Telecommunications (International Edition) articles from December 2003

Telecommunications (International Edition) archives from December 2003

The outsourcing conundrum.(Commentary)
December 1, 2003... Outsourcing telecom is like being married--and (unfortunately) with about the same degree of failure rates. "Less than 50 per cent of outsourcing deals are renewed beyond the first term," says Phil Barton, CEO and chairman of the EVUA, an...

Level 3 goes on the offensive.(View from the Top)
December 1, 2003... "We're not waiting for the recovery to happen; instead, we're going out into the market with new products to boost top-line revenue growth," says Sunit Patel, Level 3's CFO. "The restructuring phase is over and we're moving from a defensive to...

Any takers for GPRS remote access? Fixed-line service providers are adding GPRS to 'complete' their remote access portfolio but take-up, so far, has been subdued.(GPRS Remote Access)(Cover Story)
December 1, 2003... Equant, AT&T, Cable & Wireless and Colt already do it. Infonet says it will do it in the first quarter of 2004. What are we talking about? Remote access to the corporate intranet over GPRS networks. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The...

MPLS: more packets less sweat? End-users appear to be clamouring for MPLS--even carriers that resisted it now concede that they can lose business without it. However, is MPLS all it is cracked up to be?(MPLS)
December 1, 2003... The problems that MPLS aims to solve are not new: how to offer predictable, scalable service in connectionless networks. MPLS, or Multi-Protocol Label Switching, which allows operators to switch packets across layer 2, emulating the traffic...

IPv6 may never happen; IPv6 may be the preferred protocol destination for peer-to-peer applications, but it will be a longer journey than expected and the industry may never get there.(The role of IPv6)
December 1, 2003... IPv6, when will it happen? is a hardy perennial in telecom debates. The basic argument goes as follows: IPv4--with its 32-bit address space--can support only four billion unique IP addresses. This is a number that appeared sumptuous before the...

Do you need to own the network? VNOs claim that by not owning a network they can enjoy competitive advantage. Facilities-based carriers profoundly disagree.(The VNO Business Model)
December 1, 2003... Have you invested enormous sums of money in a multi-national network to deliver managed services to business customers? If so, you might take offence at the suggestion that service providers--with no network assets to their name--can put...

SIP: a signal success: is SIP the winner in the battle of the real-time session signalling protocols? The SIP Forum, as you would expect, certainly thinks so.(SIP developments)
December 1, 2003... In the 1990s, a debate raged over which protocol would become the standard for real-time session signalling over packetbased networks. Would it be H.323, SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) or MGCP (Media Gateway Control Protocol aka Megaco)? ...