Q&A: Bell Labs eyes broadband's future
Published: 13 Jun 2003 13:24 BST
With less money, there must be more emphasis on profit-making projects. Has the amount of pure research versus market-driven projects changed as a result of the economy?
I can't give you its whole 77-year history. After the three years that I've been here, about 15 percent to 20 percent of Bell Labs researchers are still working on fundamental science. But fundamental physics doesn't particularly impact products or Lucent projects in five years, ten years -- maybe ever. So we've maintained a traditional focus on scientific research.
People want the next hot box, but they want such that it can be incorporated into an overall end-to-end solution. Not only should it be cool, but it should solve a customer's problems.
What did you find interesting at the show?
Frankly, a lot of folks are copying the stuff that we've been talking about.
Like what?
Lucent Technologies was the first equipment manufacturer to declare openly and publicly that it's not only about the next hot box, but that it's going to provide integrated customer solutions that it'd back up with services like consulting or management. The thing that stimulates researchers the most is having a ready source of exciting new technical problems to work on. I'm seeing a lot of that.
So, what's new is actually old? What's the most disruptive technology you've seen?
The fibre for the premises technology of Verizon, SBC and Bellsouth will be extremely disruptive on multiple levels. For starters, it's going to move the ability we have to get high bandwidth to the home another order of magnitude. Just think of the difference that we experienced when we moved from 56 kilobit modems to DSL and cable -- it was huge. Now we get fibre to the premises. The immediacy that one will have to data gets greatly improved. It's going to then put the next generation of load on a telephone network's core. That means a doubling or tripling every year of traffic on the network. And when that continues, the carriers can only go so far with their existing equipment before they have to rebuild and re-engineer the metro Ethernet and even, ultimately, the core.
It sounds, from your description, that the carriers are creating a problem by solving one.
That's true from a strictly technical point of view. They are creating a major new revenue source for themselves. In order to support that revenue opportunity, they have to make some investments.
When might this problem arise?
That depends on the speed of the deployment of the fibre to the premises. There are lots of regulatory issues, so I can't really comment. That's really hard for a technologist to predict.
Fibre to the home is meant to deliver high-speed Web access -- even cable TV. But it could provide a way to deliver voice services such as Internet telephony, aka voice over IP (VOIP). That raises the question: Will VOIP be the only way that telcos deliver a voice call, rendering the copper networks that they've spent 125 years building moot?
Yes. I think it will happen. There is efficiency to the packet approach, which does make it the ultimate technology. But it's got to be done reliably. There's a tremendous amount of copper-installed base and there has to be a value proposition to move from the old to the new. That's going to take a long time.
It seems that the latest standard that everyone is embracing is MPLS, which lets carriers offer a multitude of services on the same connection. What's Lucent's position on the standard?
We're partnering with Juniper Networks. They have an outstanding MPLS switch, and we're going to surround it with all the network management, provision and traffic engineering, along with our quality service.
What changes have you seen in the ways that telephone companies sell their networks? It seems that they are going beyond just selling airtime, now offering more services.
A lot of those carriers are saying that transmitting bits of information themselves is not what they want to do. They want to add valued-added services.
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