***COMNET 2003
January 27-30
by James Sneeringer
Washington Convention Center
Washington DC
This was the 25th year of COMNET, but there was little to
celebrate in the sessions or on the exhibit floor. The
conference continues to slide, with significantly lower
attendance for the second year in a row, a smaller exhibit floor,
and many empty seats in the sessions. COMNET has always been
about selling to the government and local businesses, but in the
past it has also been a good place to seek insight into
communications policy and regulatory issues. This too was
reduced this year, with policy coverage consisting only of two
events--the traditional featured panel of government
representatives, and a session covering spectrum management
issues. With few press announcements or big players present, the
conference appears to be falling off the national map.
Yet, the conference provided us with a busy two days of
attendance, including insight into the recent FCC satellite
spectrum ruling, a DSL answer to the efficiencies of DOCSIS, Wi
Fi security providers, and peeks into the future of both
communications policy and collaborative communication.
Communications Policy Town Meeting
Twenty five years ago Richard Wiley was one of the co-founders of
COMNET, and to this day he continues to moderate the panel of
government representatives that is COMNET's signature. A former
Chairman of the FCC, Richard is now a senior partner at the law
firm Wiley, Rein & Fielding LLP. His panel is always one of the
most important events at the conference.
This year the participants were representatives from the FCC,
NTIA, Senate Commerce Committee, and NARUC, the National
Association of State Utility Commissioners.
- Brad Ramsay, General Counsel of NARUC, echoed the
sentiments of the other panel members when he said that the
1996 Telecommunications Act has been successful overall, but
the task now must be to reduce the uncertainty present in
the telecom markets. Success was judged by a number of
factors, including lower overall phone rates, increased
competition for local phone service, and ever-growing
broadband penetration numbers.
- Bryan Tramont, a Senior Legal Advisor at the FCC, shifted
some of the uncertainty onto the back of the court system,
pointing out that twice, courts have struck down FCC UNE
rate regulatory schemes. But Kevin Kayes, Democratic Staff
Director for the Senate Commerce Committee, stated that the
courts overturned the FCC rules simply because they were not
backed up well enough by data from the markets being
regulated. To Kevin the key is granularity--no one set of
general rules will be applicable or fair to all markets.
- The Senate Commerce Committee recently held a hearing on
the issue of unbundled network elements (UNE) and
competition in telecommunications. A key question was--
where do the states fit? Kevin summarized the feeling in
the committee following the hearing: states need to be
involved, and could provide a local, more specific venue to
oversee rate regulations than the federal government. He
indicated there was some support in the committee for a two-
tiered solution, with the FCC setting general guidelines,
and the state utility boards enacting actual UNE rate
regulations, based on their finer understanding of local
markets. Yet, Bryan Tramont pointed out that the 1996
Telecom statue requires that the FCC set the elements for
UNE. Michael Gallagher, a Deputy Assistant Secretary at
NTIA, went further by stating that state-by-state
regulations may prove hostile to national offerings--one
cannot have 50 different standards for VoIP. Brad debated
him vigorously on this point both during and after the
panel. The interaction between state and federal regulators
remains dynamic, and may take center stage when the FCC
addresses its UNE obligations later this month.
- Challenged by the moderator as to why the Bush
administration has not articulated a clear broadband policy,
Michael Gallagher stated that there is a clear position--
"broadband is positive and should be encouraged." He laid
out 5 ways in which the government has taken action to
encourage broadband deployment:
-- Tax incentives for infrastructure investment by
telecom companies;
-- Extending the Internet Tax Freedom Act;
-- $52 billion per year government spending on IT
technology;
-- Work to open up foreign markets for export of
technology; and
-- Regulatory action to stimulate the explosion of
wireless networking.
- Can 3G succeed with the spectrum it has now? Bryan
Tramont summed up Chairman Powell's feelings:
-- Government serves the consumer best by putting
spectrum into private hands.
- Yet, there are real government interests that must be
appeased. Michael Gallagher sees the new 90MHz allocation
for 3G coming online at just the right time in the near
future, but don't expect any more. Kevin agreed--one does
not go to the DoD during war time to negotiate for spectrum.
Yet, Michael sees two advantages for 3G in the US.
-- The spectrum use can be flexible--more voice or data
as needed.
-- US companies are not saddled with debt as the
Europeans are.
- Consolidation of wireless companies is to some extent
inevitable. The Nextwave situation will likely provide
carriers with a way to grow by buying slices of spectrum
rather than wholesale acquisitions of other companies.
Bryan pointed to the lifted spectrum cap as key to enabling
consolidation in the future. Michael will look for more
partnerships and sharing the short term, particularly
between vertical segments of the market.
The Future of Wireless
Given by Craig Mathias, a Principal with the Farpoint Group, this
session identified seven technologies that he feels will define
the future of wireless. His refrain was--we have the technology
today to allow wireless to achieve parity with wireline. The
list:
W-CDMA
- Wide-band CDMA, this is the basis for most 3G systems.
OFDM
- Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing. This
multiplexing system is used currently in 802.11a and 802.11g
standards, and could be used in future WAN deployments to
provide greater data rates. One company investigating this
use is Flarion.
http://www.flarion.com
Smart Antennas
- Phased array base station antennas that can track the
movements of each user and target the RF signal. By
targeting the RF at the user, the effective range from the
base station can be increased, or it may accommodate more
users. Companies include Vivato and Arraycomm.
vivato.net
www.arraycomm.com
Ultra-wideband (UWB)
- Radio signals spread across several GHz of bandwidth. The
tremendous bandwidth minimizes interference effects and
allows high data rates with very low power usage. Currently
allowed by the FCC only at very low power levels, due to
spectrum ownership issues. Companies include Time Domain
and Extreme Spectrum.
www.timedomain.com
www.extremespectrum.com
Self-Organizing Mesh Networks
- Each wireless node becomes a router, forwarding data to
the next node. Companies include Mesh Networks, Ricochet,
and FHP Wireless.
www.meshnetworks.com
www.ricochet.com
www.fhpwireless.com
Software-Defined Radios (SDR)
- Analog signal circuitry is replaced by ultra-high speed
digital processors--putting a very fast computer into each
radio. The advantage is that encoding, modulation, and
operating frequencies are controlled by firmware and may be
updated or changed easily. Bug fixes can be pushed into
devices as needed. The downside is that even basic CDMA
would require speeds of around 14 gigaflops (floating point
operations per second), and more advanced protocols may
require hundreds. For now SDRs exist only in theory and
several research labs. They are most likely to appear in
base stations first due to power and cooling requirements.
A real challenge will be providing the analog-side silicon
to handle the variable RF.
"4G" Systems
- This is a catch-all term for wireless systems that
transport over IP natively. On such a system voice and data
are indistinguishable when in transit, except perhaps for
packet prioritization to ensure QoS for time-bounded
communications (such as telephony). This is essentially
extending the Internet over wireless systems. Companies
working on this include
-- Flarion -- OFDM to 3Mb/s
http://www.flarion.com
-- Tantivy -- I-CDMA to 1Mb/s
http://www.tantivy.com
-- Qualcomm -- 1xEV-DO and 1xEV-DV to 2.4 Mb/s
http://www.qualcomm.com
Craig sees wide-area wireless broadband as possible within 6
years. Yet, there are many issues to overcome to reach that
point, including technical issues such as processor speed, power
supply, and cooling. Though relatively unaddressed by the
session, regulatory issues may present an even greater obstacle.
The lobbying power of incumbent spectrum owners could have a
serious effect on UWB and SDRs in particular.
Spectrum Management for 2003
After a lengthy introduction to the RF spectrum and the ways it
is used, this session got down to business. Michael Lewis,
Engineering Consultant, and Eric DeSilva, Partner of the law firm
Wiley, Rein & Fielding laid out the current spectrum management
system, the results of various recent reports, and thoughts on
the future of spectrum regulation in the US.
The FCC manages spectrum for non-governmental users, and the NTIA
manages spectrum for federal users, as well as advocating for
them at the FCC. As spectrum becomes more precious with the
growth of wireless services of all kinds, the interaction between
the FCC and NTIA is one of several weak spots in the current US
government approach to regulation. In the biggest picture the
central issue facing spectrum managers is the search for greater
efficiencies in spectrum use. The current FCC administration
intends to look to the private markets as much as possible to
find those efficiencies. Yet, the FCC is bounded in what it can
do by several factors, including:
- International spectrum allocations;
- Government uses (military and EMS);
- Incumbent spectrum owners; and
- Lack of a clear national spectrum strategy.
Eric and Michael detailed four recent reform initiatives, and the
recommendations they produced.
NTIA Spectrum Summit
- Better coordination between agencies is needed.
- The spectrum allocation process should be shorter and more
pro-active.
- Incumbent spectrum users must be dealt with more
rationally.
- Look to encourage more efficient technologies, such as
SDRs.
GAO Spectrum Management Report
- The FCC and NTIA should jointly develop a clear national
spectrum strategy,
-- To guide spectrum management, and
-- To promote unified US positions at WRCs (World Radio
Conferences).
- NTIA must improve management and accountability for
federal use of spectrum.
FCC Spectrum Policy Task Force Report
- Increase flexibility in rules governing spectrum use and
power limits;
- Clearly define spectrum user's rights and
responsibilities;
- Facilitate secondary markets for spectrum;
- Develop a quantitative measure of interference--an
interference "temperature"; and
- Shift from "command and control" to an exclusive and
commons model for licensing spectrum use.
FCC Office of Plans and Policy White Paper
- Use auctions to determine most spectrum allocations as
well as licenses;
-- With the exception of unlicensed bands and public
safety.
FCC command and control allocations specified not only the
purpose for which spectrum could be used, but also technically
how it could be used. For instance, all original cellular
telephony licensees were required to run AMPS--the American
Mobile Phone System. The exclusive/commons allocation model
leaves the technology to the companies, with allocations
specifying only the type of service to which the spectrum could
be put (such as cellular telephony), but not the technologies
that could accomplish that service. Exceptions would include
"commons" allocations (unlicensed bands such as the current 2.4
GHz), and such command and control as is necessary to ensure
public safety. But as much as possible, the market would decide
the successful spectrum technologies.
For this to work, companies must be able to buy and sell licensed
spectrum that is not being used efficiently. The FCC therefore
would need to define very explicitly what the rights of license
holders are, including with regard to interference. The
commission seems to be committed to developing a way to quantify
the amount of interference as a "temperature"--a number which can
be assigned strict limits. The FCC is already working to
increase the ease with which spectrum licensed can be transferred
from one entity to another, including developing spectrum leasing
and 3rd party management schemes.
In the future the FCC wants to see spectrum technologies
developing according to the private markets, with spectrum
licenses moving from existing owners to more efficient uses
according to market forces. Yet, between here and there stand
the current spectrum owners, many of whom spent millions of
dollars to acquire exclusive, protected rights. The FCC seeks to
implement the transition in a number of ways:
- Reduce the burdens on transacting previously assigned
licenses;
- Allow subdivisions of existing licenses;
- Create incentive for more efficient use, by charging fees
for inefficient use; and
- Reallocate existing users to new spectrum bands.
But, it is not all about the FCC. One of the problems going
forward will be the dual role that NTIA plays, as both regulator
of, and advocate for government use of spectrum. There is no
independent agency to arbitrate between private and government
users when a conflict arises, although the NTIA often serves this
purpose. Increased cooperation between the FCC and NTIA is
essential for the reforms to work. And, as Eric pointed out,
spectrum use is only growing outside the US. A clear spectrum
strategy would allow the US to present strongly at WRCs, where
international spectrum policy is decided.
Videoconferencing and Collaborative Communications
As part of the National Convergence Summit--collocated with
COMNET this year--Tandberg Americas President Brad Johnston
painted a picture of the ideal enterprise collaborative video
system. It has the attributes:
- High bandwidth converged video, voice, and data;
- Integrates seamlessly with existing network architecture;
- All features available to all users constantly;
- Easy access to video;
- Scales easily (growing the conversation);
- Same experience on any platform; and
- Robust management--control and logging.
The key for Brad was that end users just want to communicate--
they don't care about implementation. Right on. The key
therefore is a system that interacts seamlessly with a
heterogeneous network structure, but provides a homogeneous
experience to end users throughout the enterprise. Even
scheduling should look the same from any desk. The same is true
of management--consistency of experience is important. The
system is in place for a reason--to make or save money.
Management, especially logging and analysis, is the key to
providing and quantifying an ROI.
The issue of integration with existing networks is a core part of
Tandberg's marketing message, since they produce only software.
The typical implementation has three layers:
- Tandberg Solution -- End user
- Tandberg ACE -- Collaborative Communications Server
- Existing network architecture
The system can run over IP or ISDN. Tandberg's system is based
on the H323 standard, but in response to a question Brad stated
that there was little reason they could not support SIP as well--
if they felt it was sufficiently developed for video. Brad
stated that this was likely to be the result of development by
Microsoft, who is driving much of current SIP development. For
now, though, he sees SIP as firmly planted in voice
communications. Tandberg will focus on what they can do--H323--
and listen for any developments in SIP for video.
On the Expo Floor
Mobile Satellite Ventures
This is a provider of WAN and voice services via satellite, using
the occasion of COMNET to brief the press on the upcoming FCC
decision regarding ATCs (ancilliary terrestrial components) for
satellite service providers (see Hot Topics this issue).
Satellite signals work well in open rural areas, but not well in
urban areas, where the buildings block the satellite signal. An
ATC would allow a satellite provider to deploy cell towers in key
areas of cities, to provide local connectivity where the
satellite signal is blocked. It was opposed by existing cellular
providers. Some details from the briefing:
- MSV is a private company, formed in 2001 out of a merger
between Motient Corp. and the satellite business of TMI
Communications.
- MSVs customers consist primarily of first responders,
truckers, and oil and gas exploration crews. The primary
benefit of MSV's service is its nationwide coverage,
including remote rural and wilderness areas.
- Once the FCC approves the ATC (as they are expected to),
MSV will begin the process of rolling out their first ATC
deployments. They estimate full service within 3 years.
- MSV sells both retail service direct to customers, as well
as wholesale to resellers. A strong selling point is their
"dispatch radio"--push-to-talk groups that can be
nationwide. This would allow first responders from
different areas of the country to use their MSV phones to
form a spontaneous talk group at an emergency site, for
instance. The service currently has 10,000 members
nationwide, and is charged according to the area covered by
the service.
- Current retail prices are around $50-$60 per month--"Too
high" they noted.
- MSV has begun talks to line financing for the ATC roll
out, but does not have any investors yet. No one will sign
a deal without reading the actual FCC decision first, once
it is announced.
- MSV is also developing a next generation of their
technology, to coincide with the ATC roll out. The new
technology is expected to provide data rates of 160 kb/s
down anywhere in North America.
- Competitors include Inmarsat, MobileStar, and Iridium.
Celite Systems
This was the most exciting booth on the floor--a new take on DSL
deployment. Celite (sell-EET) has copied the design of cable
residential distribution and seeks to implement it over DSL.
From the carrier DSLAM, multiple DSL lines (up to 8) are bonded
together to feed data out to a single Serving Area Interface
(SAI), where the Celite DSL Headend is attached. This headend
provisions up to four hundred subscribers below that SAI at once,
over relatively short line lengths from the SAI to the homes. To
provision individual customers, the carrier simply sends them a
Celite modem and install CD--and the customer self-installs.
This is a carbon copy of the cable system, including the
protocol. The SAI with Celite equipment is equivalent to the
cable head-end, and Celite equipment is DOCSIS-enabled (but not
certified), to handle the point-to-multipoint communications.
This is DSL equipment that actually runs on the DOCSIS protocol.
Celite seeks to provide the economies of scale of the cable
system, to DSL providers. Standard DSL deployments require
physical action at the central office (CO) to complete each
customer's connection. Long line lengths from the CO to the
customer can limit data rates or block the signal. It is
expensive and time consuming to provision each customer.
On the Celite system, action is only needed with the initial
Celite installation at the SAI. Multiple DSL lines to the SAI
can be bundled and fitted with repeaters to make the hop to
distant SAIs, or carriers can deploy T1s to the SAIs. From the
SAI to the customer, line lengths are typically short, keeping
DSL data rates high. One truck roll can provision hundreds of
prospective subscribers. Once the Celite DSL Headend is
deployed, there would be little further cost associated with new
subscribers.
One effect of this architecture is that DSL becomes a "shared"
bandwidth, with all subscribers below an SAI sharing the
bandwidth to that SAI from the CO. This does take away the
"dedicated line" selling point of DSL, but that is only important
to businesses. Consumers are voting for cable over DSL with
their wallets in a ratio of 2 to 1 nationwide.
The company has completed product development and is currently
beginning a round of trials. For now they are focused on the
residential broadband market. Upgrades for future product lines
could include fiber to the DSL Headend, or guaranteed data rates
for business deployments.
www.celitesystems.com
Canon Canobeam
This was a company we covered last year, and we checked in again.
Canobeam is a line of IR free-space optics by Canon, featuring
their auto-track feature. Auto-tracking is beam stabilization
technology, that allows the optics of the system to compensate
for up to 4 degrees of shift in the optical alignment in any
direction. It is based on Canon's image stabilization technology
camera lenses and binoculars, which it has been developing for
well over a decade.
Because auto-track can compensate for movement, it can allow for
a tighter beam. Free-space optics systems without an auto-track
feature must use a wider beam to ensure to that the relative
motion of either sensor does not break the connection. A tighter
beam reduces the chance that the signal could be tapped by
placing a detector behind the primary detector to pick up the
overlap. A tighter beam also travels farther before dispersing--
increasing the range. Auto-track also eases set-up. The users
aim the sensors at each other using sights, and then the units
themselves dial in the final adjustments with electric motors.
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Canon saw a surge in
interest in their systems. Today, the increased level of
interest continues. Sales are up and there are lots of calls.
For many companies and government agencies, homeland security is
now a budget line item, funding contingency plans and
redundancies. Canon sells to federal, state and municipal
governments, and enterprises, for three purposes:
- Buy a system and put it in the closet for disaster
recovery;
- Set up systems to create redundancies in the network; or
- Use it to provide point-to-point communications--building
to building or closing a loop.
Wi Fi--the Impact of WPA
On the floor we spoke with WLAN security providers BlueSocket and
Funk Software, and equipment provider Proxim, about the impact of
the Wi Fi WPA standard on their businesses. We highlight some
quotes below:
- Proxim: Customers ask about WPA. Even our enterprise and
government customers ask whether we are WPA compatible.
That is the second question; whether we are Wi Fi certified
is the first. There has been no apparent impact of the new
WI Fi capability labels.
- BlueSocket: WPA secures the airlink, but it does nothing
once a packet makes it through the access point. BlueSocket
can provide intranetwork security (hide elements from
certain users), and policy enforcement--such as active
bandwidth management.
- Proxim: WPA is important, but enterprise customers don't
want to do it themselves. They want to buy an integrated
package from a vendor and save money.
- BlueSocket: WPA has not impacted our growth. In fact we
are seeing 40% revenue growth quarter to quarter. Our
target is enterprise, but our technology also works for
WISPs--it is deployed in Schipol airport (Netherlands) by a
WISP.
- Funk Software: We have not noticed an impact on sales by
WPA. Customers do ask about it regularly, and our software
is WPA compatible. Actually the enterprise WPA deployment
requires a RADIUS server for authentication--which we
produce. So, WPA will not hurt us. But will it have an
affect on the WLAN security market?--we don't know yet.
Wave Issue 0303 2/7/03 Article 2-01