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UP R F ON T:
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PUTTING NETWORKS TO WORK

APRIL 2010
Bucks for Broadband

STIMULUS FUNDS AND FEDERAL BROADBAND INCENTIVES ARE ON THE WAY CAN SERVICE PROVIDERS
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0 4 .10 CONTENTS
_UPFRONT
6 CISCOS SPLASH
By Rich Karpinski. A look at the new CRS-3 router and its potential impact.
_COVER STORY
Cover design by Isabelle Pantazis
_INFR ASTRUCTURE
16 MOBILE VoIP GETS A LOOK
By Kevin Fitchard & Sarah Reedy. The Skype-VZW partnership could become a blueprint.
10
STIMULUS WISHES AND BROADBAND DREAMS

By Rich Karpinski. Telecom carriers and alternative providers are chasing the proverbial pot of gold to help build tomorrows broadband networks. Its been a bumpy road still with no endgame in sight.
20 CARRIER ETHERNET CATCHALL

By Rich Karpinski. The latest developments from the carrier Ethernet front.
22 POWER TO THE API

By Rich Karpinski & Kevin Fitchard. Operators are looking at ways to combat Apples App Store.
16 22
20 28
24 AT&TS 4G UPGRADE
By Kevin Fitchard. The operators radio network head talks about the path to LTE.
_SMART PIPES
26 REMOTE ENERGY MANAGEMENT
By Sarah Reedy. Telcos should seek a role in energy management, with or without utility partners.
9 OPINION 30 MARKETPLACE/HELP WANTED 31 SOURCES/ADVERTISERS 32 FINAL WORD
28 TELEPRESENCE TAKES OFF

By Joan Engebretson. New applications offer new opportunities for service providers.
( connected planet | April 2010
EDITORS LET TER
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Whats next?
You hold in your hands the final print issue of Connected Planet. As weve watched the industry we cover telecom and the industry we do business in publishing change and evolve, its been our job to evolve as well. Our latest evolution is a new and tightened focus that reflects the future of the market, serving our readers via original journalism and online community at ConnectedPlanetOnline.com; through custom content like Webcasts and online microsites delivered there; and via what we believe will be an exciting lineup of planned live 2010 events, including: Understanding the National Broadband Plan, in partnership with US Telecom, May, Washington, D.C.

RICH KARPINSKI, Editor-in-Chief richard.karpinski@penton.com KEVIN FITCHARD, Senior Editor kevin.fitchard@penton.com SARAH REEDY, Senior Editor sarah.reedy@penton.com MARK DONAHUE, Associate Editor mark.donahue@penton.com JOAN ENGEBRETSON, Contributing Editor joanengebretson@cs.com ISABELLE PANTAZIS, Art Director isabelle.pantazis@penton.com
The Sustainable Networks Roadshow, June, Chicago.
An exclusive invite-only, salonstyle 4G event for vendors and their customers, this fall.
A virtual event exploring Tier 2/3 telco opportunities to target investments in key areas including IPTV, Ethernet ser vices, broadband upgrades and more, this fall.
On ConnectedPlanetOnline.com, we are going to focus our efforts on two areas: one, curating and providing instant analysis of the days most important industry news and events exclusively from the telecom service provider point
of view; and two, delivering deep and hopefully insightful features and analysis you cant get anywhere else. We believe we have the edit team to accomplish this. Weve also brought the band back together in recent weeks and months, bringing a trio of former Telephony top editors back into the fold: Jason Meyers, to lead our events and custom content; Joan Engebretson, to cover Independents, broadband policy and carrier services; and starting April 1, Dan OShea, to provide his experienced insights into key service provider issues. We realize this raises some questions. Like, why are we doing this? The reality is that the way readers consume information today has changed (and to be straight-forward, the way our advertisers try to reach and influence you, our reader, has changed as well). Connected Planets telecom service provider audience knows better than anyone the impact that the Internet, broadband networks, and new mobile services and devices have had on how we all get the news, information and analysis we need to do our jobs. In response, we too are evolving with those changes, focusing on helping you get the critical information you need faster and with less lag time than ever before. We know many of our readers will miss the print edition. We will as well. But we look forward to seeing you online virtually and in person as we continue on our more than 100-yearold mission of serving this industry in our and its next incarnation. RICH K ARPINSKI
KIM PAULSEN, Sr. Vice President kim.paulsen@penton.com WAYNE MADDEN, Publisher wayne.madden@penton.com KIM DAVIDSON, Senior Marketing Manager kim.davidson@penton.com MEGAN LYNBERG, Eastern Sales megan.lynberg@penton.com NICOLE OZMAI, Western Sales nicole.ozmai@penton.com SUSAN SHEPHERD, Inside Sales Representative susan.shepherd@penton.com JULIE DAHLSTROM, Classified Sales julie.dahlstrom@penton.com LISA PARKS, Vice President, Production lisa.parks@penton.com MELISSA LANGSTAFF, Group Production Manager melissa.langstaff@penton.com DENISE POOLE, Advertising Production Coordinator denise.poole@penton.com
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U P F R O N T 0 4 .10
Read more about developments in the mobile space in Kevin Fitchards
Cisco aims router at video deluge

The new CRS-3 adds big bandwidth to carrier backbone networks, anticipating growth in HD video and other broadband apps.
BY R I C H K A R P I N S K I
Chambers
In the end, Cisco did what it does best: roll out a bigger, faster router. In a much-hyped announcement last month one that was rumored to be about everything from a Google-style gigabit network trial to yet another major acquisition Cisco instead rolled out the next generation of its carrier-class IP core router, the CRS-3. In conjunction with the news, AT&T said it had completed a trial of the 100 gigabit CRS-3 running over a live fiber segment spanning New Orleans to Miami. AT&T said it would continue to test the platform with a goal of moving large portions of its backbone network to 100 gig in the next several years. Most of the attention will go to the speeds enabled by the CRS-3, which at 322 terabits per second triples the capacity of Ciscos current mainstay,
the CRS-1. That capacity would enable the Library of Congress to be downloaded in one second or every motion picture ever made to be streamed in less than four minutes, Cisco claimed. But perhaps more important for service provider customers is the fact that Cisco is sharply focused not just on helping carriers provide raw bandwidth to deliver best-effort IP traffic, but rather, Cisco executives put just as much emphasis on capabilities in the CRS-3 that add network intelligence to secure and dynamically dedicate portions of that massive network to customers as well as help the network self-heal and route around network problems to guarantee carrier-class service delivery. Those increases in network intelligence as well as raw speed are necessary as service providers are faced with
vast new demand for high-bandwidth applications such as HD video and video collaboration, said John Chambers, CEO of Cisco in announcing the new router. The CRS-3, as well as deepening strategic relationships between Cisco and its customers, will help both parties move from being a [network] plumber, he said, to a new focus on how you deliver the next generation of [telecom] business and service models. For AT&T, standardizing its entire network around IP has been a long time coming, and moving to a higher-bandwidth, more scalable network backbone is a crucial next step, said Keith Cambron, president and CEO of AT&T Labs. We are already seeing routes where 40 gigabits is not enough. Were using multilink 40 gig on those routes, but were going to need 100 gigabits soon.
T-Mobile: M2M connections to outnumber humans 4-to-1

For every single human being punching phone numbers or surfing the net on the T-Mobile network, there could be four machines chirping away quietly, embedded in utility meters, cars, freight containers, medical equipment, wristwatches and even the oversized flashlights carried by cops. John Horn, national director of M2M for T-Mobile, believes that machineto-machine communications will not only be a huge factor in T-Mobiles future growth, but that it will become the dominant form of connection on T-Mobiles GSM network. Every analyst has a different prediction, Horn said. I dont know what the exact number will be, but at the end of the day we could see a 4-to-1 ratio easy. Embedding every utility meter, vehicle and home with an M2M module would get to the number without difficulty, Horn said, but with the pace of M2M innovation accelerating applications the industry hasnt yet conceived of, that could send that ratio far higher in favor of machines. As for how long it will take T-Mobile to hit that 4-to-1 mark, Horn wouldnt say. Nor would he reveal how many M2M connections T-Mobile today has on its network. The only M2M data T-Mobile has released is that it has enjoyed 100% growth in M2M connections on its network every year for the last four years. Horn added that T-Mobile is still try-
ABI: 2009 wasnt quite so dire for wireless vendors.
blog.ConnectedPlanetOnline.com/unfiltered
Real-world LTE
Releasing the first results from its 4G trials, Verizon Wireless announced that its first two long-term evolution networks are averaging download speeds of 512 Mb/s and upload speeds of 25 Mb/s, while achieving peak downlink speeds of 50 Mb/s and uplink speeds of 25 Mb/s. Though the Boston and Seattle networks have yet to be tested in the real conditions of a commercial launch, the initial results show VZWs new 4G network to be significantly faster than any 3G network running today. According to independent testing from Root Wireless, downlink speeds for all of the major operators 3G networks tend to hover in the 200400 kb/s range in the countrys largest cities, while average upload speeds rarely pass the 150 kb/s mark. PCWorlds own recent study (also conducted in major markets) found significantly higher average download and upload speeds for all of the operators, but with the exception of AT&T, which averaged 1.4 Mb/s over its highspeed packet access network, none exceeded an average downlink connection over 1 Mb/s. Verizons testing methodology is likely much different from that of PCWorld and Root, just as the two companies methodologies appear to be vastly different from each others. And while Verizon enjoyed the controlled test environment of a non-commercial network, the 3G testing was conducted over live, increasingly congested commercial networks. But if Verizon can carry that trial performance over to its commercial launch, even the lower end of its results would produce a network five to 10 times faster than what almost all 3G networks in the U.S. can offer today and almost double the 36 Mb/s average fellow 4G provider Clearwire is delivering over its WiMax network. So far, there is only one commercially live LTE network to compare Verizons results to. TeliaSonera launched its LTE network late last year, and results from two independent tests of the network recorded average download speeds of 25 Mb/s and peak speeds in excess of 45 Mb/s. KEVIN FITCHARD
ing to figure out how to quantify M2M connections. It cant just add those connections to its overall subscriber numbers because they are so vastly different from its consumer handset and data card businesses. Most of those connections consume only a modicum of capacity each month and most of them bring in only a relatively small amount of revenue. Thats one of the reasons why scale is so important,
he said. Even if T-Mobile reaches that 41 ratio of machines versus handsets today, the revenues resulting from those 120 million-plus machines would still only be a small percentage of its overall revenue. But if you can get 200 million [M2M users], Ill take a buck a meter, Horn said. Its a much leaner business. If I had to go out and build a new network to do it, it wouldnt be worth it.
Ultimately adding any number of M2M devices to the network costs T-Mobile very little. Its mainly a wholesale business model, so T-Mobile doesnt have to acquire individual customers or activate connections it just ships bulk SIM cards. It also doesnt incur customer care or billing costs. And it doesnt have to make any additional network investment to support those millions upon millions of devices, Horn said. KEVIN FITCHARD
April 2010
| connected planet ) 7
U P F R O N T 0 4 .10
Independents face voice line challenge

Fourth-quarter earnings reports from four different Independent telcos revealed a mixed bag, as the companies seek new revenue sources to compensate for continued voice line loss. Many industry observers view bundled broadband services as the best focus for telcos moving forward and SureWest Communications seems to have found success with that approach. It saw consolidated revenues increase 2% yearover-year, driven by 13% broadband revenue growth. The gains did not happen without investment, however. The company passed 8800 additional advanced fiber homes in 2009. Also noteworthy was its average $8 increase in ARPU for triple-play-marketable homes. Increased demand for higher data speeds, HDTV and digital video recorders also helped generate ARPU growth. nTelos saw sufficient growth in broadband and video services. In its wireline business, it saw a 1% increase in revenues over the same period a year earlier. This was driven by a 139% increase in IPTV revenues and 10.2% increase in broadband, dedicated access and metro Ethernet. More than half of customers in the nTelos' RLEC footprint now purchase its broadband connectivity. TDS Telecom saw operating revenues virtually unchanged between Q4 08 and Q4 09. Results would have been better if it had not experienced a $14 million charge for impairment of licenses. In reporting results for its wireline business TDS skirted the line loss question by using a measurement called ILEC equivalent access lines It reported a 17% increase in ILEC high-speed data customers, yielding a 12% increase in revenues. 39% of ILEC residential customers now use TDS for broadband. Iowa Telecom reported a $1.7 million loss for Q4 2009, attributed primarily to costs related to its plan to merge with Windstream. It lost 3800 access lines in its ILEC business between third and fourth quarter, which were partially offset by a 1200-line increase in its CLEC business. It also added 700 DSL and video subscribers during Q4. JOAN ENGEBRETSON
Commitment
Just as you are committed to providing reliable service to your customers, CoBank is dedicated to supporting its borrowers regardless of the economic conditions. We have been delivering financial solutions to rural communications companies for decades, helping them meet their business goals. Our longtime focus on the communications industry means we understand the challenges you face every day and are committed to supporting your needs today and in the future. To learn more about CoBank, please call 800-542-8072 or visit www.cobank.com.
Keep up with the latest developments in the broadband stimulus program at our residential services one-stop. ConnectedPlanetOnline.com/residential_services
OPINION
Spectrum: Public trust or cash cow?

Perhaps the most i nterest i ng a spec t of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowskis recent call to identify 500 MHz of new spectrum for mobile broadband was his proposal to buy back licenses from the TV broadcasters. That implies that broadcasters own those licenses in the first place or even paid for them. Like any other radio frequency license, broadcast licenses are owned by the people and held in public trust by the licensees. TV broadcasters received their original licenses for free. With very few exceptions, those licenses are renewed automatically. And in the age of blockbuster spectrum auctions, they each received gratis new digital TV licenses in exchange for their analog spectrum, which allowed them to broadcast more channels in higher quality (though to be fair they were forced to spend billions on upgrading their infrastructure). My question is what exactly are we compensating them for? Is it the public service they provide? As part of their covenant with the people, broadcasters have to provide a certain amount of educational and public interest programming. In my mind, airing the presidential debates every four years, a few public service announcements featuring B-list celebrities and the schlock thats called the local news are pretty poor tradeoffs. Wireless operators paid billions of dollars for their spectrum, and though they face fewer restrictions on how they use their licenses they can charge for service, for one thing regulation on the wireless industry is increasing. Theres a growing expectation that broadband in both its fixed and mobile forms should be readily available to every American. There is increasing pressure on the FCC to mandate open networks. And the growing movement of net neutrality is affecting wireless as much as it is wireline. The current system of wireless auctions was designed to apply free market principles to the allocation of public spectrum through private self interest a competitive market would find the most efficient way of utilizing a public asset. After spending billions acquiring said spectrum, though, it would be unreasonable to expect those operators not to act in their own self interest by resisting regulation or competitive limitation. Im not calling for the FCC to strip broadcasters of their airwaves and hand them over to the operators. Nor am I advocating a world of closed wireless networks and walled gardens where operators act as broadband gatekeepers. But I think the FCC, Congress and the president need to decide how they view our nations wireless spectrum: Is it a public asset they must ensure is used for the overall good, or is it commercial asset they can sell off for extra revenue? They cant have it both ways. Its two-faced for the government to profit enormously from spectrum auctions and then regulate it as a public service. To use those proceeds to compensate a broadcast industry for spectrum it never owned or paid for is downright hypocritical. KEVIN FITCHARD
The FCC, Congress and the president need to decide how they view our nations wireless spectrum.
April 2010
STIMULUS WISHES AND BROADBAND DREAMS

By Rich Karpinski
Telecom carriers and a variety of alternative providers are chasing the proverbial pot of gold to help build tomorrows broadband networks. Its been a bumpy road still with no clear endgame in sight.
Its an old adage that you dont want to see two things get made: laws and sausage. Theyre both just too messy. In telecom, you can add a third, and given this industrys regulatory complexity and the fact that billions of dollars are up for grabs, it should be no surprise things did indeed get messy with the federal broadband stimulus application and award process. Talk with service providers and vendors and you hear a common tale: They certainly wont look a gift horse in the mouth, especially as funding awards finally started flowing in early 2010. Yet at the same time, the stimulus process was one fraught with difficulties. Vague service area definitions forced many incumbent providers to sit out. Those that did take part in the process saw their detailed applications get placed into consideration alongside pie-in-the-sky overbuild projects. The entire process took
longer than expected, freezing some capex spending in a tough economic year when it was already tight. At press time, it appeared that the government, even faced with 2200 applications, would not end up granting all the funds it expected to in Round 1, likely pushing those awards into the second round and delaying network buildouts. And in a development that somehow seemed emblematic of the entire process, the awards from Round 1 ended up overlapping with the Round 2 application deadline, forcing companies to assemble second-round applications without knowing how they had fared in Round 1. The feds ended up pushing the deadline back a few weeks, but the impact was already felt. That said, the industry has certainly reached a significant flash point thanks to a number of developments even beyond the federal stimulus awards that could vastly
April 2010
accelerate broadband deployment here in the U.S. The National Broadband Plan expected from the FCC in mid-March will set broadband deployment goals and restructure the industry to spur investment (see sidebar below). The FCC has received feedback from a wide variety of quarters on net neutrality issues, which will impact what runs over broadband networks and ultimately affect the incentives for funding them. And in an out-of-left-field move that is nonetheless garnering plenty of attention, the Google Fiber for Communities project has established itself as yet another source of broadband
funding one that has cities and towns falling all over themselves to win. (You can read one states Google story below.) Clearly, were in the realm of sausage-making here. But that doesnt mean its not worth watching. What follows is a peek into how service providers and others have fared so far in the stimulus process, including an in-depth look at two very different stimulus stories. STIMULUS 101 The first broadband stimulus awards were announced back in mid-December awarding $182 million split between the National Telecommuni-
cations and Information and Administration and the Rural Utilities Service. In many ways, those first awards set the tone for the ones that followed in the subsequent months, with the bulk of the grants going to so-called middle-mile projects, in which fiber or other broadband technologies are deployed in the middle or transport part of the network, rather than in the last mile to the home. Also in that first instance, it became clear that while service providers were involved in many of the awards, they typically werent getting those funds directly but often as part of public-private partnerships or
FIVE OBSERVATIONS AND TWO PREDICTIONS ABOUT THE NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN
As we went to print with this issue, the FCC was just days away from formally unveiling its National Broadband Plan. Weeks prior, it began floating details to get early feedback and whet the public appetite for what was to come. Although we couldnt get a full gander at the plan before writing this story, heres our best guess and interpretation of what it will look like, the impact it will have and the questions it is likely to both answer and leave unanswered at least for now. 1. 100-SQUARED MATH FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has said the NBP will establish a goal of providing 100 million households with 100 Mb/s connectivity (although no firm deadline has been set). If you check U.S. Census data, thats more than 90% of U.S households a substantially higher percentage than some news reports have recognized. 2. 100 MB/S REALITIES While the plan is likely to include a strategy for funding broadband to high-cost rural areas through the Universal Service program, its not clear how major carriers such as AT&T and Verizon will be encouraged to make that move. Verizon is already on its way to supporting 100 Mb/s with its FiOS offering, which like other fiber-tothe-premises deployments should be able to support 100 Mb/s without major network re-architecting. But several industry experts including Clif Holliday, president of B&C Consulting, and Teresa Mastrangelo, analyst with broadbandtrends say fiber-to-the-neighborhood deployments such as AT&Ts U-verse service will not be able to support 100 Mb/s at least not without a major upgrade that would bring fiber closer to end users than it currently does. 3. CAPEX TIMING I cant imagine AT&T will be keen on upgrading facilities that have only recently been upgraded. Even a decade seems like it might be too soon for such a major rework. Then again, AT&T has said it would have more money to invest in broadband if it were allowed to phase out traditional phone service and instead use broadband to deliver voice over IP (VoIP). If the FCC expects telcos to upgrade to 100 Mb/s, it would seem that a PSTN shutdown would need to go hand in hand. 4. WHITHER THE PSTN? Although the FCC has a strong incentive to phase out the PSTN, that move has not been part of the pre-announce-
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other arrangements a trend that followed in subsequent rounds. For instance, the largest award, a $39.7 million grant for a wholesale middle-mile network in upstate New York, was granted to a public-private partnership between ION Independent Optical Network, a coalition of 13 rural telephone companies and the Development Authority for the North Country. When built, that network is expected to immediately connect more than 100 community institutions including libraries, colleges and health clinics and enable last-mile connections to 250,000 households and 38,000 businesses in New York, Pennsyl-
vania and Vermont. A second major award in the initial bunch, meanwhile, went to Biddeford Internet Corp., a partnership between the University of Maine and local service providers, which won $25.4 million to build three fiber optic rings across rural Maine. Things moved at a similar pace through January and February. In one batch of awards, non-telco applicants, such as Merit Network in Michigan and MCNC in North Carolina, picked up bids to build educational- and research-focused fiber networks. In other batches, incumbent Independent providers picked up grants, including Butler
Telephone Co. for DSL service in Alabama; C-M-L Telephone Cooperative for a fiber optic network in Iowa; and North Central Telephone Cooperative for a triple-play network in Tennessee. LEVEL 3S MIDDLE-MILE PLAY It wasnt until March, however, when Level 3 Communications won $14 million in grants, that a larger, more widely known service provider won a piece of the federal funding. For Level 3, its decision to apply for the money was driven by the pragmatic goal of extending its existing network and services where it makes business sense.
ments. But endorsement of that move would appear to be implied in the anticipated recommendations about Universal Service. The NBP is expected to recommend a transition from a voice-based fund to one that focuses instead on broadband. If support for traditional voice infrastructure is phased out, one can only assume that infrastructure would have to be shut down. And if the small telcos are allowed to shut down their voice networks, bigger companies will expect to be allowed to do the same. 5. WHAT ROLE FOR VOIP? If there is a full-scale changeover to VoIP, however, it opens up a can of worms for the FCC. VoIP is currently classified as an information service rather than a communications service, which means, among other things, that VoIP providers dont pay into the Universal Service Fund and cant even interconnect directly with telcos. Ergo, if all telcos converted to VoIP under todays rules, the funding mechanism for Universal Service would vanish. VoIP providers, including telcos, also would have to self-organize a way of interconnecting with one another, which probably isnt the best way to help ensure that all the grammies and grampies who just want their phone to work will be taken care of.
6. USF ISSUES If broadband is not reclassified as an information service, the FCC might not have the authority to create the broadband Universal Service fund. Combine that with the VoIP issues and its easy to see why reclassifications of VoIP and broadband are almost certain to be part of the plan. 7. THE PHILOSOPHY OF BROADBAND The idea of reclassifying broadband, however, has a lot of people in a tizzy, fearing it could lead to greater regulation of the Internet although most opponents are concerned about the content aspects of the Internet rather than transport and connectivity issues. Whether or not content and connectivity can be separated is the crux of the information service versus communications service argument and we should brace ourselves for a whole lot of philosophical debate on this topic moving forward. Whether or not the FCC will have any authority to drive its ambitious plan to upgrade the nations communications infrastructure will hinge on arcane details, such as whether domain name look-ups can be separated from the connections used to make those look-ups. JOAN ENGEBRETSON
April 2010
THE FASTEST BROADBAND COUNTIES IN THE U.S.

To help better illustrate the current availability of broadband here in the U.S, data provider ID Insight recently published a list of what it called the Top 25 Fastest Broadband Counties a list it claims is based on actual Internet access speeds. Those speeds, collected in a database it calls Broadband Scout, includes data about users types of connection, speed, the carrier they use and more. ID Insight developed Broadband Scout as part of its work helping service providers apply for federal stimulus funding. Of course a list without broadband speeds is less than interesting. To get some feel for the range of speeds, the No. 1 county on the list, Nassau County in New York, boasts a median download speed of 15.0 Mb/s and a median upload speed of 4.4 Mb/s. The No. 25 county, Howard County in Maryland, had speeds of 10.7 Mb/s down and 2.8 Mb/s up, according to Craig Settles, a broadband consultant who works with local communities on broadband projects and who is a business partner with ID Insight on the Broadband Scout project. The list is important, Settles said, because in large part due to the [federal broadband] stimulus [program], people are becoming more aware of the fact consumers and small businesses dont really know what theyre getting when they buy broadband. There are the advertised up-to rates that can look good on paper but have no basis in reality due to terrain, time of day, number of people within a service area and so on. By comparison, he claimed: ID Insight gets to the heart of resolving these issues by pulling out what are actual data speeds individuals and businesses are getting during the day over a period of time, averaging this out per person and then averaging everyones rate within census tracts. This approach addresses the lack of accuracy in individuals randomly checking Internet speeds from their computer and presents what is closer to reality. It enables the company to provide a unique data source to validate marketing claims and also compare providers performance, determine ISPs market share and broadband usage patterns in an area. RICH K ARPINSKI
What we submitted was something that could help achieve the goals of the federal stimulus plan but also made sense for Level 3 as a business, said Paul Savill, senior vice president of product management for the company. It didnt drag us into a whole new type of business, and it was something that fit within our core competency and leveraged assets we already had deployed in the field. The proposal that Level 3 submitted, and for which it ultimately won $13.7 million in NTIA funding (which it will match with $4.2 million of its own funds), will be used to build 47 new access points to its existing nationwide broadband network in six states: California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Tennessee and Texas. The middle-mile project will open up access points to other carriers and users at speeds starting at 50 Mb/s on up to 40 Gb/s. For Level 3, its efforts to bring access to its network to more remote regions actually began several years ago. Wed run into cable companies, small [multiple system operators], rural LECs and wireless companies all the time that would be operating way from major metro areas, Savill said. Theyd know we had fiber running through part of their region; their field operations could see it in the rights of way. But they had no way to access it. They couldnt afford to buy high-speed access circuits [like an OC3 or OC12] and in many cases couldnt support high-speed services like Sonet. To serve those types of customers, Level 3 developed a solution called Extended On Net, or EON for short. Wed break out our capacity and sell it in rural areas, Savill said. Breaking out those drops was
Heres the full list of counties, one to 25: 14. Providence County, R.I. 1. Nassau County, N.Y. 15. Calvert County, Md. 2. Kent County, R.I. 16. Bristol County, R.I. 3. Putnam County, N.Y. 17. Multnomah County, Ore. 4. Benton County, Ore. 18. Chester County, Pa. 5. Mercer County, N.J. 19. Washington County, Ore. 6. Richmond County, N.Y. 20. Salem County, N.J. 7. Delaware County, Ind. 21. Allen County, Ind. 8. Snohomish County, Wash. 22. Suffolk County, N.Y. 9. Thurston County, Wash. 23. Ramsey County, Minn. 10. Frederick County, Va. 24. Island County, Wash. 11. Washington County, R.I. 25. Howard County, Md. 12. Arlington County, Va. 13. Yamhill County, Ore.
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expensive, he said, and while we had opened up 80 of these sites, there were still a lot of locations we couldnt justify. To drive EON deeper into remote areas, Level 3 decided to turn to stimulus funding. When it began evaluating new access points, not every possible location made the cut. Even if the government paid 100% of reaching certain locations, wed still have to operate that portion of the network and provide those services, and the operational costs couldnt be justified, Savill added. Level 3s pragmatic approach to this middle-mile project will ultimately end up adding 47 access points to its networks drops it might have otherwise not have been able to build, Savill said. BROADBAND ONE WAY OR ANOTHER Level 3 represents the story of an established telecom service providers bidding for, and winning, stimulus funds. But the path to broadband is much less clear-cut in most other areas of the broadband stimulus universe. For instance, consider Tom Evslin, who along with his wife Mary started wholesale long-distance carrier ITXC back in 1997 (which they eventually sold off). Evslin subsequently launched AT&T WorldNet, one of the first ISPs, among other ventures. Now mostly retired and living in Vermont, Evslin has been working in various capacities for that state, currently as chief technology officer, to bring in broadband for its residents. That effort not to mention his deep industry experience has put him at the center of numerous efforts to help seed and speed broadband deployment, including the federal
broadband stimulus effort, similar funding in the area of smart grids and even Googles closely watched Fiber for Communities project. Evslins journey began about three years ago, when the state formed the Vermont Telecommunications Authority and authorized it to issue revenue bonds to help fuel broadband deployment. The economic downturn, however, killed the market for those bonds. Next, the VTA and Evslin helped the states utility
As that effort moves forward, the state decided to also place a big bet on Googles fiber project, a move that Evslin called a one-in-a-gig long shot. Ultimately, the VTA decided to put in a bid to try to convince Google to wire the entire state of Vermont for broadband. We think wed be a fantastic testbed for them, Evslin said. If they win Google funding, the project would be quick and administratively simple, Evslin promised, because state law allows the deploy-
What we submitted was something that could help achieve the goals of the federal stimulus plan but also made sense for Level 3 as a business.
PAUL SAVILL, LEVEL 3
providers apply for smart grid funding, ultimately winning $69 million that is being used to extend a statewide, utility-owned fiber network with smart energy capabilities. That doesnt ultimately solve the [states] last-mile problem, Evslin said, but it does make it easier to solve. When it came to federal broadband stimulus funding, a few small projects that could impact Vermont applied for Round 1 funding, but the VTA and local service providers are making a bigger push to apply for Round 2 funding. Evslin and the VTA are helping to coordinate that effort, which will consist of middle-mile and last-mile applications for federal funding, he said. The deadlines for that are coming up soon, and exactly which providers will be part of the process is still be decided.
ment of a statewide broadband network in the same way as if it were deployed in a single town. In one project, Google gets to build a network across a variety of terrain and make a big impact in an area that is already very fertile ground for broadband, Evslin said, adding that because its not clear exactly how Google would propose to build such a network, the price tag to wire Vermont would fall somewhere between $250 million and $1 billion. While Evslin sees the benefit to local communities in Googles proposal, he said the bigger effect will be to prove that a structural separation business model for telecom can be successful and attract more private capital. Id like to see that succeed, Evslin said, adding that the U.S. needs that to be competitive.
April 2010
INFR ASTRUCTURE
_ MOBI LE VoI P
OPERATORS EMBRACE SKYPE,
BUT AT ARMS LENGTH

Mobile VoIP is suddenly a lot more palatable to wireless operators when they are the ones setting the rules.
BY KEVIN FITCHARD & SARAH REEDY
Verizon Wireless old enemies are quickly becoming its closest friends. Skype and Verizon Wireless recently announced plans to offer Skypes service to all VZW smartphone customers, leveraging Skypes traditional business model of free or cheap voice calling and messaging but using Verizons near-ubiquitous CDMA 1X network rather than a voice-over-IP connection. The two even hinted at bigger plans for the future, as VZWs 4G
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long-term evolution network is deployed and its FiOS network opens up to new applications. Using an application co-developed by Skype and Verizon, smartphone customers will be able to make and receive unlimited Skype-to-Skype calls and dial out to local and international landlines or wireless numbers using regular SkypeOut calling rates. The calls, however, will traverse VZWs 1X voice network, where theyll be switched as normal phone calls in the core and handed off to the Skype VoIP network. Verizon, however, will still require all Skype users to have a data plan, which will be used for IM and presence features also being introduced at launch. In 2007, Skype and Verizon were at odds over open access, with Skype and Google lobbying hard for it to become a requirement on VZWs 700 MHz spectrum.
Though Verizon lost that battle, it played the gracious loser, promising to work closely with its former opponents on open network development. Verizon Wireless didnt just make nice with Google; last year it announced a partnership with the Internet giant to work on services and platform development, a direct result of which was the Droid phone. Now it appears to be taking the same path with Skype. Rather than merely cooperating with the VoIP calling provider, Verizon is partnering with it, though the two wouldnt reveal any additional details of their business relationship. Josh Silverman, CEO of Skype, said he felt the partnership with Verizon was perfectly natural, given Skypes recent strategy of pushing further and further into operators networks. By working with Verizon we can offer a service that is second to none, Silverman said. By embedding it in the mobile network proper, the use cases for Skype balloon, as the user is no longer dependent on a PC or a Wi-Fi connection. Suddenly, inbound calling becomes very possible because Im not tethered to a PC anymore, Silverman added. As for where the partnership will eventually lead, John Stratton, executive vice president for VZW, told the crowd at a recent press conference to close your eyes and imagine. Fielding questions about whether an all-VoIP version of Skype would be used on long-term evolution devices before VZW launches its own VoIP service or whether Skype could be integrated with
April 2010
INFR ASTRUCTURE
_ MOBI LE VoI P
pipe. Verizon gets to set the rules and share the revenues. Skypes just along for the ride. Indeed, mobile VoIP is becoming a lot more palatable to wireless operators, and the reason is that Skype is willing to let them call the shots. By requiring a voice and data plan, theres little risk of revenue cannibalization or a mass exodus of voice subscribers. Embracing this semiopenness could ultimately have upside for carriers. As long as Skype is okay with the restrictions, why not do it? asked Julien Blin, principal anaWe arent able to go into the lyst and CEO of JBB Research. specifics of each possible partnership, Verizon is not taking a huge but we are open to different models risk since people have to sign up for voice and data anyway. If it for how to deliver a compelling user doesnt appeal to a lot of people, experience that maintains the core thats okay, too. Skype values of free and low-cost Openness is something that international calling. the U.S. wireless operators have RUSS SHAW, SKYPE been moving toward anyway, said Dario Talmesio, senior analyst with Informa Telecoms & Media. Internet services focused on the voice market were the last bit of FiOS IPTV for in-home videoconopenness missing from the picture, he added. Regulaferencing, Stratton refused to offer tors are helping to accelerate that move, too. All the U.S. specifics, but he said there would carriers have been feeling the squeeze from the Federal definitely be much more to the partCommunications Commission to open their networks, so nership than what was announced. Verizon could just be embracing Skype before its forced There will be an array of serto do so anyway. vices well announce at launch, and Skype has more than 500 million users worldwide, we hope to have some very exciting making it particularly attractive to operators easing things to announce with our partinto alternative voice services. According to Russ Shaw, ners at Skype at that time, Stratton general manager of mobile for Skype, operators are recsaid ognizing the benefits of the mobile Internet, and mobile Considering Skypes long history VoIP in particular is an app consumers are demanding of being blocked from mobile neton their phones. Therefore, operators can use it as a difworks in the U.S., the companys ferentiator and a customer acquisition tool, he said. Its partnership with Verizon is certainly a strategy that has worked for Hutchison 3, Skypes first a harbinger for change. But a gamepartner in the U.K., which also offers a Skype-centric changer it is not yet. The much phone. Of its consumers using Skype, 79% were new feared bandwidth-depleting, reveto the operator. Shaw said that these consumers have nue-eroding, game-changing potenalso proven to be higher spenders, driving more average tial of mobile Skype is ultimately revenue per user (ARPU) for the operator. stifled by Verizons ownership of the
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Skype has also shown that if people use the cheap calling service on mobile, they use more of everything else as well, said Jeremy Green, mobile practice leader for analyst firm Ovum. Verizons average customer currently spends $51 per month. If they want Skype, theyll have to spend at least $70. These users are nice to have. The more data revenues a re g row i ng a nd t a k i ng the lions share of the total service revenues, the less mobi le operators w i l l be bothered about the risk over voice, Informa's Talmesio added. Furthermore, Skypes most active users are those calling internationally and, according to TeleGeography, Skype is currently the largest cross-border communications provider around. It carried nearly 54 billion minutes of international long-distance traffic in 2009 alone. Wireless operators, on the other hand, have yet to really tap this market. Ca r r iers just wa nt to boost wireless data ARPU and revenue, JBB Researchs Blin added. Any data services that can help them do that, like Skype, they should do it. For the consumer, the value of close integration with an operator stems from the subsequent close integration with the phones dialer, contacts and native voice capabilities. Wireless operators also have the ability to prioritize VoIP calls, even guarantee their quality of service (or disable or degrade it, but Blin notes this wouldnt be a wise move now that operators want to be considered viable mobile Internet players). We arent able to go into the specifics of each possible partnership, but we are open to different models for how to deliver a compelling user experience that
maintains the core Skype values of free and low-cost international calling, Shaw said regarding the company's plans to work with mobile operators. This integration with a carriers wireless network also enables consumers to use Skype as an alwayson service. They dont have to plan to make a Skype call, coordinate it with the calls recipient and schedule a time for it, which was often the case on the PC. If they have a data plan, they can leave the service running in the background, and their long-distance recipient would only have to log into Skype perhaps through an app on a Nokia smartphone, Shaw suggested to see when that person is ready to take a call. It Verizon and Skype are successful together, its a safe bet that other operators will follow suit. In that sense, Verizon is acting as the litmus test for the U.S. wireless industry, just as 3 in the U.K. has helped make VoIP more palatable to operators abroad. Its not, however, a sure thing poor service quality on Verizons 3G network would reflect poorly on the carrier, not just on Skype. Still, wireless operators are rapidly approaching the day when they wont need to decide whether theyll welcome mobile VoIP on 3G, just how they will do it.
April 2010
INFR ASTRUCTURE
_ ET H ER N ET
Ethernet continues to evolve as the Swiss Army knife of network protocols and services with an increasing focus from service providers to adopt and adapt it to their own needs and the needs of their customers. From its roots as a relatively simple, best-effort LAN protocol, carriers, vendors and standards bodies such as the Metro Ethernet Forum are continuing to add carrier-grade features, new OAM&P capabilities and extensions to the core Ethernet protocol to position the technology as a foundational element in tomorrows converged IP networks. And as service providers become more adept at bending Ethernet to fit their needs, new and potentially lucrative applications for carrier Ethernet continue to emerge. That not only includes offering carrier Ethernet services to businesses as a relatively low-end T-1 replacement, but also as a more dynamic, high-bandwidth, gigabit-speed solution for connecting data centers and moving great loads of traffic. It also involves using Ethernet as a convergence protocol that will handle business, residential and in an increasingly important application mobile voice and data backhaul traffic on a consolidated IP-based network infrastructure. Were seeing customers on the same network they provide Ethernet business services also looking to deliver mobile backhaul, as well as, still in its early stages, video to consumers, said Tom Mock, senior vice president of strategic planning for Ciena. That type of network/service approach, with Ethernet as the glue, is just beginning to come to maturity, he said. BEYOND BEST EFFORT The key to providing those carrier-class Ethernet services is the development of new capabilities to augment the core characteristics of Ethernet. Mock pointed to developments in three key areas as being most crucial:
CARRIER ETHERNET
CATCHALL
Ethernet continues to evolve from a besteffort service to the essential glue that holds together next-generation networks and services. Heres a grab bag of the latest developments on the carrier Ethernet front.
BY RICH KARPINSKI
Making Ethernet more deterministic rather than best effort to accommodate voice and video services, in particular. Enabling applications that are more connectionoriented i.e., require a set-up and take-down path from a network point of view. Dealing with synchronization and timing issues, especially as Ethernet is used for applications like mobile backhaul carrying voice traffic.
The industry is rapidly moving forward with work in these areas. While early approaches such as transporting Ethernet over IP/MPLS using pseudowire technology
20
or via provider backbone transport have gained some momentum, next-generation options are gaining adherents as well, in particular MPLS-TP (or transport profile). What all of these more connection-oriented approaches to Ethernet have in common is a goal to set up a more explicit path in the network, just like a Sonet circuit, said Ralph Santitoro, director of carrier Ethernet market development for Fujitsu Network Communications. Like Sonet, connection-oriented Ethernet features explicit forwarding of connections and bandwidth resource reservation to ensure that traffic is guaranteed to be properly delivered across the network. Combine more connection-oriented approaches to Ethernet with higher-bandwidth packet optical network technologies and the next generation of carrier infrastructure starts to come into focus, Santitoro said. THE EXCHANGE QUESTION Further extending the reach of carrier Ethernet are emerging Ethernet exchanges. Such exchanges enable carrier customers to interconnect their Ethernet offerings so that they can more easily serve end user customers wanting to interconnect multiple locations, including locations that are only served by other carriers. Mobile backhaul will likely also be an important application of carrier exchanges. Neutral Tandem launched a carrier Ethernet exchange in February, expanding its current interconnect business which includes customers such as U.S. Signal, XO Communications and Zayo to include carrier Ethernet services. It will simplify the ordering and provisioning process and keep track of service level agreements and billing, said Surendra Saboo, chief operating office for Neutral Tandem. We have over 110 carrier customers. A lot of them would be buyers and sellers on this Ethernet exchange. Others are making progress on the exchange front, as well. In October, collocation provider Equinix announced its service launch followed by a similar announcement from start-up company Carrier Ethernet Neutral Exchange (CENX) in November. CENX aims to streamline the process for handing off carrier Ethernet services from one network to the next, translating service characteristics from one carriers classifications into anothers. ONE CARRIER'S VISION How can service providers parlay these trends into new revenue and business opportunities? Consider AT&T,
which is rapidly expanding its carrier Ethernet capabilities, focusing in the past year on better integrating Ethernet provisioning into its own operating environment and building on the carrier-grade capabilities of the service as well as interconnection with other carriers around the world, said Sandy Brown, vice president of connectivity services for AT&T. Another part of AT&Ts carrier Ethernet service focus has been adapting its offerings to specific There is a great enter pr ise req ui reopportunity for ments, such as an service providers access arrangement to move to that for virtual private netnext generation of works or voice over IP or as access to cloud capabilities. computing services, SANDI BROWN Brown said. On top AT&T of that, carrier Ethernet is just a very costefficient solution for companies with high bandwidth needs. The other thing we focus on is Ethernet to the cell site. Theres just tremendous growth in data requirements for carriers, and Ethernet can deliver backhaul services reliably and efficiently. In the past year, AT&T has extended its Opt-E-MAN end-to-end switched Ethernet service to more than 38 countries, Brown said. In addition, AT&T is delivering its 10 Gb/s private line Ethernet services to a batch of customers essentially enterprises that have very high data requirements such as financial services firms of companies connecting large data centers. Ethernet is a great fit for that application class, Brown said, adding that such users used to do a lot of Layer 1 switching over dark fiber, do-it-yourself-style, but now were seeing more outsourcing and buying of carrier Ethernet services. As the market for carrier Ethernet continues to expand and evolve, the challenge for service providers is to slash service provisioning cycle times by improving internal operational processes. In the TDM world, the customer would send an [order] to the telco and everyone would know what to do with it, Brown said. In the Ethernet world, those standards and processes are less developed. There is a great opportunity for service providers to move to that next generation of capabilities.
April 2010
INFR ASTRUCTURE
_ MOBI LE A PPS
POWER TO THE API

Several initiatives are underway to extend the power of operators to combine their reach and respective network APIs to combat the monolithic App Store.
BY RICH KARPINSKI & KEVIN FITCHARD
Theres only one way to beat a bully: stand up to them, and even better, bring a few of your friends along to back you up and provide support. Thats essentially the strategy behind several new approaches that aim to get wireless operators back in the mobile application ballgame a contest theyve largely lost to Apples App Store, not to mention up and coming copy-cat stores run not by carriers but other players like operating system creators (Google Android) and device-makers (Nokia and Research In Motion).
The challenge, though, is that while single-operator walled garden approaches may have worked in the past when there werent more open app competitors with a broad global reach, they wont work today. Marketing and distributing apps to just one customer base or one geographic region alone wont cut it. Customers dont like it and developers, quite rightfully, feel even more strongly about it because it limits their ability to monetize their apps. Making it even more challenging, competing application platform providers such as Apple have found early success delivering application toolkits and interfaces that are simpler to use and essentially duplicate or route-around capabilities that mobile operators thought only they could provide things such as location (via GPS), presence (via social media check-in), address book access (again via social
22
media friend networks) and more. In response, several efforts are underway to consolidate the power of mobile operators and operator application programming interfaces (APIs) to win back the mobile app game. In February, 24 of the worlds largest global operators including the big four in the U.S. joined together to form the Wholesale Applications Community, with the goal of creating a common application development platform for their networks. The end result of the effort would allow a developer to be able to write code for a single app and have it work over every members network and devices, serving billions of subscribers. The big thing for developers is that theyre going to have a lot more access to a lot more customers, said Alex Sinclair, chief technology and strategy officer for the GSM Association. If the initiative resembles the Joint Innovation Lab established by China Mobile, Softbank Mobile, Verizon and Vodafone, its no coincidence, Sinclair said. The partnership takes the initial JIL premise, a common development ecosystem, as well as JILs initial focus, widgets, and expands it to a much larger group of global carriers, effectively creating a de facto standard for small-bore application development in mobile. We didnt want a Jack versus JIL situation, Sinclair quipped. While the WAC is clearly the centerpiece mobile operator app effort, momentum in other areas is gathering as well. The LiMO Foundation, which supports the popular Linux operating system in mobile environments, offered its backing to the WAC. Like the carrier wholesale effort, the LiMo Foundation is also focused on whitelabeling software and letting users personalize it to their needs while reducing industry fragmentation, said Morgan Gillis, executive director and member of the board for the LiMo Foundation. Operators including NTT DoCoMo, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone have released devices running the LiMo platform and apps. Not to be outdone, the largest independent app store, PocketGear, recently acquired fellow app store Handango, with a goal of creating a compelling alternative for carrier app stores. Fellow app store enabler Tarsin, meanwhile, has introduced its platform for deploying apps across the networks of the four major U.S. carriers. Finally, industry vendor Alcatel-Lucent launched the second stage of its Open API Service, which like WAC has a goal of helping operators aggregate and package up their most important network APIs. The idea is to let developers write once and access multiple service providers a lot of SMS aggregators do the same kind of thing today, said Laura Merling, vice president of ALUs developer strategy. What we can do is help service providers bundle APIs together, then as a developer rather than pay for one API or another you can access multiple APIs across service providers, API providers and other developers. We want to encourage them not to go over the top but make [telco APIs] more palatable by giving them things they want access to.
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS
In a series of recent moves, mobile operators and independent app stores are combining to combat the Apple App Store. Wholesale Applications Community Twenty-four global operators, including the Big Four in the U.S., are creating a common app platform for their networks. PocketGear Plus Handango Leading independent app stores are merging and offering to work more closely with operators. Alcatel-Lucent Open API Service The vendor is helping operators aggregate and package APIs to help developers build better apps.
In addition to aggregating APIs, AlcatelLucents model also changes how developers pay to access APIs. Rather than charge upfront fees or set monthly per-API-call minimums, Merlings team has put forth a model where developers can access APIs for free and then share revenue to cover the costs once the app starts making money. The challenge for all of these API efforts is the exact thing that has made Apples app store so successful: putting together an appealing value proposition for developers essentially, Let us help you make money. There is the issue of whether developers will lend their support to these initiatives, said Mark Newman, chief research officer for Informa Telecoms and Media. They are more interested in developing apps for Apple and Android and have historically distrusted operators because of the unfavorable revenue share deals that have been on the table. A number of the developers that we have spoken to would rather operators keep out of the applications development community entirely. For mobile operators, this is one game they cant afford to lose. By joining forces and combining their user bases, APIs and networks in more interesting and, to developers, more palatable ways, they hope that their strength-in-numbers play can change the way the game is played.
April 2010
INFR ASTRUCTURE
_W I R ELE S S
INSIDE AT&TS 3G-TO-4G
UPGRADE PATH
AT&Ts radio network head details the operators coming move to LTE.
BY KEVIN FITCHARD
When AT&T named Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson as its 4G radio access vendors in March, it cited their incumbency in the 3G network as a critical advantage in deploying long-term evolution. The 3G base stations that Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson deploy today can be upgraded to support LTE in the future, giving AT&T flexibility and even a capex advantage in its future 4G rollout. But just how upgradable is AT&Ts network? According to Gordon Mansfield, director of AT&Ts radio access domain, the operator wont be able to merely flip a switch in 2011 and have an instant LTE network. There is still extensive network deployment necessary. But AT&T does have an
advantage, Mansfield said, in its ability to reuse elements of its high-speed packet access (HSPA) network that will make its LTE deployment more seamless and less expensive than an operator starting from scratch. The biggest thing is that the equipment we buy today is upgradable in some way to LTE, Mansfield said. If I put LTE in at a different band I obviously need new radios, but the bottom line is on our base station equipment there are a lot of things that are completely reusable. By implementing next-generation software-defined radio equipment, AT&Ts base stations are moving from centralized to distributed architecture. Think of previous generations as
hard-wired to a particular technology, supporting a specific radio standard at specific widths at specific frequencies. With a distributed architecture, the base station is no longer a purpose-built GSM or HSPA box but a collection of generic baseband and radio resources, which can then be allocated to any technology or combination of technologies. AT&T plans to build its LTE network at 700 MHz, and because its HSPA network uses the PCS and cellular bands, it will need to install new radios at each cell site. But AT&T doesnt necessarily have to install a new base station. Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucents base station lines can allocate a portion of their baseband
24
processing capabilities to an LTE carrier while reserving the rest for HSPA. In general, when you talk about a distributed architecture youre talking in terms of raw radio resources, Mansfield said. As long as we dont exceed what the baseband processor can support we can use any configuration of technologies. Under such a scenario, it would appear that AT&T is basically building its LTE network today. As part of its new 4G contract with ALU and Ericsson, all HSPA base stations deployed this year and onward will be able to support both 3G and LTE. But Mansfield said it would be a mistake to assume AT&T will simply slap some 700 MHz radios on its existing 3G cell sites in 2011 and have an instant LTE network. Just because all of its new base stations can be rescrambled for LTE doesnt mean AT&T will use them that way. It will be using its HSPA capacity ahead of and concurrent with the LTE deployment, and in many cases HSPA will have spoken for all of the baseband capacity of many of its sites, he said. If I already have three carriers of HSPA on a base station, its probably not a good candidate for an upgrade, Mansfield said. He pointed out that LTE will have channel sizes as large as 10 MHz, meaning there would have to be a lot of extraneous baseband capacity to support LTE, though he added AT&T might opt to install smaller 5 MHz LTE channels on a case-by-case basis. In urban areas, AT&T will likely need to deploy another baseband module as well as new radios alongside its HSPA kit. Supporting simultaneous HSPA and LTE makes the most sense in rural areas. Outside of the cities, AT&T has a lot of 3G sites that are
only running one HSPA carrier, leaving plenty of untapped resources for LTE, Mansfield said. In those areas, though, AT&T has to ensure that its backhaul connections are up to par, as the overall capacity of the site will jump dramatically, from a maximum of 7.2 Mb/s to well over 50 Mb/s. In fact, its those backhaul upgrades that today are the most concrete of AT&Ts 4G preparations. Mansfield said the HSPA and LTE networks, whether running off the same base station or separately, will definitely share the same backhaul connections, meaning any upgrade AT&T makes today to fiber backhaul is one that will be
The biggest thing is that the equipment we buy today is upgradeable in some way to LTE.
GORDON MANSFIELD, AT&T
unnecessary next year. Theres one other instance in which those upgrade capabilities could be highly useful. As it moves more of its data and voice traffic onto the LTE network, it may start shutting down 2G and 3G channels in its most congested markets to take advantage of the greater spectral efficiencies of LTE. Because GSM and HSPA run at the cellular frequencies, AT&T wouldnt have to install new radios to convert those carriers to LTE. If its vendors' claims about remote radio programming are true, it might literally require a flip of the switch to turn those base stations into LTE sites. The big question is how much of AT&Ts network is new enough to take advantage of 4G migration capabilities. As part of their contract, all
new ALU and Ericsson 3G installations must be LTE-upgrade-capable, but Mansfield said that doesnt mean anything deployed before 2010 is hardwired for 3G. Mansfield wouldnt give specifics about what percentage of its footprint was upgradable, saying AT&T was doing a complete inventory of the different generations of base stations in its network. He did say AT&T does have more flexibility than the 2009 cut-off date would imply. Ericssons RBS 6000 is relatively new. It started going into networks in mid-2009. That likely means most of the 3G network Ericsson built over AT&Ts PCS frequencies cant be upgraded, but more recent installations at the cellular frequencies are eligible. Alcatel-Lucent is a different story. It maintains that almost every GSM and UMTS base station its deployed in the last 10 years some 700,000 units can support some kind of upgrade, though Tom Krause, Alcatel-Lucents vice president overseeing the AT&T radio contract, acknowledged that some upgrades are easier than others. ALU has gone through several generations of base stations, so older networks would require more site work to make the move to LTE, while newer equipment is completely software configurable. If AT&T wanted to take the entire Alcatel-Lucent-built HSPA network and convert it into an LTE network, its possible, Krause said, but it would definitely require work, and ultimately its not what AT&T plans to do. AT&T wants to reuse what it can from its 3G deployment for 4G, but it isnt looking to replace one with the other, he said. What AT&T is doing today is building a 3G network in such a way that when theyre ready to pull the trigger on 4G, a lot of the network is already built, Krause said.
April 2010
SMART PIPES
_ SM A RT GR I D
REMOTE ENERGY MANAGEMENT COMES TO TOWN

Telcos like IT companies should seek a role in energy management, with or without utilities as partners.
BY SARAH REEDY
Most communications service providers are currently focused on offering backhaul communication solutions to utilities looking to delve into the smart grid, but that doesnt mean theyre not equipped to offer more. Theres room for telcos alongside IT companies and home-area network vendors to carve out a niche in remote energy management (REM), with or without the help of a utility. The impetus for that opportunity is a simple fact: Energy demand is growing faster than supply. This is driving the move toward smartening up the electrical grid, but REM services dont depend on the presence of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), the first step most utilities are taking today. They can be sold, or offered free of charge, as part of a CSPs service bundle. The utilities are only exploring the market because they need to shed their peak loads, said Bill Ablondi, director
of home systems for Parks Associates. [Telcos] could provide monitoring and the ability to control things over the Web in the home whether you are in the home or not, Ablondi said. It could make sense because these types of systems could be set up before utilities decide on their approach to the home-area network. There are only a few trials out there right now, but the technology is capable of monitoring consumption on the circuits in the home or helping a consumer change the temperature setting on a water heater or the HVAC system to save energy. For CSPs, their motivation stems from the potential for additional average revenue per user from their existing networks or, at the least, the ability to increase stickiness among their customer base. Consumers have indicated they are willing to pay in the short term for longer-term savings. Parks found that 80% to 85% of households are
26
Photo courtesy of Ecobee
Google PowerMeter came up a while ago with quite a willing to pay $80 to $100 for cost-saving equipment if bit of press and awareness, Ablondi said. It developed they are guaranteed to save 10% to 30% off their monthly awareness in the consumer marketplace, as well as in electricity bill. various federal agencies, for the fact that technology is On the other hand, only 15% to 20% of consumers are available for consumers to better understand and track likely to sign up for time-of-use or demand-response protheir energy usage and possibly take action on that. grams, and 35% do not want utilities to control systems Microsoft, meanwhile, recently said it expects the in their home no matter what the potential savings, f i rst energ y dev ices Parks found. That doesnt imply smart meters, energy manthat they would want a CSP to do it agement dashboards and either, but they might be more amiPOWER PLAYERS thermostats to link to its cable to a remote energy manageA variety of companies are making a play to provide Hohm online Web service, ment platform that ties into their services for in-home power management: following its recent release existing services. of a software development The question is will energy manGOOGLE kit for it. Both Google and agement be a viable standalone serIts PowerMeter is a free electricity usage Microsoft partner with utilivice, Ablondi asked. We, at this monitoring tool that provides you with information on how much electricity your home is consuming. ties, as well as offer their point, feel its better to [combine] beta services direct to conthat with other services consumMICROSOFT sumers free of charge. ers already pay for. Then theres the Released a software development kit to link I n ot her energ y se c possibility of adding some value for energy devices to its Microsoft Hohm energy tor developments, Bloom the consumers. management portal. Energy recently came out of CSPs biggest barriers could come eight years of stealth mode in the form of obtaining utility-conBLOOM ENERGY to a bevy of media excitetrolled usage data and their ability Offers a distributed-energy fuel-cell technology ment. The company, which to act on event alerts that come from that can power entire business locations. already counts Coca Cola, the utility, Ablondi said. It brings eBay and Google among its up the non-trivial question of who beta customer list, is offerowns the consumer data and CSPs ing a distributed-energy fuel-cell technology that can resultant access to it. In Texas, at least, the answer is the power entire campuses. According to the companys consumer. All smart meter deployments that take place founders, the technology can take almost any fuel and in Texas require that the customer owns the consumer turn it into electricity, cheaply and efficiently. The more energy usage data, and they can have access to it whenboxes a company adds, the more electricity it receives. ever they want, said Farhan Abid, research analyst with Bloom is focusing on corporations now but could someParks Associates. For CSPs to play an active role, utilities day when costs come down become a competitor in have to publish their consumer data, and consumers the home, as well. would have to sign off on it. Ablondi admitted that with all the major players in IT giants Google and Microsoft are also showing that the market today, it remains to be seen how the space REM services dont necessarily require a utility. Google will shake out. But with energy demands continuing to recently received clearance from the Federal Energy outpace supply, moves will have to be taken. The point Regulatory Commission to buy and sell electricity on was raised at the Smart Energy Summit that the energy federally regulated wholesale energy markets. This puts market resembles the telecom market back in the 60s. Google Energy on the same level as a utility company It used to be that AT&T owned the network and the if it wants to be. The IT giant has said it plans to exercise phones on it until the Carterfone decision allowed other this power (which other large companies like Wal-Mart devices to connect to the network under the provision share) to cut its own sizable energy bills, as well as to that they didnt harm the system, Ablondi said. If that buy more energy generated from renewable sources. It same approach was taken to the electricity meter, he maintains its altruism in this space, highlighted by its asked, how would that change the game? goal of carbon neutrality.
April 2010
SMART PIPES
_TELEPR E SENCE
TELEPRESENCE:
NOT JUST FOR MEETINGS ANYMORE
Emerging applications in health care, education and manufacturing offer new opportunities for service providers.
BY JOAN ENGEBRETSON
When people first shake hands with Peter Quinlan, director of managed telepresence services for Tata Communications, they often start to say Nice to meet you but then hesitate. If people have already interacted with Quinlan using telepresence, they may feel as though they have already met him. Tata is one service provider that has pursued the telepresence opportunity most aggressively. Telepresence, an advanced form of videoconferencing, aims to simulate the experience of a face-to-face meeting by using HD, jitter-free video coupled with spatial audio. Once you
use it once or twice, youre hooked on it, Quinlan said. Only a small fraction of the 230,000 videoconferencing systems sold worldwide in 2009 were telepresence systems, according to Wainhouse Research. But the technology is earning a following, and Wainhouse expects to see its share of the videoconferencing market increase substantially over the next five years. Depending on the number of sites connected and the equipment involved, a telepresence meeting could include as many as 300 people. Whoever is talking at any moment appears on screen virtually life size.
As Dave Martella, director of operations for Ciscos telepresence business unit explained, You can have 300 people in a meeting, and everyone is effectively across the table from everyone else. Internally, Cisco has installed 700 of its own telepresence systems worldwide, which have improved productivity by reducing the time and expense of travel. But Martella has also seen employees use telepresence from different rooms in the same building because the system puts everyone on equal footing. There is no back row, Martella said, Everybody is right there in the heart of the meeting.
28
But telepresence isnt just for meetings anymore and Cisco isnt the only organization that has found that participating in an event via telepresence can sometimes be preferable to being there. Medical students at Barrow Neurological Institute have used it to view live brain surgery conducted by doctors. With this approach, the students avoid the possibility of disturbing the surgeons and are able to view associated X-rays in HD on the systems electronic whiteboard. Another emerging application for telepresence is quality assurance or other applications involving the approval process for visual materials. Telepresence totally changed the way one packaged goods manufacturer does business with its advertising agency, Martella said. The two organizations, based in different states, now review mockups of new campaigns using telepresence, thereby eliminating the need to overnight those materials. In a similar vein, Andrew Davis, senior analyst and partner with Wainhouse Research, said that decision-makers at Tommy Hilfiger use telepresence to approve samples of new clothing styles manufactured overseas. Davis added that educational institutions are perhaps the biggest users of traditional videoconferencing equipment and he sees opportunities for enhancing and expanding distance learning. Duke University, for example, has used telepresence to offer classes overseas. Its a revenue opportunity for the university and an educational opportunity for students who cant travel, Davis said. The telepresence equipment can even be used to enable professors to offer remote office hours, he added. Applications need to be compelling to justify the upfront and ongoing costs of telepresence. HewlettPackard, for example, sells systems under the Halo brand that range in
price from $125,000 for a two-seat system to $350,000 for a complete studio that seats as many as 12 and includes four walls and a ceiling. User organizations also pay about $12,000 to $18,000 a month for a DS-3 or fractional DS-3 connection managed by HP, which includes unlimited usage as well as a concierge service to help in setting up connections and remotely diagnosing any technical problems. Average usage is about 150 hours a month, said Darren Podrabsky, global marketing manager for HPs Halo collaborative solutions, and 70% to 80% of customers purchase an additional system within six months. HP made the decision to manage its own network because it wanted to ensure reliability. Underlying HPs network are a range of Tier 1 service providers, and eventually the company may consider enlisting service providers to take a more active role in supporting the Halo offering, Podrabsky said. Organizations purchasing telepresence systems from other manufacturers including Cisco, Polycom and Tandberg typically use a service provider to manage the connection. Davis estimated that about 75% of telepresence systems use connections managed by service providers and he doesnt envision that dynamic changing any time soon. These systems are used by senior people who expect high reliability, high quality and a pleasing user experience, Davis said. If youre a videoconferencing manager for a pharmaceutical company, you welcome having an expert to provide that high level of service. Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president for Yankee Group, agrees. Telepresence wont be successful without the service providers, he said. Networks become more valuable the more people are connected to them, Kerravala added and service providers will be critical to
enabling telepresence sites to interconnect with one another. Tata claims to be the service provider with the most extensive infrastructure for interconnecting telepresence sites. The company operates three telepresence exchanges around the world one more than any of its competitors, said Greg Brophy, director of product marketing for Tata. The companys exchanges enable equipment from disparate manufacturers to interoperate, and through interconnection agreements with other network operators, including AT&T and BT, it also can interconnect sites on different provider networks. People tell us we have the most flexible and user-friendly offer, Brophy said. Customers can connect to Tatas exchanges using Tatas network or another operators. Tata offers several different levels of managed connections, including concierge service, or customers can manage their own connections. In addition, the company operates 12 public telepresence rooms worldwide and makes its infrastructure available to other service providers on a wholesale basis. Partners can either resell Tatas offering or bring their own connections to Tatas exchanges. Many service providers, however, have been less willing to share the telepresence opportunity with other providers and that will need to change to make telepresence successful, Kerravala said. This will require more work upfront than most service providers are used to, he said. They will have to be more intimate with their customers and not fear partnering with other service providers. Ser v ice prov iders a lso must work on minimizing the amount of advance notice they need to set up a connection. Today, they typically need at least half an hour, sometimes longer and for some applications, thats too long.
April 2010
SMART PIPES
_TELEPR E SENCE
Dr. Todd Rowland, executive director for HealthLINC, pointed to one potentially hot telepresence application that will need shorter setup times. In a recent demonstration using the Internet2 academic and research network, two physicians remotely consulted with each other while jointly reviewing a patients records. It facilitated good one-on-one interaction and didnt require a lot of preplanning, Rowland said. But before such applications can be widely adopted, they will need the ability to connect and pull up patient records on the fly, he added. I wouldnt say there are great solutions yet, Rowland said. We need to see more ad hoc solutions.
Academic and research networks such as Internet2 and National LambdaRail are beginning to talk with telepresence manufacturers with the goal of influencing the design of future systems. On National LambdaRails wish list is what Wendy Huntoon, chief technology officer for the organization, called a visualization environment that would graphically display large data sets. People could have interactive discussions, zooming in and out on the data set with everyone seeing the same thing, Huntoon said. In a similar vein, Mike LaHaye, director of technical services for Internet2, said he would like to see telepresence manufacturers offer
options above and beyond the traditional conference room setup, such as classroom or medical clinic configurations. They need to understand what it means to create a high-quality immersive environment for these different settings, he said. Despite the need for refinements, virtually everyone interviewed for this story envisions a much greater role for telepresence and for service providers supporting telepresence moving forward. For many companies visual communications will be core to the way they do business but not core to their business, Wainhouses Davis said. Therefore there will be growing interest in having experts provide these services.
CL ASSIFIEDS
SERVICES & PRODUCTS
30
SOURCES
CONNECTED PLANET, Volume 2, No. 4 (ISSN 2150-5276) is published monthly by Penton Media Inc., 9800 Metcalf Ave., Overland Park, KS, 662122216. Canadian Post Publications Mail agreement No. 40597023. Canada return address: Bleuchip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2. Editorial and advertising offices are at 330 N. Wabash Ave., Suite 2300, Chicago, IL 60611; 800-458-0749. Corporate office is at 249 West 17th St., New York, NY 10011. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Persons may subscribe at the following rates: USA, 1 year, $84; 2 year, $125. Outside USA, 1 year, $147. For subscriber services or to order single copies, write to CONNECTED PLANET, P.O. Box 2100, Skokie, IL 60076-7800 U.S.; call 866-505-7173 (USA) or 847-763-9504 (Outside USA). Current and back issues and additional resources, including subscription request forms and an editorial calendar, are available at www.telephonyonline.com. REPRINTS: Reprints available through Penton Media Reprints. Call 888-8588851 or e-mail reprints@pentonreprints. com. PHOTOCOPIES: Authorization to photocopy items for internal, personal or instructional use may be obtained from the Copyright Clearance Center at 978750-8400. Obtain further information at copyright.com. ARCHIVES AND MICROFORM: This publication is available for research and retrieval of selected archived articles from leading electronic databases and online search services, including Factiva, LexisNexis and ProQuest. For microform availability, contact National Archive Publishing Company at 800-521-0600 or 734-761-4700, or search the Serials in Microform listings at napubco.com. PRIVACY POLICY: Your privacy is a priority to us. For a detailed policy statement about privacy and information dissemination practices related to Penton Media products, please visit www. penton.com. COPYRIGHT 2010. Penton Media Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to CONNECTED PLANET, P.O. Box 2100, Skokie, IL 60076-7800 USA.
Alcatel-Lucent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23, 24, 25 www.alcatel-lucent.com Apple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 www.apple.com AT&T. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 12, 24, 25 www.att.com Cisco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 28, 29 www.cisco.com Ericsson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24, 25 www.ericsson.com Google . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15, 27 www.google.com/corporate GSM Association. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 www.gsmworld.com HealthLINC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 www.hilltopchc.org HP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 www.hp.com Internet2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 www.internet2.edu Iowa Telecom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 www.iowatelecom.com Joint Innovation Lab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 www.jil.org
Level 3 Communications . . . . . . . . 13, 14, 15 www.level3.com LiMo Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 www.limofoundation.org Microsoft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 www.microsoft.com nTelos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 www.ntelos.com Skype. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 17, 18, 19 www.skype.com SureWest Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 www.surewest.com T-Mobile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 www.t-mobile.com Tata Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28, 29 www.tatacommunications.com TDS Telecom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 www.tdstelecom.com Verizon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19 www.verizon.com Vermont Telecommunications Authority . . . 15 www.telecomvt.org Wholesale Applications Community. . . . . . 23 www.wholesaleappcommunity.com
ADVERTISERS
ADC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 www.adc.com/osp/connectbook Cobank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 www.cobank.com EXFO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IFC-1 See ad Verizon Wholesale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 See ad
April 2010
FINAL WORD
BY STEVE HAWLEY, TVSTRATEGIES

Steve Hawley is principal analyst and consultant for tvstrategies.
The Post-IPTV Era has begun.

2010 is shaping up to be a pivotal yea r for broadba nd- del ivered video, and theres a g row i ng rec ognition that we have entered the Post-IPTV Era. Have you noticed how many methods of video delivery there are now? A few years ago, we started seeing hybrid IP-broadcast or IP-satellite services reach scale. But now, operators are concerned with video traffic from services like Netflix, TV shows delivered over the top from content owners, and with video delivery to non-set-top-box (STB) devices (not to mention the peer-to-peer video traffic generated by Skype and illegal downloads). Weve come a long way from the siloed view of TV as a stand-alone service and have arrived in the world of multiplay. Not only is bundling a basic fact, but many operators have added mobility to the TV experience, with remote personal video recorder (PVR) features that allow subscribers to program their recordings from afar and even allow people to watch the shows on non-fixed devices. Which leads to another interesting development: Place-shifting is about to become a basic feature of Dish Network. Its sister company, EchoStar, acquired Sling Media in 2007, and when EchoStar announced its own wireless video monitor in 2008, people saw it as a head-scratcher. But when Dish begins to ship its Sling-enabled ViP922 STB this year, along with several devices that retrofit existing TVs and STBs with place-shifting, theyll have a competitive edge over IPTV, at least with the early-adopter set. This also shows that IPTV isnt just for telcos anymore. Satellite operators like DirecTV and Dish are increasingly dependent on a broadband IP connection to deliver their full experiences. Cablecos are introducing IP technologies into their networks and application platforms. Some operators have pursued a strategy of putting just their little toes into the video stream. Frontier just announced the launch of an Internet video site with thousands of videos, none of which are exclusive. From a revenue perspective, what are they thinking? Some still see IPTV as a solution to an engineering problem and not so much a business (let alone a significant component, as AT&T acknowledges when it says U-verse is on track to be a $3 billion business this year). Last year, all eyes were on ZillionTV and its Internet-delivered video solution. Hopefully, Qwests recent investment will help it get past the final hurdles into production deployment. If telcos like Fron-
Weve come a long way from the siloed view of TV as a standalone service and have arrived in the world of multiplay.
tier are loath to build a full set of IPTV facilities, they at least would do well to partner with the likes of ZillionTV. An unmanaged video portal does not get them into the video game, and it makes nothing of the revenue potential of their broadband networks. In the face of all of these changes, did you notice that IPTV is getting the best ratings by consumer researchers? This isnt just a matter of operators having effective media relations teams its fact. AT&T, Verizon and others with whole-home DVR have a leg up on cablecos that implement each PVR set-top as a single repository that cant share. Widgets and apps are also an area of IPTV advantage. So just because the Post-IPTV Era has begun, it doesnt mean that the IPTV Era is suddenly over. But it does mean that IPTV operators should keep at least one eye fixed on the rear-view mirror because the landscape shifts suddenly without advance notice and threats always seem to emerge from the unlikeliest of places.
32
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UP R F ON T:

CISCOS ROU TER SPL A SH

PUTTING NETWORKS TO WORK

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MAKE THEM PAY OFF?

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9 OPINION 30 MARKETPLACE/HELP WANTED 31 SOURCES/ADVERTISERS 32 FINAL WORD

28 TELEPRESENCE TAKES OFF

( connected planet | April 2010

EDITORS LET TER

A PENTON MEDIA PUBLICATION

The Sustainable Networks Roadshow, June, Chicago.

SHARON ROWLANDS, President/CEO sharon.rowlands@penton.com

CIRCULATION BLAIR JOHNSON, Vice President, Business Development blair.johnson@penton.com

( connected planet | April 2010

Read more about developments in the mobile space in Kevin Fitchards

Cisco aims router at video deluge

T-Mobile: M2M connections to outnumber humans 4-to-1

( connected planet | April 2010

ABI: 2009 wasnt quite so dire for wireless vendors.

Independents face voice line challenge

Spectrum: Public trust or cash cow?

STIMULUS WISHES AND BROADBAND DREAMS

( connected planet | April 2010

THE FASTEST BROADBAND COUNTIES IN THE U.S.

( connected planet | April 2010

OPERATORS EMBRACE SKYPE,

BUT AT ARMS LENGTH

( connected planet | April 2010

( connected planet | April 2010

( connected planet | April 2010

POWER TO THE API

( connected planet | April 2010

INSIDE AT&TS 3G-TO-4G

( connected planet | April 2010

REMOTE ENERGY MANAGEMENT COMES TO TOWN

( connected planet | April 2010

Photo courtesy of Ecobee

( connected planet | April 2010

( connected planet | April 2010

BY STEVE HAWLEY, TVSTRATEGIES

The Post-IPTV Era has begun.

( connected planet | April 2010

New year. New solutions. New Web site.

Enhanced Coverage Better Navigation Expanded Online Community

S: CONNECTED PLANET FOCU

dont always have tim

or search industry Web telecom news and co

mmentary. When you

content comes to you

and focused. Our 7 top news a step further, fea

that you cant get anyw get the exact informati

else. Now, its easy to

wanton the topics yo

u need to know about!

Call your sales manager for more info:

Western Manager Nicole Ozmai 720.227.1958 nicole.ozmai@penton.com

Inside Sales Representative Susan Shepherd 312.840.8432 susan.shepherd@penton.com