Nortel Networks, Industry Leaders Come Together to Improve Rich, Broadband Content Delivery to Businesses and Consumers - Industry Trend or Event

Cambridge Telcom Report, April 10, 2000

Nortel Networks (NYSE/TSE:NT) and other industry-leading Internet infrastructure, content and service providers have joined together to establish the Broadband Content Delivery Forum (BCDF). The BCDF will focus on recommending open architectures to deliver rich, multimedia content over the emerging broadband networks and improve end user experience through improved performance and personalization. The goal of the group is to improve the experience while opening up new opportunities for service and content providers that increase value to customers.

"The BCDF is a key step toward breaking open the high-bandwidth services market," said Tim Johnson, senior analyst with Ovum, an international research and consulting company. "Ovum estimates that Internet advertising and applications service revenues alone will be worth over US$20 billion worldwide in 2001. But the full development of content service revenues will depend on streamlining access and communications for the subscriber. If the BCDF helps to do that, it will deliver significant benefits for everybody involved with content services."

"All of us should concentrate on our core competencies. What we need is a broadband alliance to make this new era happen, now. Bertelsmann will contribute with its leading knowledge in rich media content and applications to realize the convergence of television and Internet in a way that nobody has ever seen before," added Hardy Heine, executive vice president, Bertelsmann Broadband Group, Hamburg, Germany.

In addition to Nortel Networks, BCDF members include: Akamai, Aliant, Alta Vista, AT&T Broadband, BBC, Bertelsmann, Be Here Corporation, British Telecom, Broadband Digital Group, Broadjump, Canbras, CMGI, DSL Networks, El Mundo, Enron, First Mark Comm., Hewlett Packard, iKnowledge, InfoLibria, InfoSpace, Inktomi, NBCi, NetActive, Qwest, Redo Ajato Ltda., Starguide Digital Network, Sun Microsystems, Telocity, Telstra, TVA Sistema de Televisao S.A., Universo Online Ltda., and Zyan Communications. Anthony Alles, president and general manager, IP Services, Nortel Networks, will serve as interim chairman of the group until the BCDF's initial meeting this May.

The BCDF is open to, and solicits membership from, the entire broadband value chain to address the critical business issues of the entire industry. This includes wholesale access providers who want to maximize the value of their infrastructure; service providers who want to leverage the value of their subscriber base; content providers who want to enhance end users' experience by controlling the delivery and quality of the content; and the many different players in the content networking and management business who will have new opportunities to distribute and host broadband content at the edge of the network. Most importantly, the BCDF will concentrate on providing Internet subscribers what they truly value - a personalized broadband experience.

Today's Internet infrastructure architectures are optimized for dial-up links. This architecture hampers people from receiving the full potential of higher performance broadband access links. Rich content is delivered at a slower rate than the capabilities of the links, resulting in a sluggish and often unusable experience. In addition, end users and content providers need better tools to help personalize the Web experience and deliver more quickly and easily the content people want. The BCDF plans to focus on developing open architectures for improving the performance of broadband content delivery by bypassing Internet bottlenecks and by moving broadband content closer to the aggregation networks connected directly to end users - thereby improving personalization. The goal is to help people realize a better overall experience with rich content on broadband links while creating new opportunities for service and content providers to meet customer demands.

The BCDF will work on mechanisms for a `network login,' and for service advertisements, allowing service providers to recognize their subscribers and, unlike the transparent Internet of today, allow them to offer highly personalized content and applications services. Such content mediation technologies will allow wholesale access and service providers to partner with content providers to offer them access to their identified subscriber base, hence greatly reducing customer acquisition costs and allowing more targeted services.

"Nortel Networks initiated the creation of BCDF because we recognized that the evolving broadband Internet will be fundamentally different from the Internet as we know it today," said Anthony Alles, president and general manager, IP Services, Nortel Networks. "The Internet has historically been about ubiquitous connectivity, but tomorrow's high-performance Internet will be different. Customers want more than simple connectivity, they want the network to truly become `their world,' a place where they'll access personalized services, data, applications, and content - anywhere, anytime. In an era of free access, Internet services will drive the business case for broadband providers and soon, personalized services will be a multi-billion dollar industry. To realize the vision, today's industry leaders must come together to build tools and technologies, much as yesterday's leaders came together years ago, in bodies like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), to build the technologies of today's Internet. BCDF brings together fresh thinking and new perspectives to the mission of building the broadband business case."