Managing Telecommunications

Managing Telecommunications Lecture 15

Digital Convergence Has Become a Reality • Digital convergence is the intertwining of various forms of media – voice • data • video • Convergence is now occurring because IP has become the network protocol of choice

Digital Convergence Has Become a Reality.. • When all forms of media can be digitized, put into packets and sent over an IP network, they can be managed and manipulated digitally and integrated in highly imaginative ways • IP telephony and video telephony have been the ‘last frontiers’ of convergence – and now they are a reality

Digital Convergence Has Become a RealityIP Telephony • The use of Internet to transmit voice to replace their telephone system • Few companies have given up their telephone networks for a VoIP network, but as the cost differential continues, more will switch • Became ‘hot’ in 2004. Previously the voice quality wasn’t there • Can be managed electronically from e.g. one’s PC = possibility of ad hoc conferencing

Digital Convergence Has Become a RealityIP Telephony... • Rather than analog, the IP phone generates a digital signal • Routed over the LAN like any other data in packets either: • To another IP phone on the LAN • Through the company’s WAN to a distant IP phone on another of the company’s LANs, or • Through an IP voice gateway to the PSTN to a standard telephone

TORONTO PEARSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORTCase study: Digital convergence via IP • Canada’s busiest airport • Network is common use because its infrastructure is shared by all the airport tenants • Each tenant has a private LAN for its own voice, data and video applications • VPN = private and secure • Yet = can be (authorised) accessed from anywhere – wired or wireless

TORONTO PEARSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORTCase study: Digital convergence via IP.. • Each gate can be used by any airline • Baggage tracking integrated with passenger reconciliation • Numerous benefits: • Reduced network operations costs • Consolidated network support • Increased terminal operational efficiency • Increased capacity

Digital Convergence Has Become a RealityThe Battle Begins • Setting up a collision among three massive industries • $1.1 trillion computer industry • Led by the U.S. • $225 billion consumer electronics industry • Asian roots and new aggressive Chinese companies • $2.2 trillion telecommunications industry • Leading wireless players in Europe and Asia • Data networking leaders in Silicon Valley

Digital Convergence Has Become a RealityThe Battle Begins • The Internet and its protocols are taking over!!!! • To understand the complexity of telecommunications, we now look at the underlying framework for the Internet: the OSI Reference Model

OSI Reference Model • The worldwide telephone system has been so effective in connecting people because it has been based on common standards worldwide • Today’s packet-switching networks are also following some standards in most cases

OSI Reference Model • The underpinning of these standards is the OSI Reference Model. • We now live in an “open systems” world, and the most important architecture in the Telecom world is the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model

OSI Reference Model cont. • Analogy of mailing a letter: - see Figure 6-2 • Control information (address and type of delivery) on the envelope - determines the services provided by the next lower layer and addressing information for next lower layer • When a layer receives a “message” from the next higher layer, it performs the requested services and “wraps” the message in its own layer of control information • It passes the “bundle” to the layer directly below it. On the receiving end, a layer receiving a bundle from a lower layer unwraps the outermost layer of control information, interprets the information, and acts on it

OSI Reference Model: The Seven Layers • 7 - Application Layer: contains the protocols embedded in the applications used, e.g., HTTP (hyper-text transfer protocol), which anyone who has surfed the Web has used to locate a Web site • The rest = read the text but many people are of the opinion: “who cares”? – provided it works • But just in case it doesn’t, the ‘techies’ need to know!!! • Major area of outsourcing and use of external consultants

The Rate of Change is Accelerating • Although no one seems to know for sure, many people speculate that data traffic surpassed voice traffic either in 1999 or 2000 • In 1995, exactly 32 doublings of computer power had occurred since the invention of the digital computer after World War II • Chess example

The Rate of Change is Accelerating • E-mail outnumbered postal mail for the first time in 1995 • Unfortunately now = many are Spam (junk) • Looking for a solution!!

The Rate of Change is Accelerating cont • The number of PC sales overtook the number of TV sales in late 1995 • Such changes will only accelerate • Everyone in business must become comfortable with technology to cope with this brand new world of ever-increasing technological change

The Optical Era Will Provide Bandwidth Abundance • Decline in cost of key factors: • During the industrial era = horsepower • Since the 1960s = semiconductors • Now = bandwidth • We are now approaching another “historic cliff of cost” in a new factor of production: bandwidth • “If you thought the price of computing dropped rapidly in the last decade, just wait until you see what happens with communications bandwidth”

The Optical Era Will Provide Bandwidth Abundance.. • Fiber optic technology is just as important as microchip technology. 40 million miles of fiber optic cable have been laid around the world, in the USA at a rate of 4,000 miles per day • Half of the cable is dark, that is, it is not used. And the other half is used to just one-millionth of its potential, because every 25 miles it must be converted to electronic pulses to amplify and regenerate the signal

The Optical Era Will Provide Bandwidth Abundance cont. • The capacity of each thread is 1,000 times the switching speed of transistors • As a result, using all-optical amplifiers (recently invented), we could send all the telephone calls in the United States on the peak moment of Mother’s Day on one fiber thread • What about Fathers’ Day????

The Optical Era Will Provide Bandwidth Abundance cont. • Downloading a digital movie, such as The Matrix: • Takes 7 hours using a cable modem • 1 hour over the Ethernet • Four seconds on an optical connection • Over the next decade, bandwidth will expand ten times as fast as computer power and completely transform the economy

The Wireless Century Begins • The goal of wireless is to do everything we can do on wired networks, but without the wire • Wireless communications have been with us for some time • Mobile (cell) phones, pagers, VSATs, infrared networks, wireless LANs etc. • We are just on the cusp of an up-tick in wireless use for all types of networks • The 20th century was the Wireline Century, the 21st will be the Wireless Century

The Wireless Century Begins cont.Licensed Versus Unlicensed Frequencies • Some frequencies of the radio spectrum are licensed by governments for specific purposes; others are not • Devices that tap unlicensed frequencies are cheaper = no big $ licensing fees • BUT = possibility of collision between signals

The Wireless Century Begins cont.Wireless technologies for networks that cover different distances • Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs) • Provide high-speed connections between devices that are up to 30 feet apart • Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) • Provide access to corporate computers in office buildings, retail stores, or hospitals or access to Internet “hot spots” where people congregate

The Wireless Century Begins cont.Wireless technologies for networks that cover different distances cont.. • Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks (WMANs) • Provide connections in cities and campuses at distances up to 30 miles • Wireless Wide Area Networks (WWANs) • Provide broadband wireless connections over thousands of miles

BMWCase Example: Wireless LANs • A plant in South Carolina has more than 30 suppliers nearby • Real-time delivery of data to the suppliers is key to efficiency • Suppliers especially needed accurate inventory data of the components they supply to BMW, so they know when to make just-in-time deliveries to the plant

BMWCase Example: Wireless LANs cont. • To gather inventory data for SAP to track parts, scanner terminals in the factory transmit the data from the barcode readers (as parts move through the assembly process) to SAP via a wireless network that covers the entire 2-million-square-foot plant

BMWCase Example: Wireless LANs cont. • The system uses RF technology • A number of suppliers have followed suit

The Wireless Century Begins cont. Wireless Long Distance • The only two wireless technologies are infrared light and radio airwaves • Figure 6-5 shows the bandwidth spectrum, which illustrates where the different technologies lie • Cell (mobile) phones use radio transmitters and receivers • Call is passed from one cell to another – fades out of one and into another • Much of the bandwidths and radio waves are regulated by governments

The Wireless Century Begins cont. Wireless Long Distance • In the main, GSM has become the mobile telephony standard for all but the Americas • Unlike the computing industry, a number of leading global telecom manufacturers are outside the United States. NTT is in Japan, Ericsson and Nokia are in Scandinavia

The Wireless Century Begins cont. Wireless Long Distance cont. • The first cell phones used analog technology and circuit switching, now called first-generation (1G) wireless • 2G cellular. 2G, which predominates today, uses digital technology, though it is still circuit switched • It aims at digital telephony, not data transmission, but 2G phones can carry data

The Wireless Century Begins cont. Wireless Long Distance cont. • 2G can use a laptop with a wireless modem to communicate • Not always the most ‘reliable’ • 2G can carry messages using short messaging service(SMS)

LOUISVILLE METRO SEWER DISTRICTCase Example – 2G mobile telephony • When Louisville encountered big storms, sewer repair workers had to return to headquarters to get assignment details and look up customer records – a process that slowed their response to the flooding • Now they have laptops and wireless modems

LOUISVILLE METRO SEWER DISTRICTCase Example – 2G mobile telephony • As customers call in for emergency repairs, operators at the sewer district’s headquarters enter the orders into a database that work crews can immediately access from the field • They can view neighborhood maps, locate broken water mains and pipes, and check out the most likely areas of damage, potentially saving entire neighborhoods from flooding

The Wireless Century Begins cont. Wireless Long Distance cont. • 2.5G cellular is extending the life of 2G digital technologies • Essentially adds data capacity to a 2G network • The problem with adoption has been pricing • The goals of 3G are to provide WANs for PCs and multimedia, allowing bandwidth on demand. • CDMA (code division multiple access) is the universal standard for 3G

The Wireless Century Begins cont. Wireless Long Distance cont. • It faces the same pricing issues at 2.5G – perhaps worse • Court battles over the “leased” spectrum • Costs to deploy not seen as tenable in many circumstances • Hutchinson (UK) making a play in this area in Australia and elsewhere with ‘3’ (big brother of ‘Orange’) • Sponsors of Australian Cricket Team

The Wireless Century Begins cont. Wireless Long Distance cont. • New entrants are looking for 3G alternatives • One is mobile broadband IP, which could actually provide 4G services (the user paying for different kinds of services) • Wireless mesh networks • Links are radio signals not wires • More flexible but uses a lot of battery power

The Wireless Century Begins cont. Wireless Long Distance cont. • VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) technology is taking off in some countries because it is seen as the best technology for providing stationary wireless broadband • Provided by DSL, coaxial cable and T carriers • Heaps to be made and lost • Watch the battles • Ask your friends who are always up with the ‘latest and greatest’

AMERICAN GREETINGSCase Example: Extending Internet to Cell phones • American Greetings, a leader in exploiting the Internet, is extending its Internet presence to cell phones using WAP to garner a wireless presence • The company was one of the first with a Website — it sends reminders to subscribers, and often finds itself overwhelmed on holidays such as Mother’s Day

AMERICAN GREETINGSCase Example: Extending Internet to Cell phones • It also forms “side door” alliances with retailers’ Websites • And now, subscribers can order cards from their cell phone. The company reasons that when people have idle time, besides checking e-mail or playing a game using their cell phone, they also might want to send an animated funny card to someone

Is Wireless Secure? • Security is a major issue today • Eavesdroppers need special equipment • Radio scrambling and spread-spectrum technologies add security, encryption protects data, and eventually , 802.11i will provide a framework for security • Requires eternal vigilance • Note: the network is often not the main problem

Is Wireless Safe? • Although a lot of attention is focussed on all the new wireless services, a troubling question has not yet been answered: Are these transmissions safe for humans? • It is quite possible that there could soon be a backlash against wireless devices, similar to protests against genetically modified organisms • Already = heaps of debate (informed and otherwise) in this area

Messaging Is a Killer App • What has proven true with data communication technologies over and over again is that the killer application is messaging • Original purpose of Internet • Email

Managing Telecommunications