How might a 20Mbps telecommunications connection to most New Zealand homes help businesses? In many ways, says Telecom which has announced it will build a “Triple Play” Internet Protocol (IP) network able to carry voice, video and data simultaneously between New Zealand homes and businesses at speeds in excess of 20Mbps by 2012.

Telecom says it will spend $US 220 million upgrading its current Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) network technology – which performs at speeds of up to 7Mbps – to a new network technology called ADSL2Plus, which will perform at speeds of around 20Mbps. ADSL2Plus triples the current DSL downstream bandwidth available, making it better designed to carry the three different kinds of network traffic: voice, video and data – hence the term “Triple Play”.

Built in conjunction with Alcatel, Telecom says the network will prioritise voice traffic and replace the existing PSTN and DSL network services to homes and businesses by 2012. Some residential customers will be able to use it by early 2007.

However, he says voice and video traffic will be automatically prioritised and voice quality won’t be compromised – an important consideration for businesses.

For home connections, a Triple Play network will better support the delivery of IP based TV and other forms of online content likely to be available in force by 2012. Families will also be able to place videoconference calls to one another affordably.

Best for business?
So what does it really mean for businesses? Well, imagine you are an office manager who lives on the North Shore of Auckland. You have an important 8.30am meeting in your city office but an accident on the Harbour Bridge means you are not going to get to work on time. You have a 20Mbps IP network connection to your home and access to managed IP services and applications that your company pays for.

Using a high quality, cost-effective IP video camera also provided by your firm, you decide to video conference into the business meeting from your home. From a window on your laptop screen (or the wide screen TV you decide to use as a monitor) you can see the whiteboard used in the meeting, hear and see other people clearly and they can see and hear you. You make documents on the hard drive of your laptop available online for others in the meeting to refer to and change, and the quality of your videoconference call isn’t affected by the fact your teenager is using the same connection to listen to music in another room. In other words you are participating in the meeting as effectively as if you were there.

Other business applications for Triple Play include the ability to place remote call centre agents at home and have them able to take customer calls and access customer data contained on the call centre network; and the delivery of fast, reliable and converged voice, video and data applications to business desktops through one device.

Improvements to features and pricing
Martin Butler, head of wired corporate and medium enterprise marketing at Telecom, says although Telecom can already offer businesses converged applications on the desktop through managed IP services, these are traditionally purchased by large businesses able to afford Ethernet over fibre connections. However, he says Telecom will progressively be able to offer these managed IP services to smaller businesses over the new Triple Play network.

“Among other things, there are applications that let users see the online diaries and telecommunications and contact status of any individual on the IP network. Managers and colleagues can see at a glance if someone is working on their keyboard, or has used a mobile or wired connection in the past five minutes,” says Butler.

Crombie says both business and residential customers will be able to access Triple Play applications across a local WiFi network if the wireless router is connected to the Triple Play DSL network.

The decision businesses need to be making is whether they will use managed IP network services from a telecommunications provider like Telecom or TelstraClear (see the side box) or invest in their own managed IP data network and install and manage their own converged applications and remote workers.

“Small businesses in particular need to realise return on a [telecommunications] investment in about three years,” says Goodburn.

SMEs: the market everyone wants
Goodburn says uptake of Triple Play network services is likely to be slow among small businesses because the SME market is driven by price.

“Their mantra is ‘I can live without the technology until I can get a better price’” says Goodburn. He says the telecommunications network providers will need strong channel partners to communicate the benefits of Triple Play and managed IP services to SME’s. However, if successful, Goodburn says an affordable Triple Play network will transform Cogent’s market.

“Currently, we don’t have the quality of service to the home and business that we’d like to have. Triple Play services should drive small businesses to use more remote workers providing that is functional for the business. The network itself will also be more stable and cost effective - that’s a significant benefit,” says Goodburn.

Telecom’s Butler says some small businesses will be early adopters.

“Three years ago it would not be uncommon for a company with 10 staff to have just an email address and ISP; now we have small businesses with four staff and a managed data network. New Zealand businesses are quick to take up new technologies where there are practical productivity benefits,” says Butler.

As to cost, Butler says small businesses will be able to lease managed IP services on a monthly basis and Telecom will begin to offer per-seat pricing based on the usage profile and the types of workers in a business. “Requirements in terms of communications depend on the type of user – are they mobile, are they a knowledge worker?” says Butler.

It will also enable Video over IP and VoIP under a single Microsoft environment for remote office and virtual workers.

“Todays Microsoft based IP-PABX’s mean remote workers can be part of the corporate network and collaborate with colleagues on projects. Triple Play opens up opportunities to take this further, enabling desktop to desktop video and VoIP communications whilst also sharing applications collaboratively online,” says Steeples.

He says with IP wireless services [such as Woosh] the biggest problem is network latency which affects the quality of voice traffic. And the cost of cellular connections is too expensive for businesses to use either of the two mobile networks exclusively for remote access to Triple Play applications.

So what should businesses be doing right now? The consensus from the experts is to decide how a fast IP data connection into the business and home could increase business productivity or performance. What business applications might be deployed across these networks to deliver immediate business benefit? Businesses that can see that benefit should begin investing in their internal data networks and seek advice on how to better optimise these for today’s network services and applications. However, those that can see potential benefit down the track won’t be disadvantaged by waiting for IP data networks, services, applications and pricing to improve.

For more information visit the IP Telephony Research Pavilion on iStart.

December 2005