IS IT or not? Are we in a world of Services or Technology?
by Stephen Lowe

When even brand names are changed more often than the duvet cover it’s not too surprising that those who work in the Information business want to join in. So now we are seeing IT departments in companies large and small re-branding themselves as IS departments. But will a change from Technology to Service really reflect the change in the balance of power? Will the users continue to accept blunt messages about administrator rights or blocked access to web pages or will they demand support for the processes that they need in order to carry out their business?

Many smaller companies cannot afford the high calibre people needed to keep a complex LAN working together with all its applications while fighting off the constant stream of virus attacks. The larger companies may well be able to afford such people but their value is then lost in global company policies that reduce the more advanced users to the level of the least experienced. Or even to the point where it is assumed that any access to computing power leads inevitably to corruption and downloads of stolen applications, music without royalty or unmentionable content.

While little may be done to help the latter group the world of the SME’s may be about to change. Everywhere the talk is of Broadband, with a capital B as if it’s a proper noun. Soon we will be in a world where not having broadband marks us out as second-class people. It is already true that the price of office space is related to the availability of broadband connectivity. But how and when that high-speed pipe reaches you is controlled more by population density and legacy networks than by user demand.

The local incumbent telecom provider will tell you that you can have broadband by ADSL. Some may even hint at a faster and more symmetrical service, SDSL or VDSL. The cable operators will remind you that you can have even faster speeds from their cable modems. Web sites abound with the icons for those who have broadband.

Wireless is the new player

We began to hear about wireless local loop, WLL, in the middle of the ‘90’s. It was first promoted as the way to get an alternative, and lower cost, voice line to consumers who were unhappy with the incumbent. As time went by the speed of the wireless connection increased and from WLL we moved to LMDS, local multipoint delivery system. Or maybe multimedia or microwave depending on which country you were in and what the sensitivities were.

For a time LMDS operators were springing up in every market and telling the world they were going to put the wire line operators, that’s both telephony and cable television, out of business. Like all teenagers they have grown up and, although some have disappeared, there is a mature group of businesses beginning to roll out high speed communications without wires. I say ‘without wires’ because ‘wireless’ brings to mind microwave systems and tends to direct people towards the mobile telephone idea of wireless. What is now in place is Broadband Fixed Wireless Access, BFWA, capable of matching the Quality of Service of any wired system and of reaching to places where wire is too costly to lay.

In practice wireless has been part of all communications networks for many years in the form of point to point links where the costs of laying a cable are too high. These point to point links were expensive by consumer standards but economic for business users, where the link is kept close to full capacity for most of the time and where that capacity is higher than a simple voice connection.

Wireless systems have now developed to the point where there are many services running in competition with the wire line operators and where they provide the same or greater speeds than wire line can manage with DSL. Even cable modem systems may be matched speed for speed with wireless.

But is high speed all that the user wants?

Always On

Cable modems and ADSL connections are always active, unlike ISDN or the dial up connection used by satellite and terrestrial services. We all assume that a click on an icon will cause an immediate reaction. We might wait for a lift or elevator, but we’ve all seen those people who press the button repeatedly when there is no sign of a movement. Just putting a light on the button or an arrow over the door that goes on when the button is pressed does a great deal to reduce the anxiety of the person behind the finger. In telephony the days when a caller would listen for a dial tone before hitting the numbers are long gone. It is assumed that the instant the handset is lifted a dial tone will be there.

Mobile handsets have had to deal with this expectation by using the store and forward process for dialling. Because there may be some benefit in being able to check the number before dialling and because the delay is transferred to the ringing part of the cycle this difference between a fixed line telephone and a mobile telephone is hardly even noticed – now. But how long did it take actually to educate the customer base and for them to accept the process? And would it have worked so well had mobile telephones been less a business tool and more a consumer item? Probably not.

So when setting the price for a broadband service it’s as important to look at the benefit of the ‘always on’ element of the new access technologies. Many, if not most, SME’s, home workers or SOHO’s would be happy to have a permanently live connection than have to pay for high speed, that they probably can’t yet use. Fax machines are not sold on speed but on the benefit that they attract your attention when a message arrives and they tell the sender that it has been delivered. So should any communications system that tries to replace them.

Symmetry

Both cable modems and ADSL have grown from a consumer market. They work well for high downstream speeds and are therefore best suited to web browsing or television watching. But the business world exchanges information in both directions equally. Email, graphics, data, voice all require high upstream capacity. For most of the applications the traffic from an individual user is bursty. Data flows only when a file is transferred, whereas with voice or video there has to be a continuous unbroken stream.

Provided that a high speed may be achieved when that burst of data is sent then the rest of the time another user may have the capacity of the local access system. BFWA takes this requirement and matches it to one of the main characteristics of a BFWA Point to Multi-Point, PMP, system. The users in an area covered by a base station may use all the available capacity if no-one else has claim to it and provided that the service provider allows it. While cable modems may stake a similar claim they lack the symmetry of wireless PMP.

Coverage

It is often assumed that wire line can reach every building and every person within each building. Equally it is assumed that wireless cannot pass trees, buildings or mountains. Of course neither position is completely true. Cable ducts may only go where land owners agree to let it pass and where the fees they charge allow the telecom operator to make money. To cross a river or even a major road may be uneconomic so many areas are beyond the reach of broadband by fibre or copper.

While it is true that the higher capacity wireless systems require a clear line of sight between the base station and the user it remains the case that with two base stations up to 90% of the buildings in an urban area may be reached. Where a mesh of transmitters and receivers is deployed then even higher coverage can be achieved.

In either case a viable business may be made from one of the technologies. But an even better business may be made by combining them.

Consumers

In the consumer domain broadband is the single topic of debate. While bar conversations may be all about who has the smallest mobile phone, a strange reversal in the ‘size doesn’t matter’ debate, perhaps school playground conversations are about how fast is your Internet. And don’t even bother to enter a multi-player game if you’re still on dial up. And of course you will need to have the latest and fastest PC to keep up.

With television penetration far beyond PC penetration we are hearing all about Interactive DigitalTV. Interactive has a satisfying ring of excitement about it. And possibly the advantage that it has no clear single meaning so we can speculate and pronounce at will. It could mean simply that the service responds to a selection from an on screen electronic programme guide, EPG. It could mean that the system allows communication such as email. It could mean that in order to get what you want, a movie or a TV soap episode, you either pay or accept some advertising.

Are we confusing the drive to digital with the invasion of interaction? In practice they are separate themes that get mixed up rather than harmonised in the confusion of so-called Convergence.

In a limited way digital is also making it possible to deliver video via the telephone network with ADSL. The range and speed inter-dependence of ADSL ensures that for some time the service will only be available to people within 4 or 5 km of telephone network hubs. ADSL also fails to compete with cable, satellite and terrestrial because it cannot provide ‘broadcast’, or one to many, services.

Broadband Broadcasting

Just as prevalent a word as Interactive is Broadband and it adds confusion to the iDTV evolution. The owners of content are no longer limited to a couple of routes to the customer. They may choose to go by different routes with the same content but to different market segments. They may choose to use them all. Broadband has grown with the vendors of Internet systems and the appetite for video from the customers.

But, like multimedia, broadband has a new definition for every person who has an interest. For a television broadcaster then it has to reflect the data rate required to deliver a studio quality picture. For a mobile phone operator it has to be better than the GSM network. For one group the base may be 4 Mbps and for the other anything better than 9600 baud.

What is certain is that any less than 2 Mbps is not enough to challenge Digital Television in the consumer home entertainment market. As yet there are virtually no widely deployed networks capable of reaching beyond the business community with speeds adequate for wide screen, surround sound home cinema services.

Multiple platforms for all content or platform specific?

Since Interactivity is most definitely not limited to a single delivery route we must learn how to re-purpose content for multiple platforms. The debate over web on TV or TV on the web is more than just a pleasurable excursion into semantics and word play. It is an expression of the complex effect that the viewing and delivery media have on the look and feel of the content.

No one has to labour the point that a film seen on a wide screen television will be significantly better than one seen on a mobile phone screen. Some content cannot be transferred between delivery mechanisms and we need to accept this rather than pursue an impossible dream. IDTV can show the mobile phone images very well but here the issue is the actual mobility not the quality. Maybe a local area map will be useful or perhaps an important football game but, despite the prevalence of football in the schedules it may not be the service people will pay for.

What speed is needed?

Consider a possible ‘average’ home. Clearly there is no such thing but we can identify the behaviour of a major part of the market. In many homes there will be a television in a main family room, in the kitchen and breakfast area another in a child’s bedroom, maybe one in the parent’s bedroom. Add to this at least one and probably two VCR’s and we easily find that we need to deliver up to six or seven video and audio transport streams. For now we might assume these to be around 4 Mbps each for a wide screen digital television service. So, as morning arrives we see one television turned on in the kitchen, possibly one in each of the bedrooms. Immediately we need 12 Mbps streaming to the home. As the day moves on towards evening the required total rate will increase as the VCR’s and the Internet browsing begin. So it is quickly possible to arrive at a requirement of 24 Mbps or more for each dwelling. Of course, broadcasting already meets this need if it is from satellite or terrestrial transmitters. Cable too can cope but not ADSL.

Local storage

Traditionally this has become the VCR. Or to be more accurate the VHS, with a little bit of 8 mm on the fringes. Interactive TV could make the home storage device redundant but until the access networks are

fast enough it is more likely that the Personal Video Recorder will slow down the availability of broadband. The only loss of Interactivity is where it would be

used to make a purchase, vote, send information or take part in a game show. And a PVR, paid for by the consumer, is a far less risky way to research the services of the future than building a complex and costly broadband network or a two way satellite or terrestrial system.

CPE isn’t done

The division between the PC and the TV is rapidly being eroded by the computer industry. The DVD is now an assumed part of the desktop PC and high-end laptop. What remains to be developed are the devices to make use of the broadband content that Broadband Fixed Wireless Access will make affordable and available to every home in every land.

How soon?

The future will be evolution not revolution. It might be quite quick when compared with the arrival of colour television and the VCR but it is a long way behind expectations. Those that believe the dawn is now may well be about to learn of false dawns.