours in a day, and in the future there will presumably continue to be 24 hours in a day, and because all basic activities have to fit into 24 hours, people's behavior is relatively stable in the time domain.
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