MPLS ready for China's core challenge; Chinese carriers have not yet traded in their ATM networks for Layer 2 MPLS for a very simple reason: ATM works just fine as is. However, that's about to change. China Unicom was the first to shift, and if that doesn't convince rivals, growing demand for bandwidth and service flexibility will

Telecom Asia, April, 2004 by John C. Tanner

Yet another driver, says Wu of Nortel, is the growing attention being given to forward-looking NGN solutions.

"When our customers talk to us, they don't look at just MPLS. They're looking for an end-to-end NGN that serves as a converged multimedia core network that supports VoIP and 3G traffic and provides the same 5-9s reliability as the traditional PSTN," Wu says. "MPLS is a part of that, but it's just one part of the broader solution.

Poon agrees, pointing out that service providers will need to define and deploy new services based on changing market needs and expectations, complete with SLAs, and NGN platforms are the ticket to that game. China Telecom's Shanghai branch has already deployed an NGN platform in Shanghai, and Poon reckons that's just the beginning of a new market phenomenon.

"Other service providers will follow suit to keep pace with the market evolution in the coming years," she says.

Even so, she adds, Chinese carriers still face plenty of questions about MPLS migration that need to be sorted first.

"The immediate question is whether they should use a single-source, best-in-class solution or a multi-vendor approach," she says. "Also, the integration of service management from different vendors is critical. China Telecom indicated that it would probably use an umbrella NMS [network management system] to manage all vendors' edge routers, although the use of one edge router vendor to manage others is preferable."

LAYER 2 MPLS IN CHINA

The holdup                         The drivers

ATM works fine for current demand  High opex and upgrade costs for ATM
Popularity of frame/ATM services   Demand for service flexibility and
                                   SLAs
MPLS deployment costs              Bandwidth needs rising
Router reliability                 Forward-looking NGN strategies
Vendor interoperability            2008 Olympics