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47
NII Evolution—Technology Deployment Plans, Challenges, and
Opportunities: AT&T Perspective
Mahal Mohan
AT&T Corporation
Statement of the Problem
This paper presents an AT&T view of the evolution of the
national information infrastructure (NII). As a leading supplier of
long-distance communications services and wireless services and a
major force in the research and development of communications and
information technologies used by customers and service providers,
AT&T has a combination of perspectives on this topic that is
unique in the industry.
I briefly review the current state of information infrastructure
in terms of certain key attributes, outline AT&T's key new
technology deployment initiatives, and recommend actions by the
public sector to facilitate faster, smoother evolution of the
NII.
Background
Several attributes of emerging communications networks offer
promise for supporting new modes of collaboration, information
access, and exchange:
•
Bandwidth and the physical medium and technology
used to provide the bandwidth;
•
The set of intelligent features that enhance the
convenience or usefulness of the networking capability or
service;
•
Messaging, involving storage, processing, and
forwarding of information in different forms;
•
Mobility, enabling users to communicate from
anywhere using wireless technologies and personal reach numbers;
and
•
Interoperability and openness, which is an enabler
for competition and rapid, ongoing innovation in each of the above
areas.
Bandwidth, Physical Media, and
Technologies
Two prominent trends in the current evolution of communications
networks are digital technology deployment and optical fiber
deployment. Most long-haul backbone communications networks have
evolved from analog to digital transmission. Digital deployment in
local loops to end users, however, has been proceeding slowly.
However, the recent increase in the deployment of integrated
services digital network (ISDN) services shows some promise for
bringing the benefits of digital transmission all the way to the
end user, resulting in the provision of expanded bandwidth with
superior performance characteristics.
During the last decade, optical fiber capable of supporting
large bandwidths (ranging from tens of megabits per second to
several gigabits per second), with clear, nearly error-free
transmission over long distances, has been extensively deployed in
backbone communications networks that support aggregate traffic
from many users. Beginning in the early 1990s, the fiber deployment
has extended closer to residential neighborhoods and businesses,
mostly still supporting aggregate traffic from many contiguous user
locations, and in some cases
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supporting aggregate traffic from a single large business
location. The ''last mile" that delivers information to or from
individual locations has some dominant technologies today. These
are twisted pair copper typically supporting symmetrical, two-way,
narrow bandwidth (less than 56 kilobits per second) analog
transport or, less commonly, medium bandwidth (56 kilobits per
second to 1.5 megabits per second) digital transport; and coaxial
cable, typically supporting broad bandwidth (the equivalent of 1.5
megabits per second or higher) analog transport—mostly
one-way, with two-way expansion widely planned.
Intelligent Features
Intelligent features constitute a broad category, and one that
tends to get less than the attention it deserves in many
discussions of the next generation infrastructure. A classic
example of such a feature in voice (and some circuit-switched data)
networks is 800 number service (and the myriad related services
that have emerged in the past decade that involve database or
routing-table lookup and translation in the network). The
tremendous utility of such services is demonstrated by the degree
of their widespread use today, mostly for voice services. In the
case of data and multimedia networks such a concept again applies,
albeit with different implementation details. Directory services,
database services, and network-based security services are examples
of intelligent service capabilities that vastly enhance the value
of the underlying connectivity to users. Currently these features
are offered in rudimentary form as part of data and multimedia
services, often to a limited base of users. As described below,
efforts by AT&T and other industry players are slated to
substantially increase the deployment and use of these features
beginning this year, expanding rapidly over the next several years
to offer more robust and useful sets of features supporting a
broader user base.
Messaging
Messaging, involving the storage, processing, and forwarding of
information, is becoming widespread and accepted as a mode of
information exchange. Voice messaging using premises-based
equipment such as answering machines or computer-based voice mail
systems is common now. Network-based voice messaging services are
available in some areas but are less widely used; their features,
functionality, and price structure need to evolve further to
provide full-fledged competition to premises-based systems. Data
messaging, or e-mail, is now widely used in corporations and is
used by the more technically oriented consumers. Substantial
progress needs to be made to provide simplified user interfaces,
build user awareness, and provide user training, before e-mail can
become a commonly accepted form of information exchange for a broad
cross section of society. Text-to-speech conversion and vice versa
are being actively worked on in research laboratories, with early
implementations being used in today's commercial applications.
Mobility
One of the major trends in communications during the 1990s is
the explosive growth of wireless services. Driven by the needs of a
mobile society, greater availability of wireless spectrum, and
technologies that allow increasingly more efficient and
cost-effective use of the spectrum, wireless services will continue
to expand rapidly.
Another trend in serving mobile users is the concept of a
personal number that follows users no matter where they are, if
they wish to be reached. The first generation of such services has
been available for a few years. The next stage in their evolution
is likely to link wired and wireless access to a user via a single
number.
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Interoperability and Openness
This attribute is worth singling out because it leads to
competition, increased user choice, and innovation. Standard, open
interfaces between local telephone networks and long-distance
networks, and between information appliances and telephone company
networks, have enabled substantial competition in the long-distance
communications and customer premises equipment industries, even
while local communications is predominantly provided in a
noncompetitive environment today. Open platforms have likewise
facilitated vigorous competition and innovation in many facets of
the personal computer industry. As we are poised on the threshold
of broader bandwidth services and an expanding range of information
services, industry consensus on, and implementation of, an expanded
suite of open, critical interfaces are of vital importance.
Examples of interfaces that are open today are the customer
premises device interface to local telephone networks, and local
telephone network interfaces to long distance communications
networks. Typically closed interfaces today include the cable
network interface to set-top devices at homes, and the cable
network interface to electronic content or programming.
AT&T's Plans, Challenges, and
Opportunities
This section reviews some of AT&T's key new initiatives and
plans in the areas of communications services and information
services. It concludes with a discussion of issues that industry,
users, and governments need to work together on to create a
framework for rapid growth of the national information
infrastructure (NII).
As its corporate mission, AT&T is dedicated to being the
world's best at bringing people together—giving them easy
access to each other and to the information and services they want
and need—anytime, anywhere.
As indicated above, AT&T has multiple roles in the evolution
of the NII—a major long-distance and global service provider;
a major wireless service provider; a product vendor for builders of
the communications infrastructure; and a provider, to consumers and
businesses, of information appliances.
Communications Services: Initiatives
and Directions
Communications services lie at the core of AT&T's business.
Our worldwide intelligent network provides the bedrock on which we
are building a wide variety of communications services, driven by
ever more demanding user needs. Over the past decade, our worldwide
network has been transformed into one that carries the vast
majority of its information in digital form. Interconnecting
high-capacity digital switches are high-capacity fiber-optic links
that offer a combination of large bandwidth and clear, error-free
transmission. To provide the highly reliable services needed by
today's users, we have developed and deployed systems such as
FASTAR to reroute and restore facilities handling hundreds of
thousands of calls automatically, within seconds, in the event of
any malfunction or failure in any portion of our network.
Using the worldwide network as a basic platform, we are building
families of communications services, aimed at businesses and
consumers, that meet the specific needs of different user segments.
These services are differentiated, each in terms of features
discussed in the previous section, namely bandwidth, intelligent
features, messaging capabilities, mobility, and openness and
interoperability.
Let us begin with a description of communications services for
businesses, because many leading-edge services are first introduced
to business users and, whenever appropriate, are adapted to address
consumers at homes.
Transport Technologies and
Services—Alternatives
Using ISDN digital transport, AT&T has been offering video
communications services, ranging from personal conferencing on a
desktop to group conferencing with a variety of speeds and picture
resolutions. The
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most recent developments in this service family, known as
AT&T WorldWorx Solutions, are global reach and multipoint
capability. It is now possible to conduct video and multimedia
conferences between, for example, Washington, Singapore, and Paris
simultaneously, using a mix of desktop computers and group
video-display systems.
High-speed packet transport technologies, known as frame relay
and cell relay technologies, have emerged in recent years and are
spreading rapidly in use. For instance, we offer a frame relay
transport service (Interspan Frame Relay Service) that connects
computers at high speeds using virtual circuits that can be
reconfigured as user needs change. To address user needs for
simultaneous communication of voice, text, image, and video at high
speeds, we have recently begun offering Interspan ATM Service,
based on asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology, which is
emerging as a worldwide industry standard for multimedia
networking.
A discussion of ATM from our perspective is not complete without
a mention of product development initiatives. At the core of our
ATM service is an ATM broadband switching product we have developed
at AT&T Bell Laboratories called GlobeView-2000. GlobeView-2000
is one of a family of ATM switches under development that will
enable integrated switching of multimedia signals. ATM technology
is experiencing rapid growth in the field of local area networks
(LANs). We believe that it has the potential to be a new unified
infrastructure for communications, coexisting for decades to come
with the current large embedded base of circuit-switched
technology.
Intelligent Features and Collaboration
Tools
ISDN, frame relay, and ATM services, as outlined above, offer
transport alternatives that can interconnect and interwork with
each other, and support high-bandwidth applications. Communications
services are also growing in terms of features such as directory,
security, and user interfaces. For example, this year AT&T is
introducing a new family of public data services that will build on
and expand the capabilities of the advanced transport services
mentioned above. These will provide "multimedia dial tone" and
offer a flexible applications environment for innovators. The
public data services will enable companies to go beyond having
sophisticated internal ("private") networks, and to connect to
their suppliers and customers with data and multimedia information.
AT&T NetWare Connect Services and AT&T Network Notes are
part of this new family that we are beginning to beta test with
selected customers and that we expect to make widely available
starting later this year.
We are developing AT&T NetWare Connect Services in
collaboration with Novell, Inc. The service will enable high-speed
LAN access and interconnection, both within an enterprise and
between enterprises. It will connect to the global Internet but
will offer much higher levels of security, ease of use, and
directory and database capabilities. By being an open platform with
standard interfaces, this service will in turn become the
infrastructure for new services, of which AT&T Network Notes is
an example. AT&T Network Notes, which we are developing in
collaboration with Lotus Development Corporation (now part of IBM),
incorporates Lotus Notes, the popular work-group collaboration
software, within the AT&T network. As a result, far-flung work
groups can work together on shared documents, incorporating
multimedia information into them. Users can rely on the AT&T
network to update the software and to readily incorporate new
features. Directory services, multiple levels of user security, and
navigation capabilities will be part of the common services
platform and will be offered with new services as we develop
them—individually or with partners in the information
industry. Taken in combination with a variety of Internet services
for businesses and consumers that we will be offering soon, these
represent a service creation platform for a new generation of data
and multimedia services.
Consumer Service and Product
Initiatives and Challenges
The description above outlines some of the emerging
communications service options for businesses to enter the
multimedia networking era. What about consumers? First, businesses
often tend to be early adopters of leading-edge services, and the
services and technologies are subsequently adapted for use by
consumers. Second,
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many of our business communications solutions involve businesses
communicating with their customers, who often happen to be
consumers. For example, toll-free 800 number services are business
solutions, but the people who make the 800 number calls are mostly
consumers who have come to accept the services as an integral part
of their daily lives.
There are significant challenges in providing multimedia
services to consumers on a broad scale. The most notable is the
limited availability of two-way broadband access for connecting to
our high-bandwidth services. As is well known, cable TV networks
offer broadband connections to many homes today. What restricts
their utility for most interactive multimedia services is the fact
that they are currently offered as part of a closed, horizontally
integrated scheme; in other words, they reach many homes, but they
are generally not open to connect to everything we would want them
to connect to. In addition, the access links are generally designed
for one-way delivery of analog information. They also have a
history of modest reliability and performance, though significant
new investment is going into installing fiber optics closer to
clusters of homes to aggregate coaxial cables and to provide
improved performance.
In our role as a major provider of telecommunications
infrastructure products and capabilities, we are actively working
to bridge this gap. We are working with cable companies as well as
telecommunications companies to provide new solutions based on a
combination of fiber-optic and coaxial cable links from homes to
switching or information hubs, combining high reliability with high
bandwidth for interactive applications. We are providing technology
and integration capabilities that are a major part of projects by
telephone companies such as Pacific Bell, Bell Atlantic, and
Southern New England Telephone, as well as by cable companies such
as Time Warner, to redefine their communications infrastructure and
to offer reliable, broadband access to homes in the immediate
future.
Two other areas in communications services deployment are worthy
of note. The first is the rapid growth and digitalization of
wireless communications networks. AT&T Wireless, created by our
acquisition of McCaw Cellular, is investing substantially in
creating an equal access mechanism for wireless access to all long
distance carriers; in expanding the reach of wireless services to
serve major markets nationwide; and in expanding the digital
capability in our wireless access network and enhancing its ability
to serve more users with higher service quality. The second area is
globalization. Communications companies such as ours are entering
into partnerships with their counterparts in several foreign
countries to offer integrated services and one-stop shopping to
customers.
AT&T Initiatives and
Directions—Information Resources
The two best-known types of electronic information content today
are (1) electronic online services, which typically provide
digitally encoded information delivered through narrowband access
networks and accessed using computers, and (2) television
programming, which is typically analog-coded information delivered
through one-way broadband networks and accessed using TV sets. The
promise of digital convergence reflects the vast potential that
exists to create and store digital information and deliver it
through two-way broadband access networks.
AT&T is a newly emerging player in the provision of online
services. Our new AT&T Interchange Online Network offers its
subscribers a rich collection of online information services on a
range of special-interest topics from different publishers. In
addition to general news and reference services, Interchange is
working closely with publishing partners, such as the Washington
Post, to offer online news and information for their target
customers. Interchange's graphical user environment, hypertext
links, and powerful searching capabilities make it a precursor for
online services that will utilize the emerging broadband access
media.
On another front, AT&T Bell Laboratories has developed
interactive TV technologies that enable consumers to interact with
the content that is delivered via their TV sets. Video server
technology, developed and delivered through IDS, an AT&T
partnership with Silicon Graphics, Inc. and Time Warner, Inc., is
capable of storing huge quantities of multimedia information in
digital form in the network for interactive uses.
An important aspect of making information resources useful for
people is offering users the ability to navigate among different
applications, to help find and retrieve the kind of information
that users need most, when
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they need it. To this end, we have recently developed AT&T
PersonaLink Service, using intelligent agent technology developed
in collaboration with General Magic, Inc. The service enables users
with a small handheld device to determine how specific kinds of
information should be dealt with—for example, high-priority
electronic mail messages from chosen persons or on chosen subjects
can be automatically forwarded to a specified computer, and the
user's paging device will be notified automatically to alert him or
her of the message. On the other hand, lower-priority messages can
be sorted and stored for future retrieval, or forwarded as needed.
We are at the very beginning of intelligent agent technology, and
we expect that capabilities in this area and their use will grow
rapidly over time.
At the nexus of information resources and communications
networks is an idea that we call hosting, and this involves
matching up information from a variety of content providers
(information producers) with users (information consumers) no
matter where they are. Key to hosting are wide reach, with wireline
and wireless technology; open interfaces that interconnect multiple
information resources with communications networks; and the
navigation technologies referred to above, enabling users to easily
sort through and obtain information they need when they need it. We
are incorporating these concepts as we develop new products and
services, and we intend to continue to support the principles of
open, public interfaces so critical to customers and so necessary
for competitive markets. We are actively participating in the
Information Infrastructure Standards Panel (IISP), which is an
industry group sponsored by the American National Standards
Institute to identify standards gaps in today's evolving NII.
Challenges and Uncertainties
Access Alternatives
Access technology alternatives for broad deployment deserve
special attention, because they are such a fundamental enabler for
many new service capabilities. Consumer applications of many of the
above services will benefit immensely from the deployment of higher
bandwidth access capabilities than those that exist today for
supporting interactivity. The current installed base of access in
telecommunications networks is predominantly twisted pair copper
supporting symmetric two-way, low-speed analog transport. The
current installed base for cable TV access is coaxial cable
supporting high-bandwidth (hundreds of megahertz) analog transport
one way (downstream only).
The most straightforward extensions of telephone network access
involve leaving the twisted pair copper plant in place and
digitizing the transport over them. Using basic-rate ISDN, up to
144 kilobits of aggregate bandwidth can be brought to homes and
businesses. ISDN technology can thus support two multiuse (voice,
data, or limited-speed video) channels to the home and one or more
packet data channels. These would enable access to information
resources with text and graphics. Basic-rate ISDN falls short of
being suitable for full-motion, large screen video applications.
Local telephone companies are beginning to offer basic-rate ISDN
for residential consumers, though price packages and ordering
processes are complicated, and user awareness and therefore
"take-rates" are limited.
Another existing technology for extending the bandwidth of
twisted-pair copper loops is asymmetrical digital subscriber line
(ADSL). ADSL involves installing matching equipment at both ends of
the customer loop that extend the bandwidth to the user
substantially (typically ranging from 1.5 Mbps to 6 Mbps), while
less bandwidth (typically one or two 56 kbps channels) will be
available for upstream communication. ADSL's key advantage is that
it can bring video services with some interactivity to users
without replacing the embedded twisted-pair loop; since the
installation and changes occur at the ends of the loop, ADSL
devices can be disconnected from one user and moved to another user
as, for example, when the first ADSL user decides to upgrade to a
higher bandwidth medium such as fiber or fiber-coax access.
Hybrid fiber-coaxial cable combinations are gaining in
popularity for new deployment. The reasons for their popularity for
new deployment are that they offer abundant bandwidth capable of
supporting integrated communications and entertainment
applications; are comparable in initial deployment cost to new
twisted pair copper access deployment when done on a large scale;
and, by offering multiple services in an integrated
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operation, administration, and maintenance environment, can help
minimize ongoing costs relative to potential service revenues. By
using the combination of fiber-optic feeders and coaxial cable
"drops" to user locations, the strengths of each of these media are
maximized. For example, fiber provides clean, high-bandwidth
transmission; but coaxial cable (unlike fiber) can be used to
supply electrical power to user terminals from the communications
network and is also more flexible and robust for ease of
deployment.
Hybrid fiber-coaxial cable combinations can be deployed in a
variety of configurations supporting one-way, asymmetric two-way,
and symmetric two-way services; these involve pure "bus" or "star"
configurations, and combinations of the two.
As a developer of a range of access technologies, we believe
that broadband access systems (such as hybrid fiber-coax) can be
cost-effective alternatives to twisted pair copper access for new
installations. They can be deployed for about $1,000 to $1,500 per
home based on a broad-scale installation. Once deployed, they enjoy
the advantages of being able to support traditional telephony,
traditional TV, and emerging interactive multimedia applications on
a single platform with a unified operations infrastructure. The
actual deployment rate will depend on the extent of competition for
provision of these services—which in turn will be determined
by user needs and the evolution of the regulatory climate.
Other Challenges
Among the obstacles and challenges, we have so far focused our
attention on access capabilities and their deployment. We must also
point out that there is significant uncertainty relating to user
demand and willingness to pay for new interactive consumer
services. Experience with early deployment of services will teach
industry a lot about how the emerging services should be priced,
packaged, and offered to users. It is hoped that revenue from new
access services will be adequate to recover the investment
associated with deployment of new access network capabilities.
Based on preliminary analysis, this appears to hold true for
integrated access capabilities.
Other uncertainties and challenges include laws and practices
relating to privacy, security, liability, and intellectual property
matters. An informed dialog between the public and private sector
is essential to the emergence of appropriate public policy for the
information age. This process has already begun, largely within the
framework of the NII initiatives in industry and government.
Recommendations
The challenge of developing the NII industries into a number of
viable market areas and addressing user needs with new products and
services remains, and should continue to remain, the province of
private industry. We in AT&T, along with our counterparts in
industry, are actively engaged in developing new capabilities and
addressing user needs. However, the public sector (at the federal
and state levels) does have a key role to play in allowing these
capabilities to develop toward their full potential in a speedy
fashion.
A major constraint on our ability to offer advanced service
capabilities to consumers and small businesses is the lack of
availability of full-fledged access alternatives. The public sector
needs to remove today's overt and subtle impediments to the
deployment and interconnection of competitive local exchange and
access capabilities for consumers and businesses. The transition
from the monopoly provision of local telecommunications services to
an environment of multiple competing and interconnecting providers
needs to be facilitated by legislators requiring the removal of
constraints such as franchise restrictions, lack of interconnect
points and standards, exchange resale prohibitions, lack of local
number portability, and numerous other impediments. The public
sector needs to work with the private sector to develop criteria
and metrics to determine when a market is competitive. Regulatory
efforts should be focused on opening markets to competition and
doing so in a manner that inhibits the abuse of monopoly power
where it exists. Hand in hand with enabling the emergence of
competitive markets, the public sector needs to support industry in
the development of open interfaces in critical NII locations where
interoperability is necessary, and support industry-led standards
for ensuring such interoperability.
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The public sector needs to facilitate the ongoing availability
of enabling resources such as wireless spectrum, numbers, and
rights-of-way as new developments in the market strain limited
resources. Flexibility and the ability to support market-driven
solutions should in general be the guiding principles in these
areas.
As a major user of the NII, the public sector needs to adopt
open industry standards and leverage its considerable market power
as major commercial users would, to advance innovation. It should
avoid creating special networks and requirements without compelling
reasons, as such efforts drain resources from the mainstream
development of products and services in the commercial
marketplace.
The public sector needs to enact laws that recognize the need
for individual privacy and security of information in electronic
form, and that protect intellectual property rights for information
created and disseminated electronically. Although the United States
can lead these efforts by example, we must recognize that these
efforts are truly global in scope.
Regulatory efforts should be focused on opening markets to
competition and doing so in a manner that inhibits the abuse of
monopoly power where it exists.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
public sector
