There are alternative solutions. Alan Quayle, a consultant who writes an excellent WebLog, suggests:
There’s the handset-centric dual-mode approach. A second option is where the enterprise uses signaling and/or VPN functionality to give it more control over call routing and costs. The third, and the mobile operators’ favorite, is the substitution approach, where the enterprise replaces desktop phones with mobile phones and replaces the PBX with a mobile Centrex/hosted PBX service.
The mobile Centrex/hosted PBX solution depends, of course, on the ability of service providers to provide meaningful solutions. Unfortunately, they only respond when threatened, and vendors have to spell out the marketing opportunity. This solution is not a forced marriage of disparate technologies, but it has to go beyond voice and enable access to mainstream business applications and services. This is something that DiVitas does particularly well. In this case it’s the CPE-centric, handset-centric dual-mode approach.
YOUR PREFERRED COMMUNICATIONS DEVICE?
It’s a cell phone. It has to be. That’s the device you carry most of the time, and the new smartphones are handheld PCs that perform light data tasks. Moreover, Apple has ignited a fire under the device manufacturers: a phone doesn’t have to look like a phone and it can have an interface that’s fun to use. Regular smartphones and iPhones do email, SMS, and multimedia. They have (or will have) open interfaces that enable access to a plethora of personal and presence-driven services. In other words, the role of cell phones as the preferred communications device is going to increase in future. And once again, the technology — whether the air interface is circuit- or packet-switched — is of no interest to the market. Subscribers simply want to access those upcoming services from any location using the best available connection. And they want seamless transitions.
Right now we tend to see seamless transitions in FMC terms, i.e. cellular to and from Wi-Fi, but a smart network would include broadband wireline access. For example, you might be watching a movie on your mobile and when you enter your home, the best available connection would be over DSL. And the best device would be a PC or a TV. It should be doable because the new mobiles are smart devices, so it would be possible for them to work in client-server mode with a really smart network, i.e. a network that performs as if it were a gigantic server. That may sound like blue-sky thinking, but bear with me.
INTELLIGENT NETWORKS AND SMART CONNECTIVITY
Recall two earlier statements. One, the awesome intelligent network technology that underpins cellular telephony. And two, the intrinsic ability of all-IP network cores to minimize operating costs and thereby enable profitable services to be marketed in the emerging markets, where the average revenue will be a few dollars a month. If this goal can be realized, then analysts and vendors such as Nokia Siemens Networks estimate that another 1 billion users will employ a cellular device for multimedia communications and access to the Internet by 2015.
The new all-IP networks will also have a very flat architecture along the lines of the Figure below. In this example, the architecture broadly divides into a connectivity area (owned by the operator) and an application space. Access to the apps is enabled over fixed broadband, wireless broadband and cellular broadband. The two domains — the application space and the connectivity area —are linked via session control and identity management. Session control will be an extension of that currently provided by IMS.
FIGURE The Emerging Architecture
The connectivity area comprises the multi-access network as well as the transport and aggregation network. This part of the all-IP network supports various access technologies using copper lines, optical fiber and air as transmission media. Schematic courtesy Nokia Siemens Networks.
This is a high-level view of next-generation networking. Additional intelligence will be introduced to enable seamless access to services and applications using different networks and network technologies in smart ways — ways that improve the quality of experience and minimize congestion. Services and applications will be mainly hosted in the Internet and in the case of enterprises, the corporate intranet. In addition, service continuity will be ensured while moving between different network technologies and the different networks of one or more operators. This is a very visionary concept and it comes from Nokia Siemens Networks. A white detailed paper (PDF) titled “Smart Connectivity – A vision of tomorrow’s connected world” can be downloaded from Nokia Siemens' website.
CONCLUSION
VoIP and cellular telephony have matured, moved on and converged. In future we’ll have powerful connectivity solutions for heterogeneous networks that enable easy, transparent and efficient access to professional and consumer services — anytime and anywhere — on our preferred communications device.
Bob Emmerson is an English national living in the Netherlands. He has a degree in electronic engineering and mathematics from London University and now works as an all-round freelance writer, focusing on Information and Communications Technology. He has written two books plus articles and columns for a number of international publications, most of which are (sadly) no longer with us, e.g. Byte: an IT bible. Send your praise or flame messages to: [email protected].
