Don't expect the world from IP
By Cathy Gadecki and Christine Heckart
Network World, 08/10/98
The rapid pace at which issues are polarized and extremist positions are created in this industry is absurd. If telecom technologies were people, the population would be made up of only supermodels and super-ugly ducklings.
IP convergence is the latest telecom issue receiving the traditional black-and-white treatment. There isn't a single major service provider that will be delivering all of its voice, data and video services over an IP network next year. No one is even close to reaching this panacea, although several carriers have admirable visions. Significant hurdles and questions remain, and the potential payback is still being explored.
We certainly don't dispute that IP has become the default protocol for data. The protocol also is well-suited for store-and-forward applications such as voice mail and streaming applications such as broadcast. But can IP cost-effectively support real-time voice applications in a high-quality manner? Some industry watchers already say yes, but many say no.
When voice is integrated with directories and other desktop applications, it probably will run over IP. But when voice is a real-time, stand-alone application, the benefits of using an IP infrastructure are partially dependent on what happens to pricing for traditional voice services. This pricing will affect the decisions of service providers, residential customers and businesses alike.
Legacy data applications may not migrate to IP any faster than traditional voice. Many businesses don't consider a big IP free-for-all acceptable for mission-critical applications. And IP doesn't yet offer granular service levels that can be guaranteed to specific applications, services or users on an end-to-end basis. Service provider and enterprise networks will remain segregated until IP can provide much more granularity in quality of service and bandwidth guarantees end to end. And even after IP gains that capability, you won't see the world change overnight.
Another big question is that of benefit. Everyone is assuming there is a major cost savings associated with convergence, which may be true. But for service providers, network costs only account for 15% to 20% of the total cost of offering a service, so how beneficial would it be to save 70% on the network? Unless service providers' entire organizations can be converged and thus lots of duplication (and jobs) eliminated, the savings from the network alone probably isn't enough.
Service providers that want to move all their networks to IP also face the following technical and business issues:
l How is bandwidth reserved for specific applications, customers or service classes? How will this be tied to pricing and billed?
l Is it really less expensive to migrate all networks and services to a single infrastructure? How long will the transition take, and how will it affect customers? Can a single network scale to meet the new level of traffic volume? How are legacy back-office systems tied into the new architecture?
l What troubleshooting tools exist for isolating and resolving problems? Do operations personnel know how to use these tools?
l How are value-added voice features and services, such as call forwarding, caller ID and time-of-day routing, supported over the IP network?
These issues are just the tip of the iceberg. Even the new facilities-based providers that were formed to build single, integrated networks have started out slowly by building many segregated ones. They, too, face the challenges of integration going forward. And until most of these problems are solved, integrating everything over IP will remain a goal, not a reality.
Businesses don't have to wait for these networks of the future to consolidate their applications over IP. But how quickly will companies really do this? Managers will need to change their ingrained behaviors and biases, realign their organizations, redesign their networks and make new investments. Even if the technical bugs can all be addressed today, there are big hurdles for businesses to overcome related to consolidation. And few businesses have the luxury of excess IT resources to work on the opportunity - most are out fixing problems and firefighting.
At various points in the past 10 years, ISDN, ATM and cable and telephony were supposed to integrate everything and change the world of networking as we know it. Now we want the same thing from IP. The expectations we place on new ideas and technologies are always so enormous that it's amazing any survive the downfall into reality.
IP is not likely to eliminate world hunger, bring everlasting peace or unite the world's religions. And IP isn't likely to join all the nations' segregated networks in the next couple of years, either. The question is, will it make a dent?
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Drill down into IP convergence:
Forum
What's it all mean? Discuss it in our convergence forum.
The big picture
The opportunities and the obstacles.
Economics
How convergence saves you money.
Regulatory
Gov't. may yet turn the tables on IP.
Customers
Pioneers who are putting convergence to work.
Technology
The standards that make it all possible.
Carriers
Who's planning what, plus interviews with Sprint, UUNet execs.
Pundits
Opinions from Network World columnists:
Anderson
Nolle
Links
For even more information!
Gadecki is a director for and Heckart is vice president of TeleChoice, a consultancy in Owasso, Okla. They can be reached at cgadecki@ telechoice.com and checkart@ telechoice.com
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