CommsDay Magazine April 2015

Autumn 2015 • Published by Decisive • A CommsDay publication

The leadership teams steering Telstra, Optus and Vodafone through changing times

Switzerland blazes a trail for multi-technology broadband Future wireless: next-gen Wi-Fi and LTE-U The state of HFC

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5 Cover Story

Who’s who at the top of Aussie telecoms

Published several times annually.

CONTRIBUTIONS ARE WELCOME GROUP EDITOR: Petroc Wilton FOUNDER: Grahame Lynch COVER DESIGN: Peter Darby WRITERS: Geoff Long, Richard van der Draay, Grahame Lynch, Tony Chan ADVERTISING INQUIRIES: Sally Lloyd at sally@commsdaymail.com EVENT SPONSORSHIP: Veronica Kennedy-Good at veronica@mindsharecomms.com.au ALL CONTENTS OF THIS PUBLICATION ARE COPYRIGHT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CommsDay is published by Decisive Publishing, 4/276 Pitt St, Sydney, Australia 2000 ACN 13 065 084 960

Features 19 Australia’s NBN inspiration: Switzerland 24 LTE vs Wi-Fi 32 An interview with Alcatel-Lucent 37 The latest deal with HFC

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Who’s who at the top of Australia’s Big 3 telcos It’s a time of extraordinary change for Australia’s top-tier telcos. Almost within a single calendar year, the ‘Big 3’ operators by revenue – Telstra, Optus and Vodafone – have all announced new CEOs as they seek to either change or cement their respective fortunes. But Andy Penn, Allen Lew and Iñaki Berroeta are all backed by teams of key senior executives, whether company veterans or new hires, charged with controlling critical areas of their business. Petroc Wilton, Geoff Long and Richard van der Draay take a look at the top ranks of Australia’s telco elite. .

At the top of Telstra Geoff Long

C

EO Andy Penn has big shoes to fill when he officially takes over from David Thodey on 1 May 2015. Thodey’s tenure of just under six years saw him transform the business and double its value to over A$80 billion, leaving it with a dominant market share, a massive industry lead in revenues and profits, and exceptionally strong mobile network assets.

Making things easier, however, are an orderly succession and a blueprint to growth laid out by his predecessor and the senior management team - including Penn himself. Penn was appointed as Thodey's successor over a number of internal candidates and has played a key role in the company's success as CFO over the past three years, as well as additional responsibilities for international operations since May last year. He also has previous experience as a CEO. Prior to joining Telstra in 2012, Penn held

senior roles with insurance business AXA Asia Pacific for 20 years, the last five as CEO of the company.

Andy Penn Given his integral involvement with Thodey and the rest of the senior leadership team in strategy development, Penn says that his focus for

the moment is on execution, delivering on a “very clear path forwards.”

He also has a passion for Asia, a market which Telstra has been openly targeting for expansion for several years and has accelerated its growth into with, for example, the acquisition of Pacnet and a partnership with PT Telkom in Indonesia. Domestically, he’s looking to continue to invest in fixed and mobile network differentiation, and where necessary to invest to boost Telstra’s IP in areas like intelligent video and eHealth.

Backing Penn up is a well-established team of business leaders. Wholesale group executive Stuart Lee is the current Australian Communications Ambassador, having been given the honour at the most recent CommsDay/Communications Alliance ACOMM Awards.

The recognition came as a result of sustained and wide-ranging industry leadership, commitment to the bet-

terment of the sector and for his development of future industry leaders.

Lee has headed up the Telstra Wholesale division since 2011 but has over 40 years' experience with Telstra and its predecessor organisations after starting as a cadet engineer. An executive since 1987, he has held a variety of executive and senior roles across products, engineering, billing, marketing, IT, international, procurement, and operations. At one time or another he has led all of Telstra’s product portfolios, and worked across the consumer, business and enterprise segments.

Retail group executive Gordon Ballantyne arrived at Telstra in 2010 after a career spanning IT and telco across Europe. Previous roles included VP of HP's personal systems group in the UK and Ireland, as well as senior roles and an executive board member at T-Mobile in the UK. He took on the role of group executive of the newly formed Telstra retail business in October 2013.

Previous positions included group MD for the Consumer business and chief customer officer across all of Telstra's customer segments of consumer, business, enterprise and government, which he took on in July 2012.

COO Kate McKenzie first joined Telstra in August 2004 as head of Telstra's regulatory group and has held a number of key positions since then, culminating in her appointment as chief operations officer in October 2013. She is responsible for Telstra Operations, the Chief Technology Office and innovation portfolios to better integrate technology development and implementation. Prior to her current role, McKenzie was group MD for Telstra Innovation, Products and Marketing, where she oversaw product, promotion and pricing across Telstra. She has also overseen the rollout of Telstra's brand identity, has been at the forefront of the turnaround in Telstra's mobile business, and has led the company's transition to the NBN by creating differentiated products and

services in a highly competitive market.

Networks GMD Mike Wright is best known for his global leadership in the rollout of Telstra's 4G LTE network, one of its most prized assets and key competitive differentiators.

But he is also responsible for the engineering and internal construction capabilities of all of its networks: fixed, wireless and media.

He has over 30 years of telecoms engineering experience and has been highly engaged in the wireless technology evolution including a series of world leading developments such

Kate McKenzie as 200km cell range, HSPA evolution, the world’s largest HD Voice footprint and Australia’s first Cat 4 and LTE-A capabilities. Wright's network team is also driving the evolution and development of wireline network capabilities including low cost ADSL expansion techniques, DOCSIS 3 upgrades, 1Tbps optical transport trials, world-first Application Aware Networking capabilities and the evolution to new ASP network architectures.

Along with Wright, Products GMD Warwick Bray has been critical to the success of Telstra's mobile strategy in recent years. He leads the team responsible for Telstra’s mobile product set -- from strategy and planning through to development and lifecycle management.

Before joining the mobile product group, Bray was Telstra’s head of corporate strategy and worked with the CEO to redefine Telstra’s corporate growth strategy and renew Telstra’s emphasis on customer service. He has worked in the telecommunications industry for over 25 years in Europe, Asia and Australia, and was previously a partner at McKinsey London, where he advised incumbent, new entrant and mobile telecommunications companies on strategy, regulation, mergers and acquisitions, capital spend and operational effectiveness.

One of the most recognisable figures in Penn’s leadership team is corporate affairs group executive Tony Warren. Warren has been at the coalface of one of Telstra's most important tasks of the past few years – the $11 billion deal with NBN Co and the Australian government to ensure its participation in the national broadband network. Warren led the successful negotiations on behalf of Telstra and has also headed the team that recently concluded the renegotiations with the parties following the government's move to a multi-technology mix NBN. In his current role he is responsible for regulatory affairs, government relations, engagement, external and internal communications, and sustainability.

Prior to joining Telstra in 2002, Warren was a Director of the Network Economics Consulting Group, a major regulatory economics consulting firm.

On the other hand, a key player behind the scenes is business support and improvement group executive Robert Nason. He’s best known in recent times for his role in driving productivity and cost-savings in the so-called Project New initiative, which was also tasked with simplifying the business. That transformation that he first started in 2010 continues today, allowing the costsavings to be reinvested into the telco’s mobile business and new growth sectors such as the key network applications and services division. Prior

to joining Telstra in 2010, Nason was MD for wagering at Tabcorp. He also has two decades of experience in telecommunications or related industries, including executive VP at consultancy AT Kearney.

Another important mover and shaker inside Telstra’s senior team is human resources group executive Tracey Gavegan. She joined Telstra as a human resources executive in April 2006, advising the company's enterprise and government and operations business units, and was appointed to lead the Human Resources team in July 2011. In that time Gavegan and her team have led a cultural realignment and assisted the business in transforming to a

more agile and customer-centric orientation With Telstra's future growth prospects nailed to new regional businesses such as network application and services, there’s a lot riding on the shoulders of Brendon Riley, who heads up a new $5 billion revenue business unit as Group Executive, Global Enterprise and Services. Riley joined Telstra in 2011 as chief operations officer, having left his role with IBM as GM of Northeast Europe. He had a varied career with IBM throughout Europe and has also been CEO of Global Serivces Australia. He was previously based in Japan for over five years, where he was part of the team that launched, scaled and matured the

IBM Global Services business across the Asian region Amongst a raft of veteran senior Telstra execs, CTO Vish Nandlall is a relative newcomer to the firm, coming in as CTO in August last year. He replaced Hugh Bradlow, who has moved into a new role as Telstra's chief scientist. But while Nandlall is new to Australia, he’s a well-established senior telco exec in the US, where he was most recently CTO and head of strategy and marketing at Ericsson North America. Before joining Ericsson he was the CTO of Extreme Networks and prior to that the CTO for Nortel Carrier Networks, where he led a team of more than 90 architects and standards delegates who worked on GSM, CDMA, WiMAX and LTE.

Optus’ upper echelon Petroc Wilton

O

ptus CEO Allen Lew is a returning veteran of the Australian telco scene. He served as MD of both Optus Mobile and Optus Consumer Business until 2006, when he headed to Singapore to head up the local operations of Singtel; Optus itself is a subsidiary of the larger Singtel group. Since he took the reins of Optus in October, Lew has made a strong early impression; his first quarter at the helm saw strong revenue, EBITDA and mobile handset share gains.

Strategically, Lew is pushing ahead with an expansion of Optus’ LTE network – it had aimed to hit 90% population coverage by March – a fresh look at its wireless broadband offering, and perhaps most significantly a new level of integration of its fixed and wireless networks. That means lifting a fixed-line gameplan that, Lew himself concedes, has been seen as “flip-flopping.” “Fixed cannot be a secondary product,” he says.

“Optus has to do well in mobile and fixed. Today, our revenue and our

focus is very mobile-centric; we have about A$6 billion in revenue from mobile, A$1 billion from fixed. That has to balance out a lot more.” Lew also plans to leverage Optus’ unique stock of 2300MHz spectrum to find a compelling edge over competitors, though he’s hinting that asset might

Allen Lew be at least partly used to boost fixed rather than mobile wireless. And he’s out to build a new identity for Optus as a ‘telco innovator’ – particularly in the way it interacts with customers.

That’s where customer MD Vicki Brady plays a key role. A 16-year telco veteran, Brady worked at KPMG before joining Optus in 1997 where she held various key positions in marketing, sales and commercial for

mobile. She moved to Singtel in 2003 but returned to head up the Optus wholesale and satellite division from 2008-2012.

Now, with Optus having moved into positive net promoter score territory last year, Brady is focused on finding new ways to ‘wow’ the customer, such as social media- or web chatbased peer-to-peer customer service.

“I think big corporates, sometimes, think everything has to be industrialstrength and perfect. But we’re using, a lot more, the approach of proof-of-concept; [for example] we’re trialling a new technology that knows you’re calling on a smartphone and, rather than waiting in the queue [asks whether] you’d rather speak to someone immediately via web chat,” she says. “Rather than waiting this to be on an industrial scale, we’ve trialled it via proof-ofconcept and it’s gone fantastically well... we’re trying to take a more agile approach to new technology.”

Brady, says Lew, illustrates one of Optus’ unique advantages in the management stakes; its close rela-

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tionship with parent Singtel. “We manage our senior talent as a pool within SingTel, within the group.

The beauty of this is that it gives our Australian executives the opportunity to get experiences across different parts of the group… it gives us a good opportunity to bring talent that we need into Australia, and take Australian talent and put it out in different parts of Asia. In terms of a career proposition for mid-seniorlevel executives, we provide a pretty unique opportunity compared to our competitors – not just in telco, but in the entire digital technology space,” he says. “A person here in Optus has the ability to craft their own strategy based on cost of resources and the financial resources given by Singtel. A person from Google, Facebook, IBM or Cisco here in Australia executes strategy that’s developed in Silicon Valley, [or] in Europe if you’re a part of Nokia… Korea, if you’re part of Samsung. They don’t have as much leeway to exercise their creativity, their initiative compared to someone at the Singtel Group.”

“If you look at a person like Vicki, she looks at the objectives she have; she has the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of Australians… Singapore doesn’t tell Vicki, unlike Korea for a Samsung executive, ‘here’s the phone, here’s the advertising we developed, now go implement it and here’s the numbers that I want you to get’,” Lew adds.

“She has… lots of flexibility, lots of ability to develop her own career here and do something really meaningful.”

Also deeply involved in the links with Singtel is Murray King, CFO both for the Australia operation and for Singtel’s group consumer division across Australia, APAC and Africa. He’s been with Optus since 2003 in a series of senior financial roles and has also worked as com-

mercial director for consumer and mobile; before Optus, he worked at Virgin Mobile, which is now a fully owned subsidiary of the firm.

“Murray is the person who gives me the guidance in terms of the financial realities of where I’m taking the company, and links back to Singa-

Vicki Brady pore to make sure we’re in sync in terms of our investment requirements and profiles,” says Lew. Some of the key Optus management responsibilities are taken care of directly from group level. “The bulk of the key personalities [at group level] that are involved in Optus operations are mainly on the network, and on the IT side. That’s what Singtel excels in – they’re a 150-year-old telco, we’re a 25-year old telco! So there are a lot of processes, they’ve got a lot of understanding of the fixed space that is of value to us, and of course in the IT space they’ve been doing such things for a while,” says Lew. “The rest of it we do ourselves in Australia; where necessary, we share experience from other parts of the group, where it’s relevant. The rest of the team I try and keep very Australian, very local.”

Currently, Optus’ CTO position falls into the first bracket, though Lew is looking to move to the second. “Tay Soo Meng is covering the CTO role for me; he’s from Group, but it’s not a permanent position, he’s covering it for me until I find a replacement,” he says.

“We used to have Vic McClelland,

but he left for his own personal reasons, and finding a replacement is something I take very seriously. It’s not just about the talent of the individual, it’s not just about persistence and perseverance; it’s also the ability to come in and work within the culture and the team that I already have in Optus. If they come in, there are jagged edges and they can’t meld into the team, I’d rather not have them. So I’m taking my time to find someone suitable.”

“The new person that we’ll be looking for absolutely has to have experience in the fixed, as well as in the mobile side of the network; and understand what needs to be done in fixed to work within the wholesale model at Optus. That means we have to have someone that’s able to know, for example, how [to] link up to Telstra for ULL, or RDSL; how to hook up to NBN Co… and how to link the mobile network to the fixed network, if I need to. That person will have to be someone who has worked in a telco, who has not just mobile but fixed and mobile [experience], and someone who has done transformation within a traditional telco or mobile company to move it to… a more integrated operation, with video operations capability as well.”

On the front-end, sales MD Rohan Ganeson looks after all sales and distribution from retail to channel and telesales. He joined the firm in 2008 as SMB director, but has more than two decades of experience in the ICT, mobile and payment industries.

“He’s very execution-focused, all about making sure we hit our sales targets. He delivers on his promises; we have the logistics support, now, to look after a huge operation, [370] stores. And he manages that together with a bunch of third-party channels as well,” says Lew. Optus Business MD John Paitaridis, meanwhile, heads up all enterprise, corporate and government business;

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though a newer hire, having joined in 2012, he also boasts twenty years of experience across Europe, Asia and Australia with a deep understanding of the telco and ICT needs of enterprise and government customers. He has also worked at archrival Telstra as executive director of network products and services. And leading the Wholesale and Satellite division as MD is Rob Parcell, whose career with Optus includes stints as regional director, CEO of subsidiary Alphawest, acting MD of the Business section and director of voice and marketing – and goes back to 1992. “Rob’s been there since the inception of this company, he looks after satellite and all my wholesale customers in a very good way!” says Lew. Other key senior Optus execs include ‘Future of Yes’and fixed phone and broadband VP Sue Bailey, another 20-year telco veteran whose track record with Virgin Mobile (now a subsidiary of Optus in Australia) covers stints both as SVP of Virgin Mobile USA from 2008-10

and CEO of Virgin Mobile Australia from 2010-2013. “Sue Bailey has been doing fixed for us [and] is very important; she ran our Virgin operations and now she’s running our next-generation transformation billing system, and operating support,” says Lew. And on the regulatory front, there’s corporate and regulatory affairs VP David Epstein; a prominent figure in Australian telco policy and regulatory debates, whose impressive national and international background in regulation and public affairs includes time as a senior adviser to three prime ministers, culminating as chief of staff to Kevin Rudd. He works with Optus chairman and former CEO Paul O’Sullivan, another famous senior figure on the Australian telco scene, whose current role is to advocate Optus and competition in the market; O’Sullivan served eight years as CEO, driving eighteen consecutive quarters of EBITDA growth, and was Singtel Group Consumer CEO from 2012-2014.

“The level of people working with me more closely are all very talented people. They have strengths in different areas; they’re all key in their different areas of expertise,” concludes Lew. “At the end of the day, in Singtel when we look at our people who we want to put in senior positions at Optus… there are two important things. People at that level reporting to me are all extremely intelligent, but the two things that differentiate them are passion – do they find that working here is meaningful to them?

Because they’re going to work reasonably long hours! – and secondly, do they have the perseverance?

They’re what I call the two ‘p’s: passion and perseverance.”

“In this market, you’re competing against a very, very strong incumbent, and at the lower end you’ve got people who market on nothing but price. So do you have the perseverance to learn; if you hit a roadblock, to learn what happened and do something different and go around it, rather than just saying ‘I give up’.

Quo Vadis, Vodafone?

Richard van der Draay

S

ince its network travails of a few years previously and the subsequent loss of vast numbers of customers – more than 1.2 million in 2013 – Vodafone Australia has been the subject of close scrutiny by industry commentators. Indeed, just weeks ago, iiNet founder and ex-CEO Michael Malone predicted the mobileonly carrier would either merge with, or be acquired by, a local fixed-line player.

But CEO Iñaki Berroeta seems to have made significant progress in turning the once-listing ship around, executing on the turnaround plan

set in place by predecessor Bill Morrow. The company has invested heavily in its networks, cut costs and

Benoit Hanssen launched new plans with more data – and is determined to become “best in class when it comes to customer service.” Vodafone Australia picked

up 91,000 new subscribers in the second half of calendar 2014, by all accounts a ringing endorsement of the CEO’s assertion that he’s met all shareholder objectives under the firm’s turnaround plan.

But Berroeta, previously CEO of Vodafone Romania, still faces a clear challenge. As well as further building on the subscriber growth – Vodafone’s first half-year of expansion since 2010 – Berroeta will need to turn around an 8.8% decline in service revenues through 2014 in the face of fierce competition from Optus and Telstra to steer the top line back into the clear.

To meet those challenges, and with the objectives of his predecessor’s turnaround plan now met, Berroeta is bringing in his own strategy. This includes using mobile data allowances as a key differentiator to lure new subs away from rivals and get back to growth, shared plans, and a focus on content delivery that has seen Vodafone team with Fairfax and Nine Network to offer customers access to Stan – one of a raft of subscription video on demand players currently stepping up to check new arrival Netflix’s bid to crash the party. In addition, Vodafone has clinched a deal with Spotify to offer postpaid customers free premium access to the music streaming service – and is unfolding a broader strategy that centres on customer satisfaction.

But Berroeta is also looking to ensure that Vodafone’s LTE speeds are on par with or better than its competitors. One challenge there is that some of the carrier’s edge around speed had been predicated on an advantage in spectrum holdings, now diminished as Optus and Telstra bring online the spectrum they snapped up at the 2013 Digital Dividend Auction – in which Vodafone notably declined to take part.

Berroeta has said that Vodafone’s geographical distribution of spectrum holdings – in particular, in densely populated cities – will help it succeed in its key urban markets. But the telco also has a strong infrastructure focus for 2015 to help its mobile network stand out, under the purview of CTO Benoit Hanssen, with anticipated developments including network carrier aggregation and Voice-over-LTE trials.

Hanssen joined the firm in 2013 from Ericsson in Stockholm where he headed up the global managed services operation. Before that, Hanssen served as CTO with Hutchison Indonesia from 2007 where he oversaw the building of a

15,000 site/25 million sub business from a greenfield start. His impressive international career includes a key role in starting and developing Ericsson’s managed services business, taking in the running of the Telfort/ O2 network in the Netherlands and the Bharti Airtel network in 15 Circles in India under a managed capacity construct. Now, he sees plenty of scope for Vodafone Australia to employ network carrier aggregation to boost speed and performance.

“Just a few weeks ago, we actually

Loo Fun Chee combined our 850MHz low-band LTE network with the 1800MHz high-band LTE network and in that way you get an additional step in the performance of the services,” he says.

Hanssen adds that as usage and demand on the LTE network continue to rise, the company would continue to aggregate more spectrum, noting it has more bands still available that could be used; for instance more 1800MHz and 2100MHz spectrum.

“We’re looking at what the right timing is to do that. Technically, our network supports it and we could deploy those if and when needed, but there is no demand yet that is that high and we also don’t have the phone penetration.”

Hanssen is also pushing Vodafone towards what could be one of Australia’s earliest deployments of voiceover-LTE, promising high quality without needing to fall back to 3G for voice communications – a complex process which can impact user experience – as is the case for all

Australian networks currently.

“We’ve successfully conducted a series of VoLTE field trials and made calls on the production network,” says Hanssen. “It’s still in a controlled environment because we’re now going through the various test phases to make sure there’s consistency in the service; especially from a charging point of view. [But] this is the phase that leads up to broader field trials where we would get actual users on the network, we anticipate that later this year we will make the service commercial.”

Perhaps reflecting Vodafone’s commitment to turnaround, many other members of Berroeta’s key team are also relatively fresh hires. On the front end is customer service director Errol van Graan, who joined the firm in February; Vodafone pulled him from arch-rival Telstra, where he was director of consumer sales and service contact centres. Van Graan has certainly hit the ground running, telling media that he intends to see Vodafone have the lowest complaints per 10,000 customers ratio in the business by next year – putting behind it for good the spectre of the ‘Vodafail’ network outages of a few years previously. Before Telstra, van Graan has also held executive positions in customer care and operations with Vodacom South Africa and Vodafone Romania.

Another fresh recruit is chief marketing officer Loo Fun Chee. She joined the ranks of Vodafone Australia in January from Globe Telecom in the Philippines, where she was head of consumer marketing. In this role, Loo Fun was responsible for driving growth in mobile data, customer loyalty management, business intelligence and digital marketing. Hailing from Malaysia, Loo Fun has also worked for Maxis Communications Berhad in a range of marketing roles. Prior to that she spent almost a decade at marketing com-

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more than 150 staff and served on the company’s board and executive committee. Marsh has been working within the Vodafone Group since February 2000 when he joined as group financial planning manager, and focused on financial reporting and analysis – overseeing financial operations in Spain and as head of reporting and analysis across the wider European region.

Iñaki Berroeta munications firm JWT in Malaysia, working on a range of international brands including Citibank, Unilever and Nestle.

Behind the scenes is general counsel Trent Czinner. Appointed in December 2013, Czinner is responsible for Vodafone’s legal function and leads a team of expert lawyers supported by a panel of external law firms. He provides advice on a wide range of legal matters across the business and assists the executive to ensure the company complies with its legal and regulatory obligations.

Czinner has worked as a telecoms

and technology lawyer since 1998, when he was employed as legal manager for Hutchison Telecoms Australia. He spent the next 13 years working as a senior lawyer for Hutchison Whampoa’s telecoms businesses in Australia and Europe.

From 2011 to 2013, he ran the legal function for Salesforce.com in Australia and New Zealand. Czinner started his legal career as a litigator at one of Australia’s largest law firms.

Vodafone’s CFO is James Marsh, appointed in January 2013. He was previously CFO at Vodafone New Zealand, where he led a finance team of

From December 1995 to early 2000, Marsh was senior auditor and audit manager for Arthur Anderson in the UK, managing an audit portfolio of Global 1000 and listed public companies. He kicked off his career in the finance industry as an auditor at Clarks Chartered Accountants in 1992.

Other key Vodafone execs include sales director Ben McIntosh, whose Australian and international career spans a string of key roles at Harvey Norman including a stint as country manager for Slovenia, and time as commercial director for Courts Asia; and industry strategy and public policy GM Matthew Lobb, an alumnus of NBN Co and, like van Graan, an ex-Telstra executive, with an eightyear track record across multiple group and general manager roles at Vodafone’s arch-rival.

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Switzerland blazes a trail for multi-technology When Australia was looking to adopt its multi-technology mix national broadband network, it looked to Swisscom for inspiration. Geoff Long reports.

O

rson Welles' character in The Third Man famously notes that after five hundred years of democracy and peace, the main thing Switzerland gave the world was the cuckoo clock. Of course that is manifestly unfair on this population of 8 million, given its chocolate, watches, army knives and . . . multitechnology mix broadband. While its broadband model might not be its most famous export, it's one that a lot of other countries are watching closely; none more so than Australia.

Australian communications minister Malcolm Turnbull has been a vocal proponent of looking at overseas broadband experiences, and one of the most influential to date has been Switzerland and its incumbent Swisscom. Before the minister and NBN Co had decided in late 2013 that an all-fibre network would be too slow and too expensive to roll out, Swisscom had already come to the same conclusion – in 2011. Prior to that, like Australia, the carrier had also planned a full fibre-to-the-

premise broadband network for most of the population.

with NBN Co as well as CommsDay Magazine.

One of the key people behind Swisscom's move from an all-fibre rollout to a multi-technology mix broadband network is Klaus Liechti, the carrier's senior project manager.

He was recently in Australia where he was mentioned by Turnbull in Parliament for his advice on Swisscom's broadband experience.

He also took time out for briefings

According to Liechti, the decision to upgrade Swisscom’s existing copper was based on both economics and the length of time that would be needed for FTTP. In Swisscom's case, its need for a quicker rollout was made more urgent due to competition from rival operators, particularly well-financed

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local cable operator UPC-Cablecom.

The Swiss cable operators reach around 2.5 million households with download speeds of at least 100Mbps and in some areas up to 250Mbps. As a result, Swisscom decided to upgrade its copper, initially using VDSL vectoring and then taking fibre to existing manholes in the street or to building basements. It now offers 100Mbps VDSL vectoring services to around 500,000 homes and businesses on its FTTN network and a further 100,000 homes on its fibre-to-the-street and fibre-to-the-building networks.

“The issue is that the more rural you go with this FTTP deployment, the cost will rise. With fibre to the street, we can do for the same investment up to five connections, so it's much cheaper. For fibre to the building it's about 70% of the cost,” says Liechti.

“But behind the capex it's really the rollout speed. In the next few years, instead of deploying 100,000 FTTP connections, we can do five times more by taking the fibre-to-the-street approach.”

Fibre-to-the-street is the term used by the Swiss, although it is sometimes known as fibre-to-the-distribution point or fibre to the curb. Instead of having to build street cabinets, the Swisscom approach is to place a small 16 or 48 port device in a manhole in front of the street, which includes vectoring technology from the beginning. It gives them 100Mbps download speeds today, while future versions are expected to boost that to up to 500Mbps.

Homes that were on the early FTTH rollout map received 1Gbps speeds, but Liechti believes it's not all about speed. “We realised that it's good to have 1Gbps but you don't really need that at the moment. And we decided we cannot just do the fibre to the home rollout, we needed to have something else because we would lose too much in terms of customers [to the cable operators].”

Swisscom has already passed more than 900,000 homes with FTTH, or 30% of populated areas and covering

all of the main cities. It will stop FTTH at around 1 million homes, but the immediate focus will be on upgrading the copper network. The firm has a new target of being able to provide 100Mbps speeds to almost 90% of the population by 2020.

Currently, vectoring is allowing the company to roughly double the speed on its existing nodes. However, Swisscom has also started trialling G.fast technology and hopes to be one of the first carriers in the world to roll it out commercially. Its aim is to do pilot testing this year, with the rollout to start next year.

“With this combination [of G.fast and fibre to the street] we really thing we have a very good proposition for ultra-broadband that will cover up to 88% of the population with a minimum of 100Mbps and up to 50% to have 500Mbps to 1Gbps by the year 2020,” says Liechti, adding that Swisscom will also plan to offer wholesale offerings to other ISPs. Working with vendor partner Huawei, the carrier has also stated that it wants longer copper loop lengths than some other carriers have been proposing. In its case, up to around 220 meters. Liechti notes an early trial where Swisscom tested the technology on 200m of copper and achieved 500Mbps download speeds; on a 100m loop, he says, it can go up to 900Mbps. “So from that perspective there is not a lot of difference for the customer between fibre end-to-end and this solution,” he suggests.

Of course Swisscom is not the only carrier that is finding renewed life in its copper network and opting for a multi-technology broadband model.

Around the world carriers including the likes of AT&T, BT, Belgacom and Deutsche Telecom are doing similar things. Other vendors are also announcing major initiatives around VDSL2 vectoring and G.fast.

For example, at Broadband World Forum in 2014 Alcatel-Lucent announced 12 customer trials for G.fast, including with BT, Orange and A1, a subsidiary of Telekom Austria.

A recent white paper from analyst group Analysys Mason also notes that investments in VDSL2 vectoring and G.fast can be used by operators as intermediary steps along the way towards a long-term goal of deploying FTTH. It says that rolling out fibre to the cabinet or distribution point in conjunction with VDSL vectoring or G.fast gradually lessens the need for further civil infrastructure work when an operator deploys FTTH – and singles out NBN Co as a prime candidate to benefit from such an approach.

“Operators have the ability to reuse investments already made in physical fibre for FTTx deployments and with minimal additional cost can install extra fibres that can be used for future FTTH roll-outs. FTTx deployments such as NBN Co in Australia will allow subscribers to benefit from significantly improved speeds while preparing the way for future FTTH roll-outs,” says Analysys Mason senior analyst Stephen Wilson.

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LTE-U vs. Wi-Fi A new proposal led by Qualcomm and Ericsson seeks to expand LTE into the unlicensed spectrum frequencies currently used by nearly ubiquitous Wi-Fi networks. Is this a blatant incursion by the cellular industry into the territory of a long-time ally? Or simply the natural evolution of technology, which could put Wi-Fi on the road to extinction? Tony Chan reports.

O

ne of the hottest topics at this year’s Mobile World Congress was Wi-Fi. The decade and a half-old wireless technology is making new waves as a complement to increasingly crowded cellular networks. The latest Wi-Fi developments feature much tighter integration with cellular both at the radio access and core network levels.

But that is not the only reason Wi-Fi has made headlines. The next release (13) of technical specifications from the Third Generation Partnership Project, the organisation responsible for the ongoing development of cellular technologies, will make it possible to extend more efficient LTE networks into unlicensed spectrum currently used by Wi-Fi systems.

As such the Wi-Fi ecosystem is facing an aggressive industry, worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year, which now wants to infringe on its turf.

The camp backing what is called LTE-U, or LTE unlicensed – first proposed by a white paper by Qualcomm Technologies and Ericsson back in 2013 – maintains that the introduction of cellular technologies into the unlicensed band used by Wi -Fi will not impact existing systems.

But the fact that Wi-Fi might have to now share its home with an operator -backed network that typically yields revenue is already raising some alarms at the Wi-Fi Alliance, which represents the Wi-Fi ecosystem globally.

“Wi-Fi Alliance is aware of 3GPP work addressing LTE operation in

the unlicensed 5GHz band, known as Licensed Assisted Access, as well as early deployments of pre-standard LAA-like systems,” says the Alliance.

“There is a risk that LAA, and especially pre-standard systems deployed ahead of coexistence work being done in the industry, will negatively impact billions of Wi-Fi users who rely on 5GHz today for networking and device connectivity. It is generally agreed in principle that fair sharing is required, but there needs to be further work from all parties to address this risk in practice.”

To further drill home its message, the Alliance points out that WiFi is also no slouch when it comes to its contribution to the global economy; which, citing figures from Katz and Plum Consulting, the group estimates at “hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Still, it’s hard not to sense a hint of insecurity from the Wi-Fi sector.

After all, it doesn’t have any legal right to what is essentially a free public resource.

As Qualcomm CTO Matt Grob pointed out in a recent interview with EE Times, ‘Wi-Fi spectrum’ is not actually spectrum specifically allocated to Wi-Fi. “It is an unlicensed spectrum and Wi-Fi complies with the regulation,” he said. “It’s not licensed to any one family.”

So the only plea the Wi-Fi camp can offer up, to the public as well as regulators, is to call for assurances that the rights of Wi-Fi users and equipment makers are protected against interference from new tech-

nologies.

If the Wi-Fi community’s defence of unlicensed spectrum is founded on its past successes, the LTE-U camp’s argument is focused squarely on the future. Basically, cellular systems desperately need help going forward.

The general consensus is that in the next five to ten years, cellular networks will have to support 1,000 times the traffic they do today. A lot of that growth is attributed to video, but there are plenty of other applications that will also begin to demand a share of network resources, led by the now catch-all term ‘Internet of Things’.

There are several vectors the industry is looking at to meet that expected capacity demand, including denser networks through small cells, and more efficient radios and antennas; but access to new spectrum is front and centre. The problem for operators is that licensed spectrum is expensive, as evidenced in the recent auction by the Federal Communications Commission of the Advanced Wireless Services spectrum in the US, which raised an unprecedented US$44.9 billion.

Depending on the country and market, there is anywhere between 500MHz to 650MHz of unlicensed spectrum available free of charge for operators through LTE-U. Compared that to the 65MHz of AWS-3 spectrum auctioned by the FCC earlier this year, and it is easy to understand why operators are salivating over the prospect of LTE-U.

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As Verizon network technology and planning SVP Ed Chan notes, unlicensed spectrum is there to promote innovation – and LTE-U represents a new innovation for the specific frequency bands, which already support multiple technologies and applications such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cordless phones, baby monitors, and garage door openers.

According to this argument, LTE -U is simply another technology that wants to use unlicensed spectrum.

Rude vs. polite The biggest worry amongst the Wi-Fi industry is interference; that LTE-U will somehow unfairly hog the band.

At the onset of LTE-U, Wi-Fi proponents immediately pointed out the “rudeness” of LTE, which constantly transmits an RF signal to the network.

This contrasts with Wi-Fi, which incorporates a so-called “polite” protocol, known by its technical term as distributed coordination function, which in turn features a technology called carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance. DCF makes sure each device checks that no other device is talking before transmitting their traffic, and to repeat the process at regular intervals.

The initial fear is that introducing LTE in its unmodified form would disrupt Wi-Fi users, whose devices are too polite to fight back.

It is a situation well recognised by the cellular industry. In a recent Qualcomm-sponsored white paper, researchers at the Signals Research Group highlighted potential issues with the current version of LTE, which failed at least two specific technical requirements outlined by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute when a technology uses the unlicensed 5GHz band.

The ETSI requirements are targeted at ensuring a fair usage of the spectrum by making sure that users first ask before they send traffic, with a technique called clear channel assessment, and don’t hog up the bandwidth once they start sending using the channel occupancy time feature. This requires the sender to wait and repeat the first process in regular intervals, hence allowing other traffic to go through.

These requirements are not met by the current generation of LTE-U, which SRG has dubbed Phase 1.

“Although there are mechanisms in place for LTE-U Phase 1 that will allow LTE and Wi-Fi to co-exist in the same unlicensed spectrum, there are certain regional-specific regulatory requirements that LTE cannot support without changes to the air interface,” says SRG, pointing to ETSI’s requirements. “LTE is constantly transmitting an RF signal, so while it can still apply interference mitigation mechanisms, it is doing it

while “talking” – a big No-No according to these requirements.”

According to SRG, full regulatory compliance of LTE-U – at least for ETSI – is not expected before Phase 2 to LTE-U. That will be defined in the next specification of the 3GPP, or Release 13, due sometime next year.

R13 is expected to introduce a feature called “listen before talk,” as well as dynamic frequency selection – so LTE-U can navigate through the unlicensed bands. These should allow LTE-U and Wi-Fi to coexist happily alongside each other, Qualcomm’s Grob added.

Performance advantages In addition to bringing new spectrum frequencies to cellular, LTEU’s advocates argue that simply migrating to a LTE radio offers distinct performance advantages over Wi-Fi, starting with better spectral efficiency.

According to Qualcomm’s Grob, one of the key motivations behind LTE-U was to develop the “most cost effective wireless network” possible.

“When we look at the performance and value of the two technologies, and the fact that many operators are already using Wi-Fi for offload, we found that… with the LTE family, we can make the use of the unlicensed spectrum three times more efficiently than with 802.11.”

LTE’s core system – including more robust protection of control channel elements, better link adaptation, and a more sophisticated retransmission mechanism – also help make the technology superior than Wi-Fi, add researchers at SRG. “The link adaptation with LTE leverages channel quality indicator reports from the mobile device, which allows the serving cell to dynamically adjust to rapid changes in channel conditions. Additionally, LTE uses a more complex HARQ (Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest) process, which allows it to combine the received energy of the (initial) transmission and the subsequent retransmissions of a data packet for better efficiency.”

According to SRG, these technical differences between LTE and Wi-Fi result in “fairly meaningful performance differences that favour LTE.” At the same time, LTE-U also offers better mobility – since it uses the same core network as an operator’s LTE network on licensed spectrum, thus supporting seamless hand off between cells, adds Ericsson CTO for Hong Kong and Macau Michael Lee. For the same reason, LTE-U will offer better authentication and security.

Capacity boost Having said that, no one in the industry is really proposing LTE-U as a standalone platform for new networks. The fact is that a network that is built exclusively with unlicensed spectrum can’t offer any quality of service, adds Lee. The most common use case for LTE-U being proposed positions LTE-U as a complementary band for operators with licensed LTE spectrum. Through LTE-Advanced’s carrier aggregation, LTE-U represents another carrier to be added to an operators’ network, primarily to boost capacity.

The initial proposed architecture calls for an anchoring macro cell on licensed spectrum, and LTE-U deployed in small cells to boost capacity. Subsequently, LTE-U could be deployed side-by-side at the same small cell as licensed LTE. “This is a critical solution since in some markets, like Hong Kong, the regulator does not have any plans in the near future to release

new spectrum,” says Lee. “To meet future network demand, operators need LTE-U to cope with increasing traffic loads.”

Like any new technology, LTE-U will have to overcome its own go-tomarket obstacles. As a small cell technology, it will face all the typical small cell challenges, such as backhaul, according to Lee. “Because LTE-U will have to connect back to an operator’s core network, it needs a carrier grade backhaul. And since it will be deployed in small cells, that environment might be a shopping mall, which in itself presents challenges of site access,” he says. “LTE-U will need its own business case.”

One topic that should not be an issue is the actual cost of the equipment, adds Alcatel-Lucent wireless CTO Michael Peeters.

“I don’t think this is such a big barrier,” he says. “While there are some changes to the RF, [in] many of the components – with respect to

Michael Peeters the maturity of RF on both ends – there is significant maturity.”

“For phones, you can reuse the RF for Wi-Fi for LTE-U. From the base station side, if you are building a base station that already [supports] 3 to 4 carrier aggregation, which already has the required LTE chipsets in there, the cost overhead for LTEU is not that significant.”

That said, LTE-U will require new gear both on the network side and at the handset level, which presents initial adoption and economyof-scale challenges.

Unified wireless When it comes to LTE-U, it is clear that there are a lot of different forces at work. On the one hand, it’s easy

to understand why operators such as Verizon and, most recently, TMobile USA are keen to at least give it a go; it’s really an incremental cost that has the potential to give them access to a highly valued commodity.

It is also easy to see why an organization like Qualcomm, Ericsson or Alcatel-Lucent would want to promote LTE-U since it means more chip sales, more equipment sales, and so on.

But that doesn’t change the fact that LTE-U is really just a better way to do something that is already being done today with other technologies; namely Wi-Fi, and standard LTE small cells.

According to Peeters, while it is a fact that LTE-U will offer superior performance than Wi-Fi, the industry should not simply abandon the older technology in the existing 2.4GHz and 5GHz unlicensed bands.

“Wi-Fi has tremendous advantage in existing bands,” he says.

“The access points are already there and the handsets are already present to be able to connect to those access points, as well as a mature selfregulated ecosystem and a regulatory environment to make sure that anyone who is broadcasting in the unlicensed spectrum adheres to the rules.”

In fact, a number of industry players are working on parallel solutions that will leverage Wi-Fi and LTE at the same time. Alcatel-Lucent dubs the solution ‘wireless unified network’.

“We also realise that there are a number of challenges with LTE-U. While it is a great way forward, particularly for the LTE ecosystem because it is more spectrally efficient than Wi-Fi, we see LTE-U as taking slightly longer to get into the market,” says Peeters. “LTE-U will very likely happen, [but] it will require new base stations, new handsets and, in a large portion of the world, it will require at least licensed assisted access to make sure it complies with regulation.... we asked ourselves ‘is there anything we can do that actually accomplishes the same goals, without having the same barriers to entry’.”

Blending techs With WUN, which Alcatel-Lucent

has laid out in a two part roadmap, Wi-Fi is used as part of an operator’s network.

“We looked at it and realise there was a blending we could do.

The way we actually looked at it is ‘what were the limitations of Wi-Fi, and the limitations of mobile, especially if you think about the enterprise environment.’ The limitations are essentially that on the download wireless is excellent – it has scheduling, and it has very efficient spectral access – but... it is licensed spectrum, and getting another 20MHz of available spectrum is tricky, or at least expensive for operators. On the other hand, Wi-Fi has fewer limitations on the download, but it is limited in the upstream,” Peeters says. “And so the way we looked at it was ‘is there something we can do to take the best of both worlds?”

Alcatel-Lucent’s WUN solution overcomes these “limitations” by using the uplink from LTE, and downlinks from Wi-Fi. “The way we’ve developed it allows you to do it without having to change the Wi-Fi access point. It allows you to use our normal small cells. The small cell and the Wi-Fi access point don’t even have to belong to the same operator,” says Peeters, adding that the system can deliver a performance improvement of up to 30% using today’s technology.

The technology is something Alcatel-Lucent calls Wi-Fi Boost. The only requirement is that the mobile operator’s small cell as well as core network has to be from AlcatelLucent.

“The way it works, say you are doing a video conference, or downloading a large streaming video; if you do that over Wi-Fi alone, you have most of the bandwidth downstream, but the upstream packets for acknowledgement are actually eating up a large portion of the bandwidth,” he continues. “By moving those over to LTE, we now have essentially scheduled downlink over Wi-Fi, with almost no uplink traffic; and we have all of the uplink traffic going over LTE, which is not straining the LTE system at all.”

Best of all, the solution is accessible today via a software upgrade from an app on the end-point, adds Peeters.

Network integration A similar solution is being brought to market by Nokia Networks, which has unveiled a new system that links both Wi-Fi and LTE radio networks to a common core.

The system takes advantage of techniques outlined by the specifications of the current generation of

Brian Cho LTE, including access network discovery and selection function enhancements, to provide network information from both Wi-Fi and LTE radio networks back to the core network. This information is then used by the core to select the best network for the job at any given time.

“With R12 [the current specification for cellular technology], you can provide information on network load, signal strength, backhaul conditions… with this information, you can now have a solution that selects the best network either by local, location, and application type,” says Nokia Networks head of technology for Asia Pacific Brian Cho. According to Cho, these type of implementation already enables a range of offload and onload scenarios between cellular and Wi-Fi. In addition to offloading cellular data to Wi-Fi when the LTE network becomes congested, the solution can also ensure better user experience at the Wi-Fi level by onloading Wi-Fi hotspot traffic to LTE when a hotspot becomes congested, or experience a degradation of signal quality.

Going forward, Wi-Fi and LTE look set to get even closer together.

According to both Cho and AlcatelLucent’s Peeters, work is now underway on a LTE/WLAN interworking solution that will effectively treat a

Wi-Fi channel as another carrier on a LTE carrier aggregation system.

This means that any operator-owned Wi-Fi hotspot can be turned into part of the LTE network, adds Cho. New market At the end of the day, the who and why behind LTE-U adoption will come down to the nature of the market and the operator’s particular market position, Cho continues.

“If operators can get extra spectrum from the regulator at a reasonable price, then they might not need LTE-U, because licensed spectrum is already better than unlicensed,” he says. “If not, then LTE-U is something they will look at. We have already gotten inquiries from several operators for LTE-U.” At the same time, operators who have already made significant investments in Wi-Fi, such as incumbents like KT in Korea, might want to leverage those investments.

“A lot of operators, which have many Wi-Fi hotspots, they are interested in LTE/WLAN integration, they are less interested in LTE-U,” says Cho. In this respect, there is no danger that Wi-Fi will be going away any time soon. Indeed, Wi-Fi could even get a boost as a result of LTE-U. “Although some of the operators at the 3GPP workshop last June who seemed in favour of LTE-U are some of the biggest proponents of Wi-Fi today, we have no expectation that they will abandon their Wi-Fi strategy,” says SRG. “In fact, one could argue that LTE-U creates a new market opportunity for Wi-Fi and it also encourages Wi-Fi to further enhance with innovative solutions, in 802.11ax and beyond.

“As an example, an operator without a strategic interest in Wi-Fi could start deploying Wi-Fi in its network when it deploys LTE-U. The concept of a Unified LTE Network is one good reason for doing so. After all, the incremental cost of the additional Wi-Fi radio is relatively modest in the big scheme of things compared to the cost associated with installing the small cell and the ongoing operational expenses (backhaul, etc.).”

Fixed directions The upgrade of the world’s fixed broadband networks is accelerating, with a range of national policies designed to ensure ubiquitous access to high speed internet services for everyone. But while telecommunications carriers had half a century to build out the old telephone network, they are increasingly coming under competitive and regulatory pressures to upgrade those assets in a much shorter timeframe – or to roll out new network infrastructure to deliver super fast broadband services. Alcatel-Lucent fixed networks division president Federico Guillén spoke to Tony Chan about the technologies and business cases that are driving the next generation broadband market. .

Communications Day: A lot of technologies have emerged in the past couple of years in the fixed line market, including VDSL2 vectoring, G.fast and others. How do you see the market today?

Federico Guillén: We all understand, and we all agree, that the endgame is fibre to the home, that’s the future proof solution that will provide you all the speed that you need in the future. But the problem is in order to get the right coverage with FTTH, you need between 10 to 20 years. So the investment is very high, and the time for return on investment is very long, and by the time you are finish with the right coverage, you also face new problems like entering the house, which is complicated and costly.

The other type of customers that choose coverage are deploying copper, through fibre to the node. The problem with that is you have an easier way to address the full popula-

tion, but the opex is higher, and the capacity that you can provide is lower. With VDSL, theoretically, you can reach 100Mbps over 500 metres, but the reality is with the crosstalk, it is more like 40Mbps, 35Mbps with a lot of dispersion between the lines.

completely for both copper and fibre because with vectoring, you eliminate the crosstalk. From a business perspective, the implication of that is, all of a sudden, you are able to provide 90Mbps, 100Mbps from 500 metres – which is a fibre-like speed.

So what happened was we came into the market a few years ago with vectoring, and that changed the picture

So customers who used to deploy fibre only, they are now going into a fixed environment with FTTH and

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FTTN because what this is doing is accelerating the business case. All of a sudden, they are able to grab more customers and start returning money, but they can reuse [copper] and shorten the loop, going to the end goal of FTTH. We are seeing that happening all over the place – mixed deployments.

It is not any more about fibre or copper, it is now fibre and copper. In my opinion, it is about fibre, and copper, and wireless. In rural areas, it makes sense, many times, to do a fixed wireless type of approach.

CD: Can you comment on what is happening in Australia with the National Broadband Network roll out?

FG: NBN is a very good example of what I’m describing is happening in the market. NBN Co decided to go with a fibre to the premises deployment, and this is the right thing to do going forward. But they realised that it would be too slow. So what they did was to combine FTTP and FTTN, because that way, they will be able to provide fibre-like speeds to many more people in a shorter period of time. This is exactly what I’ve been talking about. NBN Co is one customer that is making the point.

CD: What are some of the new technologies that will enable this mixed fibre and copper environment?

FG: One of the things that we are bringing to the market in the coming months is NG-PON2. So you have your G-PON network, which is 2.5Gbps served between 16 and up to 128 subscribers – that’s downstream, upstream is 1.25Gbps. NGPON2 is Time and Wavelength Division Multiplexing, so we combine [wavelengths], or lambdas. So we have 4 lambdas, and each lambda is 10Gbps symmetrical, which means 40G on 4 lambdas. The most important thing is we use the same passive optical network. Lambdas that are deployed for G-PON can be used for NG-PON2, so you can combine the two, or you can deploy directly NG-PON2 when it becomes available… [for] the first product, we have

already lab trials, we are going to launch the products over the next year.

Now you can imagine the possibilities, because you can use one lambda for residential, one lambda for business applications, one lambda for wireless backhaul, one lambda for wholesale to one of your competitor.

Now you have one network that you can multiply by four and by four in terms of capacity. Looking forward, we are seeking a standard for eight lambdas. What is important is that it future proofs your investment.

G.fast in business applications – you will need the cost to go down. For the cost to go down, you need volume, and for volume, you need time.

So yes, it will be ready this year, there will be products; but big commercial deployments, you can expect not before 2016.

CD: When will vectoring arrive for G.fast?

CD: That seems to be a solution for fibre, what about copper?

FG: The first version of G.fast doesn’t include vectoring. The second specification for G.fast, which will be ready this year, will include vectoring. So that is the important one, because you need vectoring with G.fast.

“For the cost to go down, you need volume, and for volume, you need time. So yes, G,fast will be ready this year, there will be products; but big commercial deployments, you can expect not before 2016.”

By the way, vectoring is about algorithms, and it’s about experience.

With the software today, we are getting VDSL vectoring that is 20% better than two years ago. So our algorithms are very robust today, but I expect much better results. A year ago, we got 800Mbps [on G.fast with vectoring], now I expect 1Gbps.

FG: On top of combining it with WDM, there is another problem: customers, especially in Europe, deploy and they reach a house [but] they cannot enter the house… why is that? It is a house without anywhere to put the fibre, so you have to drill walls, and the end customers say ‘no way you are going to do that with my house, I’ll stay with DSL.’ So you have to use copper. And we have put into the market as well something we call G.fast.

CD: Are G.fast and NG-PON2 the future for fixed broadband?

G.fast is a copper technology like VDSL2 but it uses much higher frequencies, up to 200MHz, that can provide 1Gbps at very short distances, like 70 metres… at below 100 metres, up to 1Gbps.

CD: When do you think G.fast will happen?

FG: With big commercial deployments, you have to be realistic. It is not just about technology, no matter how much you want it. It is about the business case, it is always about the business case, and for a business case to work – so you can start using

FG: What G.fast does is complement NG-PON2, but only at very short distances…

On top of that there are customers in the middle who have nodes at a distance of 300 metres. [For them,] we are putting in place a technology called V-Plus, which can provide 250Mbps at 300 metres. So we keep on innovating all the time on both copper and fibre, working around the business case of our customers, trying to shorten the period when they can get a return on their investment.

CD: What is V-Plus?

FG: VDSL2 is 17MHz, G.fast is 100MHz or 200MHz, V-Plus is 34MHz. We are working to make it an official standard. VDSL with vectoring is 100Mbps over 500 metres.

V-Plus is more or less 250Mbps over 300 metres with vectoring. G.fast is 1Gbps at below 100 metres, like 70 metres. We are always innovating.

For example, Bell Labs showed me a

technology that got 10Gbps over copper, we called this XG.FAST. That is over 30 metres or so. But that is not a product [yet], it is just research.

CD: There seem to be a lot of options for operators. For operators looking at VDSL2, should they actually plan for G.fast distances even if the technology isn’t quite here? Because if they don’t they might have to undergo the entire fibre extension project again in a couple of years when they want to roll out G.fast.

FG: If you look at the business case, if you do fibre directly, the return is 7 years, more or less. If you look at a combination of FTTH and FTTN, after 2 years, you are in profit. You can do that in one step, or you can do that in two steps. The thing is, the more you approach the home, the more difficult it is and the more costly it is. You can choose. Many customers are looking at going directly to the home, you can do VDSL vectoring, or you can use G.fast as a complementary method of getting into the home. Getting into the home is an operation that takes about 2 to 3 hours, so sometimes it is better to just put a box outside and provide fibre speeds with copper without having to do anything inside the home.

What we are trying to do with our carrier customers is to provide them with all the possibilities, depending on their requirements. I have had customers who were very decided on FTTH or vectoring, who have decided to look at an intermediate step with V-Plus. They are adding another step because the return on investment is paying the extra to go deeper. If they don’t do that, they would have to wait too much time and they could lose the customers. This gives them money right away, and money to further invest.

CD: Going back to Australia, should NBN Co be looking at VDSL2 or G.fast?

FG: They should bet on the two.

Every network is different. They are betting on FTTN when they have nodes that are 400/500 metres, and where there are places [where it’s] difficult to access the house, or even if they decide to do fibre to the building [or] the basement, the distance is not that long; they are ready with VDSL. But [they are also] ready for G.fast, which is something that they are also evaluating. So they are combining all the possibilities.

The problem with FTTH is that you end up deploying it when it is easy for you. But that might not be the best thing to do from a business perspective, because you might not be

What we do is we sit with them and we have a department within Bell Labs we call Bell Labs Modelling, and we do all the modelling depending on technology and the cost models. We do a complete study, and the result, normally is that the best thing to do is a combination of FTTH and FTTN; so you initially provide fibrelike speeds everywhere. In the second phase, you go deeper with the fibre. If you do this in one, two, three steps, you find the business case for you.

Going back to the NBN, their decision is to combine FTTP and FTTN with VDSL2. They are not waiting for G.fast.

CD: What about wireless?

“Yes, we are seeing customers already doing 1Gbps, but to be honest, it is more marketing than anything else. Do you really need 1Gbps? With today’s applications? addressing the best customers with the technology.

What we are doing is sitting with all our customers and analysing together with them the business case.

The business case depends on many things. It is not the same if you can use aerial fibre, it is not the same if you have to dig, and put in the ducts, or if the ducts are already there; it is not the same depending on the distance, the geographical dispersion of the city, whether it is [individual] buildings or flats.

FG: Wireless is a trade off, again, between distance, coverage and capacity. So in some places, it makes sense from an economical perspective, but it has to be so close to the customer to offer fibre-like speeds. Sometimes, you have to ask why not just continue with the fibre. I see it more as a complement in rural areas, for example. But then the problem is you are not going to be able to provide the same type of speed as you can with fibre, or even copper. For me, it is a complement, it is pure economics. If it makes sense from an economics perspective, then wireless works.

It is the same with G.fast. G.fast is only needed when you need 1Gbps.

And yes, we are seeing customers already doing 1Gbps, but to be honest, it is more marketing than anything else. Do you really need 1Gbps? With today’s applications? I don’t doubt in the future, 1Gbps [will not be] enough. We have seen this happen before, when people have asked ‘100Mbps, who needs that?’ and today that is more or less the norm.

Applications like 4K video, and unicast video, where you have to have an individual stream for each user, are possible examples that will need 1Gbps.

WE ARE NETWORK EVOLUTION We are looking beyond the network technologies and services of today to help service providers optimize their networks for what’s next in communications, entertainment and advertising.

WE ARE ARRIS Meet Joshua Eum, Chief Technologist for Asia Pacific at ARRIS. Joshua lives on the cutting edge of advanced networking technologies, focusing on innovations in video, voice, broadband and advertising delivery that can help service providers delight subscribers and grow revenues.

Whether he’s developing growth strategies for CCAP, HEVC, Multiscreen or home networking, Joshua harnesses his broad experience to prepare service providers for long-term business success.

THE PEOPLE OF ARRIS

DRIVING THE FUTURE OF NETWORK EVOLUTION

The latest deal with HFC Operators around the world are looking to HFC, and the latest evolution of its DOCSIS standard, to deliver the speeds required to underpin fast broadband deployments – including Australia’s National Broadband Network Company. Richard van der Draay and Petroc Wilton report.

A

ustralia’s NBN Co will leverage existing hybrid-fibre coaxial cable alongside fibre-to-the-premise, basement and –node as part of its multi-technology mix deployment – and has just announced an upgrade path to the DOCSIS 3.1 standard.

And NBN Co is by no means the only large-scale operator looking to HFC to sit alongside fibre in a nextgeneration network. It’s an opportune moment to review some current trends in the cable technology.

HFC networks were originally designed to carry TV signals, but operators can set aside channels – typically between 6-8MHz – on the cables for data transmission. While the very first HFC networks were one-way systems, they now typically operate bidirectionally, with signals carried in both directions on the same network from the headend to the home and vice versa. The forward-path or downstream signals carry information from the headend to the home, including video content, voice and internet data; the return-path or upstream signals carry information from the home to the headend such as control signals to order movies or internet data to send emails. To prevent interference of signals, the fre-

quency band is divided into two sections. Since video content was sent only to the home, traditionally HFC networks were structured to be nonsymmetrical, with one direction having much more capacity than the other. As additional services were being added to the HFC network – think internet access and telephony – the return-path is increasingly being used.

The DOCSIS standards for HFC allow for the bonding of more than one channel on the same cable for increased throughput. “This is actually a technique I invented 10 years ago for DOCSIS 3.0, the bonding of multiple channels,” says Cisco fellow and access business unit CTO John Chapman, a key pioneer in DOCSIS development. And, apart from the need to share the cable with any existing TV broadcasting, he says there’s no technical reason not to scale HFC broadband to as many channels as possible. “Technically you can go to the whole spectrum [available on the cable]… a state of the art cable modem today has somewhere between 16-32 channels... a 32-channel cable modem, at 8MHz [channels], will be around 1.5 – 1.6Gbps of downstream through-

put.... or around 1.2Gbps for 6MHz channels.”

DOCSIS 3.1, the latest evolution of the standard, promises even more. ““We could have scaled DOCSIS 3.0 to full spectrum, which is anywhere from 128 channels to 150 channels... but, because the number of channels you get depends on the silicon you’re using, we’d have needed new silicon for the next generation of 3.0,” says Chapman. “So we said... ‘if you’re going to build new chips, this is a good time to update the technology’... and that was the premise for 3.1.”

“We changed the modulation to orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, which gives us more flexibility in how we allocate spectrum; we changed the error correction to something called low-density paritycheck, which gives us a very nice boost in performance and allows us to increase the modulation by one or two orders... and we put in a bunch of other troubleshooting techniques... we made it a very superior system.”

Chapman is forecasting DOCSIS 3.1 field trials by 2016, with initial early deployments in the same year and a

PLATINUM SPONSOR

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19/20 May 2015

Westin Hotel, Sydney

Talk Satellite and CommsDay are delighted to announce the 6th annual Australasia Satellite Forum to be held on 19th & 20th May 2015 at the Westin Hotel, Sydney, Australia.

Forum EXPANSION A gathering of world and domestic satellite leaders will converge on Sydney for this now TWO Full Day event on the 19 & 20 May 2015 at the Westin Hotel, Sydney, Australia. The aim is to identify and initiate needed dialogue for the development of satellite as a primary delivery mechanism for universal service purposes. The Australasia Satellite Forum will address issues of urgent concern to governments, military, enterprise and end user entities.

New Forum EXPO The Australasia Satellite Forum continues to grow year on year and it is therefore important to develop the event in line with market demand. We have received numerous requests for an exhibition area to enable companies to show their products and services in a more visible environment. In response, we shall open up a further ballroom adjacent to the forum where exhibition booths will be available for booking. This will attract further visitors from the value chain that appreciate the trade show experience to conduct their business requirements.

ENDORSED BY

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS Lunch sponsored by Arianespace IPSTAR Breakfast sponsored by Orbital Science Eutelsat Morning Teas sponsored by Gateway Teleport Telstra Afternoon Tea sponsored by Gilat Satellite Networks Omnispace Booths sponsored by Optus Satellite Speedcast Inmarsat Newtec/Lumin

Paul Fletcher, Parliamentary secretary to the communications minister, Australian Government

Commodore David Greaves, Commander Defence Strategic Communications (CDSC), ADF

OTHER SPEAKERS from Optus Satellite, SES, Intelsat, NewSat, IPSTAR, Newsat, Arianespace, Gateway Teleport, Telstra, Our Telekom in the Solomon Islands, Digicel Pacific Group, Sky Pacific, Inmarsat, Eutelsat Asia, MS Consulting, SSL, Newtec Asia, Foxtel, Newsat, NBN Co, Gilat Satellite Networks, NSR, Optus, SpeedCast, Skybridge, Comsys, ViaSat, FetchTV, H-IIA/H-IIB Launch Services, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, SimonTD & Associates Asia, Orbital ATK, Viasat Inc, GVF, SES, Omnispace, Speedcast and more

PANEL SESSION TOPICS TO BE DISCUSSED Mobility market at a crossroads ● VSAT futures ● Satellite operator roundtable Pacific Islands connectivity ● Broadband to the edge ● Manufacture & Ground segments Asia satellite focus ● Oil & Gas, Mining enterprise segments ● Military & security

REGISTER NOW http://goo.gl/jG8LVg

DAY ONE May 19 2015 8.00: Breakfast/Networking Sponsored by Orbital Sciences 9.05: Keynote Address Paul Fletcher, Parliamentary secretary to the communications minister, Australian Government 9.30: Satellite Operator Roundtable Paul Sheridan – Vice President Optus Satellite Glen Tindall – Vice President Asia Pacific, SES Terry Beakley - Vice President Asia, Intelsat Adrian Ballintine – CEO, Newsat Moderator - Christopher Baugh, President, NSR

10.30: Networking Break sponsored by Gateway Teleport 11.00: Mobility Presentation by Christopher Baugh Mobility Markets at a Crossroad

Across land, sea and in the air, users of satellite increasingly demand bandwidth and services at a faster pace than ever before. Still, MSS systems fulfil the needs of 90% of users with reliable, low bandwidth services such as voice and M2M applications. With future systems including HTS in GEO/MEO/LEO intending to raise the bar via higher throughput, will enough of a market exist to serve planes, trains and land-mobile platforms? At the crossroad between volume and quality of service, what will be the impact of this junction in the market, and how will it be felt across all mobility platforms in the region and globally?

11.30: Mobility Panel

Growth Market or Oversupplied Mirage?

Joe Bravman, CEO, Omnispace Don Buchman, General Manager, Commercial Aviation Services, ViaSat Terry Beakley - Vice President Asia, Intelsat Christopher Baugh, President, NSR

12.20: Pacific Island Panel

Loyley Ngira, CEO, Our Telekom in the Solomon Islands Gary Cobain, Head of ICT Business Solutions, Digicel Pacific Group Clint Ah Sam, Chief Engineer, Sky Pacific Andrew Taylor, VP Sales, Pacific Islands, Speedcast Moderator, Maui Sanford, Consultant, MS Consulting

1.10: Networking Lunch sponsored by Arianespace 2.30: Unbreakable Links Panel

Asian satellite budgets, broadcasting & broadband

The Australasia and Southeast Asia video market continues to deliver remarkable growth prospects for 2015-2018.

But can these still developing markets sustain such growth in the face of the extended reach and tumbling costs for terrestrial OTT and cloud-based solutions? In meantime, the ever-expanding deployments of premium HD, 4K, live sports and event-driven TV services require yet more satellite capacity – at least until the terrestrial networks catch up. How can the satellite sector meet the new consumer demands for high-quality content and distribution -- and pay the infrastructure bills?

Pierre Benoist d’Anthenay, Deputy CEO, Eutelsat Asia Clint Ah Sam, Chief Engineer, Sky Pacific Mario Querner, Vice President, Newtec Asia Bernhard Conoplia, Head of Strategy - Delivery, Foxtel Tony Brown, Public Affairs Manager - Corporate, NBN Co Simon Cathcart, Executive Director, FetchTV Moderator: Simon Twiston Davies, CEO, SimonTD & Associates Asia

3.30: Satellite Manufacture / Ground Segment Panel Ted McFarland, Vice President, Orbital ATK Tony Colucci, Vice President, SSL David Ball, CTO, NewSat John Humphrey, Strategic Advisor, Leosat, Inc. Moderator: Kevin French, Publisher, talk Satellite

4:30 Networking Break sponsored by Gilat Satellite Networks 5:00 Broadband, to the edge and beyond panel

Erwin Hudson, Program Manager, NBN Co Long Term Satellite Service (LTSS) Ground System, Viasat Inc Nick Leake, Director Satellite Marketing, Optus Satellite

Oded Sheshinski, Regional Vice President, APAC, Gilat Satellite Networks Matt Dawson, Program Director, satellite NBN Co Michael Abela, CEO, Skybridge Keith Ramsay, V.P. Sales & Marketing, Gateway Teleport Ltd .

5.55: Optus: Platinum Sponsor Speaker 6.10: Cocktail Reception

DAY TWO May 20 2015 8.00: Breakfast/Networking Sponsored by Eutelsat Asia 9.00: Keynote Address Commodore David Greaves, Commander Defence Strategic Communications (CDSC), ADF 9.30: Military Panel

Increasing capability to the warfighter through satellite

Commodore David Greaves, Commander Defence Strategic Communications (CDSC), ADF Andy Start - President, Global Government, Inmarsat Alexander Jeuck, GM Governments & Institutions Asia Pacific, SES Moderator: Don Brown, Senior Vice President Strategic Planning, Newsat

10.30: Networking Break sponsored by Telstra 11.00: Critical National Infrastructure Panel To be updated shortly 12.00: Vanuatu Disaster Recovery Case Study 12.30: Networking Lunch sponsored by Thaicom 1.45: Keynote Address Parliamentary secretary to the shadow communications minister Michelle Rowland 2.10: Enterprise Presentation by Simon Bull

The fog begins to clear?

After unprecedented change in the VSAT market over the past few years driven by new satellite developments, changing economics and a rapidly expanding terrestrial infrastructure, is the new market environment beginning to become clearer and where is VSAT technology most applicable? VSAT operators need to play to the strengths of both VSAT and satellite technologies whilst also understanding how to position their expertise and applications within demanding vertical segments. The opportunities are immense, but so equally are the challenges.

2.40: Enterprise Network Panel

Chris Hill, Chief Technology Officer & Managing Director Asia Pacific, ITC Global Sandeep Kumar, Head of Satellite Sales, Telstra Pierre-Jean Beylier, CEO, SpeedCast Keith Ramsay, V.P. Sales & Marketing, Gateway Teleport Ltd. Moderator - Simon Bull, Senior Analyst, Comsys of Spectrum

3.40: ACMA Update TBC 4.10: Networking Break sponsored by Omnispace 4.40: Regulatory Issues WRC-2015N Panel

Bob Horton, Representative, GVF Simon Twiston Davies, CEO, SimonTD & Associates Asia Maui Sanford, Consultant, MS Consulting Chris Althaus, CEO, AMTA Reg Coutts, consultant Moderator: Grahame Lynch, Publisher, CommsDay

5.30 Close of Forum.

REGISTER NOW http://goo.gl/jG8LVg

mainstream rollout in 2017. Vendors like Broadcom, STMicroelectrics and Intel are well progressed in developing 3.1 chipsets, and operators around the world are positioning for deployment. In the US, for instance, Comcast is heavily involved with pushing the technology; access architecture VP Jorge Salinger says the immediate goal is to be in the field, establishing network readiness this year before deploying next year.

Salinger has also confirmed that Comcast already has OFDM signals running in one of its headends on its live network, and – using specially designed gear, ahead of general availability of DOCSIS 3.1 kit – has rolled out DOCSIS 3.1 to select employee households. Initial results are reportedly promising.

Meanwhile in Australia, NBN Co has just confirmed that it will roll out the DOCSIS 3.1 standard for the HFC cable broadband networks it is acquiring from established operators Telstra and Optus. According to CTO Dennis Steiger, the deployment of the standard will kick off in 2017; US-based telco equipment manufacturer Arris, who will be supplying everything from routers to access transport system products such as optical receivers and forward path transmitters, is already gearing up for HFC upgrades that will ultimately push the NBN HFC to DOCSIS 3.1.

While operators prepare for the launch of the DOCSIS 3.1 standard, there’s a range of opinions on what data rates the technology might be able to deliver in the field – but the common theme is fibre-like speeds.

ua Eum says that the tech “will deliver the next iteration of bandwidth requirements without significant investment, to deliver over 10Gbps which meets the demands/ requirements of consumers and operators around the world for the foreseeable future.”

John Chapman The operators themselves are taking a similar line. “Effectively, this technology has the potential to offer speeds equivalent to what’s on offer by full FTTP and up to 100 times faster – up to 10Gbps – than what is currently provided by today’s HFC network,” says NBN Co’s Steiger.

Comcast is looking for 1Gbps in the near future. “Our overall aim is to be able to deploy DOCSIS 3.1 and gigabit-per-second in a broad scale starting in 2016,” says Salinger.

Cisco’s Chapman believes that within a few years, once cable modems are available that can use all of the spectrum on a given coaxial cable, the speeds could get as high as 810Gbps before sharing with video services is taken into account; he says that with DOCSIS 3.1, HFC will offer “equal performance” to fibre for the “foreseeable future.”

And Arris’ Eum is already looking even further ahead, to the next step.

“Beyond DOCSIS 3.1 the industry will continue to look at ways of improving the DOCSIS network for better efficiency and scalability,” he says. “For example ARRIS is studying extended spectrum DOCSIS where we are looking beyond the 1.2GHz and 1.7GHz spectrum limits imposed by DOCSIS 3.1 to dramatically leverage the network capacity.

HFC networks still has plenty of life left in terms of evolving to meet the needs of the market.”

Arris APAC chief technologist Josh-

But it’s not just speed. One of the

benefits of pushing HFC to gigabit throughput is that it leverages existing, relatively low-maintenance infrastructure. “The fact that we're going to be able to do this with our HFC network and the fact that the [cable] network is a far lower maintenance element than any of the other metallic-based, copper delivery services is good news for the consumer,” says NBN Co CEO Bill Morrow. “NBN will utilise a network that is already deployed across millions of homes and businesses in Australia,” adds Steiger.

Even the director of Australia’s Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society professor Rod Tucker, an established FTTP proponent, lauds the potential for HFC to re-use existing assets. “I’m not a great fan of the multi-technology mix that the [Australian government] has implemented, but I think the best part of their strategy is to use the existing HFC network, because it does have the capability of being reused and providing good extra bandwidth,” he says. “You can easily expect over 100Mbps downstream for DOCSIS 3.0, which means in the new NBN those people with HFC will likely be doing better on average than the people with FTTN.” There’s also the fact that DOCSIS 3.1 is a flexible upgrade. “The beauty of DOCSIS 3.1 upgrade is that it’s completely backwards compatible to previous and existing DOCSIS technologies. This means DOCSIS 3.1 can be deployed in phases with upgrades in areas as required which makes it incredibly flexible and scalable in deploying this technology,” says Arris’ Eum. Of course DOCSIS 3.1 provides much better spectral efficiencies (upwards of 50%) through the use of superior OFDM PHY technology as well as LDPC FEC for higher modulation support… DOCSIS 3.1’s highlight is the ability to provide extremely high bandwidths.

“But the best part is the flexibility of deployment.”