Stretching for new business: service providers today are expecting equipment suppliers to deliver extra revenue, and not just technology. CTO Niel Ransom tells group editor Robert Clark how the French vendor has re-focused on systems, moved into services and learnt how to partner - One-To-One

Telecom Asia, Dec, 2003 by Robert Clark

That's not necessarily a good story for the carriers. They don't see themselves as providing nothing more than IP routing. Where we've been working--and we'll just say in contrast to some of the things of Microsoft--is to find ways to put the value in the network. Yes we believe there will be smart terminals, and of course there will be intelligent servers, but we believe that having intelligence in the network as well provides a lot of advantages. And we think that the carriers are in a good position to provide this value because they have certain sustainable advantages from just who they are.

For instance, the carriers have a lot of trust from the end-users, and providing security services and so forth, the users are willing to use the carriers in providing those kind of services. For instance, firewall services built into the network and managed by the network. They trust carriers to do that.

Also, the carriers are very good at doing micro-billing. It's routine for them to measure and put together a bill based on a five-cent event and having that kind of microbilling capability puts them in great shape to provide a lot of these new services, for which the use of a given element might only be a few cents.

Let's look a bit more forward. Are we going to see at some point in the future absolute seamlessness between all kinds of networks?

One of the big trends that is starting to happen right now, is wireless wireline convergence. Frankly, every carrier that I talk to these days wants to talk to me about that and find out what Alcatel are planning to do in that space.

The biggest part is service continuity. People don't want a separate voice mailbox for their cellphone different from the one they have at home. They don't see any reason, if they're sending short messages on their cellphone, that they can't do the same thing with their fixed line phone at work or at home as well. And really there's no reason that they can't. The ability to provide seamless services across fixed network and the wireline is obviously something that is possible.

There's another type of wireless-wireline convergence that looks very interesting as well, and that's being able to use the same handset that you're using for mobile while you're at home. A lot of homes are being wired with DSL and cable modems, but these are connected to 802.11 wireless networks in the house. So they have wireless data capability at high speeds in the house, and there's no reason one couldn't have a dual-mode phone such that when you walk into the house, the phone also operates 802.11 and can recognize the spectrum in the house. And now certainly all the multimedia messaging that you were doing on your handset outside can operate even at higher speeds in the house. Obviously the coverage of the public wireless spectrum is not that good. A lot of neighborhoods don't have a lot of radio towers built around them, and coverage in the house can be rather spotty, and taking advantage of the spectrum in the house is of great benefit.