Next Generation Communications - Broadband Archives

Proactive Care Puts Operators One Step Ahead

2013-05-20T21:31:30Z

By Thomas Fuerst, Senior Director, Multimedia Solutions MarketingAlcatel-Lucent

Monitoring and analyzing network data proactively saves operators time, money, and customers.

When a network service fails, it makes headlines, ticks off customers, and costs that network operator money. When a failure is headed off in advance, on the other hand, there might not be praise-laden headlines, but it's newsworthy nonetheless.

The traditional approach to customer care has typically been: a disgruntled customer calls customer service and complains of a service interruption or problem; the rep, learning of it for the first time, sends out a technician the next day, and eventually finds a resolution. Often, customers are left feeling put out, and the operator has spent significant time and money resolving the problem. Even worse is the customer who doesn’t call and just feels this is ‘typical’ of their network experience. That is a customer at risk of leaving.

Proactive care flips this dynamic on its head by using predictive analytics to identify potential outages or errors in the network and stop them before they occur. It consists of three main parts: one, constantly monitoring and measuring data on the network; two, real-time analysis of the data; and three, the most important, acting on that analysis to fix the problem.

Think of proactive customer care as the unsung hero of customer service. Its job is simply to maintain business as usual, leaving end customers none the wiser of any issues behind the scenes. But the job is anything about simple.

The move to IP, while flattening and simplifying the network, has upped the complexity of all the services that have to go over the networks, fixed and wireless alike. There's also a heightened expectation on behalf of customers that services will just work.

The bottom line is, operators should be improving how they react to service issues, but also doing more to prevent errors from occurring in the first place.

The good news is they are starting to understand the importance of being proactive. One of Asia’s largest mobile operators, for example, has been using proactive customer care to identify and optimize the performance of its optical network for its 120+ million customers for the past year.

Another large North American operator uses proactive care to track network trends, and predictive modeling to provide early warning of service issues. As a result, it has seen a 300 percent return on investment, and it assesses issues 30 to 50 percent faster on average. This has cut their internal staff's work effort in half over the course of a year. The time the staff save not grappling with service issues is now redirected to other, actual revenue-generating activities.

Leading-edge tools for proactive care are those that are truly self-learning in nature. Taking note of issues that happen in one network can help solve another issue in another network. Even though Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and thresholds vary from one operator or one network to another, the smarter tools are those that use this “Big Data” analysis to address triggering behaviors will down the line, turn into issues and events. For example an operator in North America saw a trend of mobile calls being dropped after 180 seconds. Was this just a brief call? Was it a bad zone? Or was it a true drop in service? Hard to tell, but using proactive care, the operator realized that this wasn't a normal behavior. By tracking the data and analyzing the trend against multiple network behaviors, the problem was pinpointed and resolved before it became a customer problem.

Proactive care is applicable in the fixed world as well. Take an IPTV provider for which ensuring there is no jitter in its video streams is table stakes. Whenever there is a prime-time event such as a sporting event (like the Olympics for example) or inauguration, the network can get overloaded with so much video that it can affect the quality. An IPTV provider can use proactive analysis to see when they start dropping bits on a router in a path and catch it before pixilation occurs. They can then use this knowledge for future events, and share their experience so other operators do the same.

In today’s hyper-competitive market for network services, a lot of operators bank their reputation on being reliable. It’s the experience that matters most for the customer. Operators are selling their brand as much as the services themselves, so while network management has always been important, it is now as critical as the design of the network.

The more operators who proactively manage their networks, the less reactionary measure they'll have to take. And, that is something all customers will react positively too, whether they know it's happening or not.

Related Material: Read ‘It Pays to be Proactive’.

Pennsylvania Healthcare Provider UPMC Upgrading Infrastructure based on Alcatel-Lucent 7950 XRS

2013-03-10T15:56:11Z

By Susan J. Campbell

The need for better business intelligence is the driving force behind the momentum in businesses around the world to look at adoption of “big data” solutions. However, not all big data solutions are the same, and their applications in various markets must be customized since data capture and management in areas like healthcare must adhere to strict rules and regulations.

With this as context of its consideration of how best move to next generation communications capabilities, UPMC, a Western Pennsylvania healthcare provider, turned to Alcatel-Lucent to upgrade its IP and optical networking capabilities, starting at its core, so it could better accommodate and leverage the large data sets that are gathered on a regular basis. And, at the HIMSS event in the U.S., the annual conference and exposition for healthcare information technology professionals and their suppliers, UPMC’s selection of Alcatel-Lucent to better enable critical communications services to doctors’ offices, hospitals and other sites throughout Western Pennsylvania was announced.

A key component of the new network will be Alcatel-Lucent’s 7950 Extensible Routing System (XRS). This solution is positioned by the company as the most powerful IP core router on the global market. In working with UPMC, Alcatel-Lucent will also provide advanced 100G fiber-optic technology to support the needs of the organization’s network.

“Here at UPMC we see our network as a vital tool to support our mission – providing our patients with world-class healthcare,” said William Hanna, Vice President, Technical Services, Information Services Division of UPMC. “Our ongoing network modernization is ensuring that we remain at the forefront of healthcare innovation. This new project with Alcatel-Lucent, the latest step in our long-standing collaboration, will enable us to not only increase the capacity of our network, but to make our entire enterprise smarter and more efficient, and ultimately improve patient care throughout the UPMC system.”

This new 7950 XRS core router is based on the 400G FP3 chipset, providing a significant boost in efficiency, capacity and flexibility within IP networks. At the same time, the technology reduces power consumption and increases operational efficiency. Telefonica and Belgacom both recently deployed the 7950 XRS and are enjoying the increased capacity. And, in a recent Alcatel-Lucent blog, Alcatel-Lucent’s new core router – Off to a BIG start!", the company shares the early enthusiasm for the 7950 XRS which has more than 20 trials either underway or complete and also has six service providers confirmed as wanting to evolve their core networks using this technology.

Michel Emelianoff, President of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise said: “The ‘big data’ needs of large-scale enterprises such as UPMC are breaking down the barriers between traditional IT systems and communications networks. This project with UPMC offers a great example of how advanced IP and fiber optic technologies can enhance the operations of enterprises in a wide array of fields. We are particularly thrilled to play such a critical role in bringing improved healthcare services to the communities that UPMC serves.”

According to Alcatel-Lucent, a majority of its 7950 XRS wins are IP core network transformations that are driving away from 10G into the era of 100G or even beyond. As cloud service, video and the proliferations of wireless devices continue to change the dynamics of the network, changes have to be made to support the demand today and into the future.

Given all of the government mandates surrounding data storage, retention and access management, the explosion of data in general, and the need for enterprises of all sizes to able to share the value of structured and unstructured data and derive actionable insights that can drive more efficient performance and sustainable business advantage, we are going to see more and more enterprises upgrading their entire network infrastructures. It starts with rethinking the core and includes a healthy dose of fiber.

Innovation Allows Broadband to Get to Fast Faster

2012-11-19T16:04:00Z

By Susan Campbell

Demands on broadband providers have been nothing short of intense the last few years. The predicted “data storm” has arrived and users now expect more flexibility, capability, quality performance, and access to rich applications and features. This can be a challenge for service providers trying to meet the need, but is also creating new opportunities and revenue streams when challenges are overcome to improve service delivery overall.

A recent Alcatel-Lucent blog, Connecting the World – from Innovation to Reality, highlights these opportunities. Author Dave Geary, President Alcatel-Lucent Wireline, points out the socio-economic benefits of broadband. And, while we’re aware of the increase in mobility and growing demand for access, there are also a few other stats that may be surprising for some vendors, including that wirelines still mater.

For instance, did you know that:

In the U.S., two-thirds of people sleep with their mobile phones?
In Germany, 84 percent of users would prefer the Internet over their car or even their partner.
Again in the U.S., individuals 8-18 years of age can consume 11.5 hours of content in just seven hours. How you ask? They tend to have the TV, the desktop and the mobile device on all at the same time.

Even at a young age, we feel a constant need to stay connected. Yet at the same time, much of the world is still not connected to available to what Alcatel-Lucent calls High Leverage Networks.

For instance, while 80 percent of users in North America have access to high speed connections, there are still 75 million who are unserved. In APAC, more than a billion people are connected, but that’s only 25 percent of the population and three billion are still unserved. In fact, 4.5 billion people throughout the world do not have broadband service.

This represents considerable opportunity for broadband service providers able to reach this target audience – the underserved. Telkom South Africa is in the process of connecting 4 million subscribers through a combination of fiber and copper technologies. Telmex and Oi in LATAM have launched similar initiatives, and fiber networks are being rapidly rolled out in China by China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom.

Even with this progress, however, it’s not enough to just stay connected. It’s also important to ensure new and existing subscribers have access to the bandwidth they need, while also supporting the applications and services they want access to. As a result, Geary says that service providers need to establish bandwidth targets based on the population they serve.

In doing so, they need to leverage new technologies that will deliver higher bitrates. For instance, Belgacom plans to offer 50Mbps to all subscribers using the VDSL Vectoring; KPN relies on P2P fiber to push out 500Mbps and Vectoring will soon be used to improve overall performance; and massive programs have been adopted by Verizon and AT&T as they focus on LTE and delivering speeds up to 1Gbps.

These examples demonstrate a clear effort on the part of service providers to try and meet a very real and growing need to reach those who are not connected and improve services for those who are. In the process, the deployment of robust infrastructures, the high leverage network and strategic plans with realistic and measurable outcomes will enable real and profitable progress that enable users to get to fast faster and service providers to monetize the need for speed faster as well.

Whether it be bringing wired broadband to customers by cost-effectively upgrading existing copper plant with VDSL2 in a timely manner or installing new fiber optics, wires still matter in enabling the under and un-served the vital links they need to be part of the connected world.

Motive Mobile Device Manager Key to Better and More Cost-Effective Customer Experiences

2012-07-16T00:55:36Z

By Mae Kowalke

The customer service challenge for cellular providers is clear.

Numerous research firms have recently published studies estimating that smartphones currently make up half of all mobile phone purchases globally and that number is expected to reach 75 percent by 2013. This is context for what is a vexing industry challenge. It turns out that more than half of all customer service calls to mobile service operators now deal with the difficult technical problems that can come from smartphones, such as mobile internet, and 63 percent of returned phones are not actually faulty.

In fact, a recent Yankee Group study notes that technical difficulties now represent a bigger percentage of call center volume than billing issues. They also represent a huge financial drain on operators. A single support call, for example, can cost a provider roughly a month’s worth of customer profit. This means finding ways to effectively address device configuration and service provisioning is more crucial than ever.

Alcatel-Lucent has just released the latest version of its new Mobile Device Manager (MDM) to address this type of challenge, as part of its Motive Customer Experience Solutions package. MDM provides over-the-air detection, configuration and provisioning of a wide range of mobile devices including Apple and Android operating systems, and it works across 2G, 3G and 4G wireless networks.

David Stevenson, VP and General Manager of Motive Customer Experience Solutions at Alcatel-Lucent noted at the recent MDM introduction that, “With Alcatel-Lucent’s portfolio of Motive customer experience solutions – of which the Mobile Device Manager is a fundamental building block – we can reduce average handle times of service desk calls with at least 10 percent and increase successful software updates with a factor of 10.” He added: “This translates into less operational costs for mobile service providers, and happier and more loyal consumers.”

In addition to MDM, six other components make up the overall Motive Mobile Device Manager solution:

Motive Mobile Device Support Template

WDS Automatic Device Detection Manager
WDS Mobile Device Content Subscription
Motive Self-Service Console
Motive Service Management Platform, and Motive Customer Service Console

The Motive Mobile Device Support Template performs over-the-air diagnosis and resolution of mobile device service issues by using data from MDM, while the WDS Automatic Device Detection Manager lets mobile service providers detect and identify mobile devices when they appear on the network.

The Motive Customer Service Console is a robust customer care interface for customer service reps, and Motive Self-Service Console is a web-based subscriber-facing tool that lets customers self-diagnose and resolve mobile device issues. This is tied together with the Motive Service Management Platform, which is a service management platform that connects MDM, the self-service console and the customer-service console with the operator’s OSS/BSS framework.

Alcatel-Lucent also offers the WDS Mobile Device Content Subscription, which is a subscription service that “ensures access to up-to-date device configuration settings that have been tested against the Motive MDM server to effectively activate and manage the mobile devices on their network, accurately.

Time is money, particularly in the case of the efficient and effective management of customer interactions by mobile service provider contact center and technical support people. Ensuring that customer conversations are compelling as well as economical requires a combination of things including proper training, skills-based routing and ensuring that the right tools are used to measure those experiences so that data can be turned into knowledge and knowledge into actions that create value. Managing devices is a critical part of this equation which is why a comprehensive approach to device management such as the Motive portfolio is something that is already drawing industry attention.

Bell Labs Celebrates TELSTAR Anniversary

2012-07-10T16:20:05Z

By Susan J. Campbell

It is hard to believe but July 10 marks the 50^th anniversary of the launch of TELSTAR I. This was the first active communications satellite and its placement into orbit is considered the birth of modern multimedia global communications.

Developed and built by Bell Labs with funding from AT&T in conjunction with NASA, TELSTAR I, which was a 34 inch sphere, was a true marvel of its time. It transformed communications. It rightfully is considered not just one of the Alcatel-Lucent research arm’s greatest historical achievements, but as President John F. Kennedy noted at the time it really was a turning point in the history of communications.

It is something worthy of a significant celebration.

The new era TELSTAR I NASA ushered in we now take for granted — high-speed (for the time) data communications, real-time global telephone service and TV broadcasting.

In a Bell Labs statement, Jeong Kim, President, noted:

“With TELSTAR and its successors, the world was made a smaller place, as billions of people around the world had instant access to news, sports and entertainment. The phrase “live via satellite” became part of the common vernacular. At the time, few people would have believed that 50 years later you could actually talk to your house or car, or predicted that children would play video games with other children 10,000 miles away.”

The success of the launch was verified when on July 13. The first transatlantic conversation took place between AT&T President Eugene McNeely and Jacques Marette, French Communications Minister.

A few other TELSTAR I firsts are noteworthy:

News items were exchanged between newsmen in New York and London on July 19 demonstrating a successfully transatlantic telephone connection
A major league baseball game played in the U.S. was transmitted to the Eurovision network to 18 nations on July 23
All three U.S. networks carried the Eurovision program on July 24, showing scenes of the Coliseum in Rome, Big Ben in London and Champs Elysees in Paris.

While these firsts were impressive at the time, it was the foundation it provided for modern communications that had potential impacts beyond expectations at the time. And now, thanks to the launch of subsequent satellites bearing the TELSTAR name over the years, we enjoy instant global communications, Web conferencing, multi-national broadcasting, data communications, and so much more without barriers or delays.

To mark the celebration of the TELSTAR anniversary, Bell Labs and Alcatel-Lucent are holding a luncheon and ceremony that will examine past success, current endeavors and proposed opportunities to build on the success of the TELSTAR program. The impact of the last 50 years will be examined, as well as the opportunities that exist with the challenges in today’s communications.

Call it coincidence, but it should be noted that on July 5, an Ariane 5 rocket lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana carrying the The Ka-band EchoStar XVII. This is satellite will be the platform for HughesNet Gen4—Hughes' fourth-generation satellite Internet service. The launch demonstrates the ongoing importance of communications satellites in enabling universal broadband for a connected world.

It also serves as an important reminder of the significance TELSTAR I. At the time, space was the final frontier. The scientific breakthroughs Bell Labs was able to incorporate literally turned science fiction into reality, and in the process transformed the world.

Happy Anniversary!

'Main-Streaming' Changing Video Game in Content Delivery Networking

2012-06-11T15:28:21Z

By Mae Kowalke

As traditional TV collides with the internet, unprecedented changes are taking place in the video industry. The biggest trend is what Alcatel-Lucent calls ‘main-streaming:’ video streaming as the new normal mass market model for how consumers get their video.

In short, consumers want video content anywhere, anytime, on any device. In an early 2011 report, Neilson said U.S. consumers spent 34.5 percent more time watching video on the internet, and 20 percent more time watching mobile video, than they did in early 2010. No doubt that number has grown since—and will continue to grow.

Online video is popular with consumers because it satisfies an appetite for flexible consumption. Plus, the success of online services like Hulu+ and Netflix indicate customers are willing to pay for that flexibility.

Content delivery industry players like Netflix and Hulu offer video using ad-funded or direct-subscription business models. These content providers pay traditional content delivery networks (CDNs) like Amazon and Limelight to publish video content online, because doing so theoretically helps ensure quality of service (QoS).

Trouble is, CDNs are making promises they can’t keep. The structure of their platforms—where caches are located at the edge of ISP networks—simply can’t provide guaranteed adequate QoS for end users. This presents a significant opportunity for network service providers.

“Network service providers are the only one who can ensure QoS, because they own the physical connection to the end user,” Alcatel-Lucent explained in a white paper about main-streaming. “QoS can be a differentiator for them compared to other players in the media value chain, and they have a unique opportunity to leverage this position.”

QoS is not the only concern, though. The impact and focus surrounding main-streaming varies depending on which side it’s viewed from.

End-users want improved quality of experience (QoE). Content owners want secure delivery and guaranteed QoS. Service providers want (or rather, need) support for a wide range of streaming and downloading technologies, and optimized traffic to meet demand while reducing transport costs.

“On-net CDN, or service provider CDN, is a key component to answer the needs of all players in the value chain, by allowing a better QoE for consumers while reducing the cost of transporting video,” Alcatel-Lucent explained in its white paper.

On-net CDNs own the networks over which video content is transmitted. At the last mile, service providers take over with content closer to the end-user through caching deep in the network.

By partnering with on-net CDNs, service providers can increase revenue, reduce transport costs and improve user experience through multiple business models using multi-screen video platforms.

Retail Model – the network providers becomes a content retailer, dealing directly with content providers to secure distribution rights—enabling high profit potential. Because of operational requirements, Tier 1 providers are most likely to adopt this model.

Wholesale Model – premium content delivery services are established for direct use by application and content providers. ACPs publish content directly into the operator networks, and network providers are compensated as a CDN provider. This model—appealing to Tier 1 broadband access providers—has smaller profit margins but also requires less overhead.

Transparent Caching – enables over-the-top (OTT) content delivery, with service providers deploying caching island to intercept OTT traffic, thereby reducing infrastructure costs and improving QoE. Content is delivered to subscribers without a direct relationship with content providers.

Major players in the video content industry, such as Verizon, are adapting to the new reality of main-streaming by adopting IP-video solutions like Alcatel-Lucent’s Velocix. For Verizon, which initiated a CDN deployment in 2008, Velocix helped speed up time-to-market, boost operational efficiency, enable multiscreen integration, and efficiently control costs for content delivery.

The success of on-net CDN as part of the main-streaming value chain depends on several key building blocks of service, publishing and storage and delivery: the control tier (management interface, network performance, usage reporting), the storage tier (provides content), and the delivery tier (delivery digital assets to end-user devices).

Deploying a CDN is a specialized effort

“A common misconception is that an existing network team can be used to design, deploy and operate digital media delivery infrastructure, but the skill set required are very different to those found to run a network,” Alcatel-Lucent notes in its white paper. “This is not just about deploying some boxes/cache into the network, but operating a CDN network requires some tools and expertise.”

Design, ingestion, resiliency, security, management, monitoring and reporting, and portal are key elements of any CDN deployment. The Velocix IP-video solution addresses these by being purpose built with efficient caching options, smart content replication, on-board instrumentation, low touch operation, troubleshooting tools, go-to-market support, monetization options, and speedy time-to-market features.

Customer Experience Management Key to Mobile Services Differentiation

2012-06-03T22:41:46Z

By Susan Campbell

The mobile broadband services market has become almost hyper-competitive globally. And, it has become increasingly clear that providing superior quality of experience (QoE) to customers, end users as well as third parties, will likely be a (if not the most) critical element in creating sustainable and profitable differentiated value. As a result, mobile service provider investment attention needs to be focused not just on delivering speeds and feeds but also on all aspects of QoE. A holistic approach for concentration on customer care¸ such as the Alcatel-Lucent portfolio of Motive Customer Experience solutions, fits the needs for making sure the best possible user experiences can be provided, monitored and constantly improved.

Why customer care, and why a comprehensive approach?

The reason is that a holistic approach to customer care is a fundamental tool for reducing vital churn rates. The bottom line is the bottom line here. Service providers (SPs) have the opportunity to make better use of the subscriber and network data to help not only make customers more loyal but also improve average revenue per user (ARPU) based on establishing a relationship that customers view as more “trusted.” In fact, if done correctly, they can leverage the provisioning of compelling customer experiences into a powerful tool for making satisfied customers enthusiastic brand advocates.

All of the elements of a holistic approach to QoE and the benefits it is capable of providing are highlighted in a recent Alcatel-Lucent Enriching Communications article, Managing the Mobile Customer Experience.

Let’s face it. Customers today expect their mobile networks today to deliver a high-performance and secure always on/all ways connected experience to their legacy and new bit-hungry personal devices. Everywhere, every time access to rich multimedia services and advanced applications is table stakes.

This presents a huge challenge and opportunity of mobile service providers around the world. Did you know, for example, that smartphones now account for 27 percent of all phones throughout the world, according to VisionMobile. Projections are they will represent 75 percent in the near future and certainly the vast majority of new phone sales. Plus, the explosive tablet market is driving a revolution in interactive multimedia apps which all need to themselves provide end users quality experiences if they are to succeed. They in essence will live or die based on the ability of the networks they rely on to deliver what they promise.

Reality is that it is not enough to simply recognize the fact that traffic in general is exploding as more devices are attached to the global networks. The nature of that traffic is also radically changing. Multimedia apps, and the use of streamed and real-time interactive video, presents a rising storm of data that already is straining mobile networks capacity in many places as well as the signaling networks that enable them to manage the new complexity.

As the article points out this is the proof case for why SPs, especially in the face of strong competition, need to invest now in efficiently and effectively managing the customer experience with solutions like Motive in order to set themselves apart in a world that is changing very rapidly.

SPs offering mobility are currently struggling to find their place between over-the-top (OTT) providers and customers. As the industry grows and evolves, complexity is bring added to the mix with new operating systems, configurations and applications. As a result, complex technologies are being made available to inexperienced customers, increasing the challenge of delivering a satisfying experience at a reasonable cost.

Management of QoE means improving such things as: first call resolution, the provision of self-diagnostic and self-care solutions, the clarification of offered services and how they are billed, and the delivery of a consistent experience across every customer interaction.

In taking the holistic approach to the customer experience, can target their position in the value chain and reinforce it in the mind of the consumer. Leveraging a holistic approach to customer experience management helps in the process by extending QoE to every touch point throughout the entire customer experience.

At the end of the day, value creation and competitive sustainability are based on trust, and trust is engendered by improved relationships between buyers and sellers which can only be the result of how buyers experience and SPs people, products, services and processes. That is what a holistic approach to QoE management is all about. It is the path to growth and profits instead of to commoditization .

A New Conversation Experience: Alcatel-Lucent's 4G Consumer Communications Solution

2012-05-14T14:15:32Z

Beecher Tuttle

Subscriber demand for more innovative, bandwidth-hungry services has driven most every service provider to build a 4G LTE network capable of providing greater capacity, reduced latency and improved pricing. But to unlock the power of a 4G LTE investment – and to continue to deliver revenue-generating voice and messaging services – carriers must look to embrace Voice over LTE (VoLTE), a core component for a new set of rich media and collaboration services that also enables operators to deliver voice without having to rely on legacy 2G/3G networks.

In short, VoLTE helps service providers capitalize on their new 4G investments. VoLTE enables operators to offload legacy infrastructure and to deliver data simultaneously with crisp HD voice. By blending mobile voice with video, converged IP messaging, the web and social networking, service providers can create new revenue-generating communication services that differentiate them from competitors. The technology is also proven to harmonize conversations across disparate providers, devices and apps.

But perhaps more than anything, VoLTE provides operators with the flexibility to respond to ever-changing technologies, market conditions and user demands. The competitive freedoms of VoLTE allow operators to experiment with and deliver new communication features for broad markets and even strategic industries like mobile healthcare.

VoLTE also provides an avenue for operators to partner with application developers to deliver the best user experience at the lowest cost per bit, solidifying their position in the value chain.

"Regardless of where technology, regulation and competition take the industry in the coming years, VoLTE operators’ investment enables them to act decisively," say Alcatel-Lucent, a leading provider of VoLTE technologies.

Voice

In addition to providing a pathway for new converged services, VoLTE acts as a business necessity for delivering voice services via 4G networks, rather than continuing to deliver voice and messaging over legacy 2G/3G networks – an interim solution that doesn't take advantage of the power of LTE.

VoLTE is the long-term industry-designated solution for delivering voice and SMS messaging – two revenue-generating services that have stringent requirements that all-IP mobile networks can't meet.

Unlike temporary solutions such as circuit switched fallback (CSFB) and simultaneous voice and LTE (SV-LTE), which can't enable all-IP communication services like video calls or WebRTC, VoLTE tightly links the voice application to the LTE network, assuring the best subscriber experience in terms of performance, reliability, interoperability and global roaming.

With VoLTE, operators can provide new revenue-generating services such as video-communications and converged IP messaging while still delivering key mobile features like global roaming, global interoperability and a global ecosystem of smartphones and tablets, says Alcatel.

How does VoLTE optimize LTE investments?

Unlike 2G and 3G networks, VoLTE provides seamless IP connectivity between a subscriber’s devices and the Packet Data Networks (PDNs), resulting in improved spectral efficiency, higher bandwidth, reduced latency and Quality of Service (QoS) for new and legacy communication services.

The VoLTE application provides industry-leading reliability for conversational voice, real-time gaming, IMS signaling, and buffered and live streaming video. Other service differentiators include:

Graceful handover of in-progress voice calls from VoLTE (packet) to 2G/3G (circuit)
Emergency calling (for example, a subscriber’s call for help to police)
Intelligent Network (IN) service migration
Short message service (SMS) over IP
IMS centralized services

These features give application developers reason to partner with service providers and gain a share of their revenue. For more technical information on how VoLTE enables these functions, check out Alcatel Lucent's most recent addition to its white paper library, Voice Over LTE: The New Mobile Voice.

Path to VoLTE

Enablers like Alcatel-Lucent acknowledge that the path to VoLTE is a serious undertaking that relies heavily on the readiness of an operator's 4G LTE network as well as their competitive situation.

"The VoLTE operator must have purchased 4G LTE spectrum that covers critical markets, and they must have deployed or have a firm plan to deploy 4G LTE’s radios, mobile backhaul, packet core and so on," says Alcatel. "The VoLTE deployment is comparably small when compared to the rest of 4G LTE, yet it too must be done well in order to assure subscribers’ service and win their business."

Before deploying VoLTE, service providers must first consider:

IN Services: Operators must develop a plan to migrate their IN services from legacy networks to 4G infrastructures. For more information on this topic, check out the IN Services Migration white paper from Alcatel.
Consistent roaming: Without standards, business agreements and interconnections being finalized, operators need to employ an interim roaming strategy. The most optimum path available is the circuit switched copycat method, which relies on Local Breakout (LBO) to expeditiously route voice traffic.
Voice call continuity: The majority of operators use SR-VCC or eSR-VCC. Click on this Alcatel white paper for more information.
Device ecosystem: With the help of early VoLTE adopters, Alcatel-Lucent has been testing and preparing for the launch of VoLTE-capable devices.

The Alcatel-Lucent advantage

As described above, VoLTE deployments hold tremendous value for service providers that rely on 4G LTE infrastructures to drive their business into the future. But to take full advantage of VoLTE, operators must first analyze their current competitive situation and assess their technical assets to ensure an efficient and cost-effective deployment.

Service providers need a partner with the technical expertise to help them with a smooth execution, especially considering commercial VoLTE rollouts are only just beginning. Alcatel-Lucent and its 4G Consumer Communications solution have been at the heart of most every major VoLTE trial, assuring next-gen voice, video and messaging services with the highest level of performance, reliability and service interoperability.

The graphic below illustrates Alcatel-Lucent’s end-to-end approach to LTE.

Alcatel-Lucent's New Conversion Experience enables operators to deliver:

A better user experience: Mobile subscribers can enjoy video, voice and messaging using any combination of device, screen and network.

Connected communities: By harmonizing communications across telecom and web-based networks. Users can easily contact friends and family over social networks. And, through WebRTC, operators can extend their services to anyone with a web browser.

Open for innovation: The solution has easy to use, open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to attract application developers with additional features that inspire and accelerate new conversation services and collaboration.

Click here to learn more about Alcatel-Lucent's "New Conversion Experience." And, for additional information, check out the following Alcatel-Lucent white papers:

LTE Wireless Networks -- Time to Deploy

2012-05-07T18:20:17Z

By Mae Kowalke

Wireless operators and those who supply them infrastructure spend a lot of time focusing on the ‘data storm’ and what they are doing to stay one step ahead of it. The goal is to deliver more data, faster, with a better customer experience and greater economies of scale than in the past. Thanks to Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, these goals are now within reach.

“According to the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), 4G LTE is the fastest developing mobile system technology ever,” said Maniam Palanivelu, director of global 4G LTE solutions marketing at Alcatel-Lucent, in an Enriching Communications article, “LTE: The Best Thing to Happen to Wireless Networks.”

Palanivelu cited GSA figures indicating there are now 49 commercial LTE networks in 29 countries, and that is forecasted to reach 119 networks in 53 countries by the end of 2012. Two hundred and eight-five operators in 93 countries are actively investing in LTE. In fact, the evolution toward 4G LTE is occurring in developing and developed markets alike.

“Operators in developing markets are using LTE to cost effectively bring the mobile Internet to areas that previously had no Internet access at all…In developed markets, premium data services, such as mobile video, gaming and business apps, need LTE’s big bandwidth and low latency,” Palanivelu explained.

For operators, the need to deliver more data is the driving force behind LTE adoption. Customers got a taste for data with 3G, and changed their behavior in response. With average consumption per device growing 14-20 fold, it is clear users want more data. They also are indicating they want it sooner rather than later. The advertising push by service providers on who has the best and/or most extensive 4GLTE deployment demonstrates how critical expeditiously deploying not just 4G LTE but also Wi-Fi hotspots has become. Make no mistake about the fact that operators are committing infrastructure dollars behind their marketing claims.

The cellular carriers have it right about the imperatives for acting, Palanivelu says, “Now is the time for operators to seize this opportunity and profit from the growing data storm,” and LTE clearly is the technology they need to meet exploding demand.

The article makes other compelling points about LTE that highlight its attraction. Delivering more data isn’t the only advantage. LTE also provides a graceful migration path to move to a scalable all-IP architecture.

“It no longer makes business or financial sense to run multiple disparate networks,” Palanivelu states. He continues that, “To deliver the massive capacity required to serve the demand, today’s networks must change. Unlike 3G, LTE is all IP. It’s based on IPv6 which supports massive numbers of additional IP addresses and provides other improvements over IPv4. And it opens up access to new market segments like machine-to-machine.”

Although return on investment for LTE varies for each operator the path forward is clear. Deployment is now no longer a question of if, but when, where, why and how. The proof cases are impressive.

“The faster operators can bring LTE to market, the faster they can rise above the data storm to grow profitably and drive new revenues,” Palanivelu concluded. “Once they have the spectrum, there’s no reason to wait another day to invest in LTE and commercialize its vast potential.” He could have added with a 4G iPhone on the way, and tablet sales creating a tsunami of demand for quality user experiences on devices of all shapes and sizes, failure to deploy LTE and correctly architect not just the network but the business model could be hazardous to one’s competitive health.

Building New Zealand's Ultra-Fast Broadband Network

2012-04-30T17:29:54Z

By Erin Harrison

New Zealand is on the brink of a new era in communications. Two major initiatives will significantly help improve the speed and capacity of the country’s high-speed broadband network, as outlined in a recent Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) white paper, “How New Zealand can increase the social & economic impacts of high-speed broadband.”

The Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) project and Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) are set to improve the network speed and capacity available to nearly 98 percent of New Zealanders, based on a study conducted by Bell Labs, the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent. The goal is, as ALU likes to say about its broadband portfolio, “Get to Fast, Faster.”

The study explored the social and economic impacts for New Zealand of UFB and RBI, and the high-speed broadband applications that these networks will enable, ultimately showing the incremental growth in GDP stemming from the network builds will be $5.5 billion over 20 years, significantly larger than the government’s $1.5 billion capital contribution to these projects.

The study offers ideas on how New Zealand can positively impact three key variables, therefore increasing the economic benefits stemming from the UFB and RBI networks, and the broadband applications that will be delivered across them. The key variables are:

Availability of relevant applications
Speed of broadband application adoption
Total level of broadband application uptake

While video is one of the key drivers behind the surge, demands go beyond entertainment. Governments worldwide recognize the socio-economic benefits that broadband can bring, and have set targets for universal broadband, according to ALU, which provides high-capacity fiber, copper access and 4G LTE solutions aimed to help service providers, utility companies and governments accelerate delivery of ultra-fast broadband in the most cost-effective way possible.

In fact, Alcatel-Lucent has been in New Zealand since the 1920s, building and maintaining the country’s telecommunications infrastructure. Alcatel-Lucent says that ICT innovation can be a powerful catalyst for social and economic development.

Alcatel-Lucent’s ng Connect Program aims to bring together infrastructure, device, application and content companies to create an end-to-end ecosystem to rapidly develop new services and applications. The company launched the ng Connect Program in New Zealand in late 2011 to help local companies, universities and research institutions collaborate with global leaders on high-speed broadband applications, for use by New Zealand end-users and to generate export earnings.

Under the UFB and RBI initiatives, 75 percent of New Zealanders will have access to ultra-fast broadband. Schools, hospitals and 90 percent of businesses will be connected by 2015. In addition, residences and the remaining 10 percent of businesses will be connected by 2019.

Businesses with large employee bases can help accelerate application adoption and create a so-called bow-wave of high-speed broadband uptake by using UFB and RBI as the basis for large-scale teleworking initiatives. To drive this aggressive level of uptake, the CXOs of large organizations need to champion this massive-scale teleworking and communication effort in New Zealand.

Information and Communications Technology has Key Role in Green Economy

2012-04-30T17:03:37Z

By Mae Kowalke

It will take dedication, teamwork and technology to achieve the future we want in terms of reducing poverty, advancing social equity, and ensuring environmental protection. That’s the message behind upcoming Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, this June in Brazil.

Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) and others are focusing heavily on technology as one key aspect in achieving a better future. At a Rio+20 planning conference earlier this month, Philippe Richard, who heads up green strategy at Bell Labs, participated in the closing panel, where he highlighted the role information and communications technology (ICT) plays in sustainable development.

“ICT is a mandatory enabler if we want to succeed in time,” Richard stressed in an ALU Corporate Responsibility blog entry. “The technology required for making a difference will mean leapfrogging for many.” To help push successful sustainable development, ICT must also be efficient and ubiquitous. “Ultimately access to broadband must be a top public policy priority for inclusive global sustainability,” Richard added.

ALU has been busy working on ICT solutions as a component of sustainable development, through Bell Labs. Its GreenTouch initiative is a co-creative platform the enables meaningful collaboration as part of the green economy. “Alcatel-Lucent’s ICT solutions contribute towards the much needed, low-carbon economy, including perspectives relative to national energy consumption patterns,” Richard noted.

A key message during the planning conference was that long-term results for sustainable development and the green economy depend on technology investments that yield OPEX savings—rather than short-term CAPEX deals. ICT has a lot of potential in this area, but needs more investment.

“Unfortunately, we are not going fast enough because of financial and economic roadblocks,” Richard said. “Even if the best technology is available, deployment is hindered by those limited by CAPEX only based decisions. This is where UN agencies, EU/global policy makers can help by providing appropriate policy support and incentives (including carbon pricing).”

It all boils down to investing wisely and starting early enough in development projects to make a lasting difference. Smart procurement, coordinated policy and reward programs for transformative technology are all important elements in creating a sustainable green economy.

For Richard, his colleagues at Alcatel-Lucent, and others involved in sustainable development, ‘green’ is the next big revolution of the 21^st century. With forecasted 27% increase in energy consumption associated with communications service provider networks now through 2016, the time is ripe to capitalize on ICT opportunities, including potential for 15% global emissions reduction by 2020.

“We have an enormous and still relatively untapped potential, to dramatically help other economic sectors to be greener,” Richard concluded.

Report: Chinese Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Industry Interested in Going Green, But More Development Needed

2012-04-30T16:04:49Z

By Mae Kowalke

People working in the Chinese information and communications technology (ICT) industry are open to the concept of going green, but need support and education to achieve carbon reduction targets using technology. That is the conclusion of a recent research study conducted at China’s Tsingua University Media Lab on behalf of Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) titled, “Green Information Communications Technology in China.”

The study involved surveying 1,072 ICT industry professionals from enterprises, associations, government departments, and higher education institutions in Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Nanjing. It found that most Chinese companies are aware of green technology efforts. In fact, 59 percent of respondents plan to go green. More than 90 percent of the professionals who participated believe technology can support a low-carbon economy through energy consumption reductions and motivating society to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

“The study found that 39 percent of businesses in China planned to reduce carbon emissions by 1-20 percent within the next three to five years with the national target of 17 percent in China’s 12th five-year plan,” ALU noted in announcing the research. “However there was resistance to adopting more sustainable policies due to what they see as high capital, time and human resource investment requirements,” they stated.

This suggests that a coordinated approach between the Chinese government, education authorities, enterprises and the technology industry will be the most successful way to reduce carbon emissions on a national scale using ICT.

“The relationship between ICT and the environment is complex and multi-faceted,” noted Rajeev Singh-Molares, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s Asia-Pacific Region, in the report. “Enterprises, government bodies and academic institutions need to work in tandem to spur the development and innovation of green ICT through environmentally sustainable models.”

Education is a key component of driving growth of ICT applications in a green economy.

Although the ICT industry in China overall has a consistently high view of this technology’s role in a green economy, knowledge levels of survey respondents varied when it came to ICT applications for carbon emissions reduction.

“Only 7.1 percent of enterprise respondents, 3.9 percent of college respondents and 16.7 percent of respondents from relevant departments of the government/associations could identify ten low-carbon technology applications… Respondents of ICT enterprises were most knowledgeable about green ICT’s ability to improve logistics and to provide alternatives to face to face communication,” the researchers found.

Based on results of this research study, ALU recommended that the Chinese government take several steps to promote ICT as a means of achieving carbon emission reductions and growing the green economy:

Strengthen awareness of how to implement green ICT
Educate IT professionals and organizational leaders about ICT’s potential beyond lowering IT costs
Actively promote relevant policy implementation
Explore radical approaches that go beyond making existing infrastructure more efficient

“With the information industry becoming one of China’s fastest growing economic sectors, green ICT provides a leapfrogging opportunity to mitigate some of the challenges in our environment, including climate change, energy efficiency and biodiversity among others,” Singh-Molares concluded.

No 'One-Size-Fits-All' Path to Improving the Customer Experience

2012-04-23T14:18:07Z

By Erin Harrison

In this day in age, no matter what business you are in, the customer is king.

As we touched on last week (and commands further attention), European telecom operators are not cutting it when it comes to delivering a stellar – or even an adequate – customer experience. This weakened Quality of Experience (QoE) tendency is forcing tech-savvy consumers to side with the company that is most responsive to their communications needs and not necessarily the one that offers a specific kind of service.

Typically consumers base their requirements on the strength, speed and coverage of their network, the depth and breadth of their product and services portfolio and, least of all, price. But this is the case no longer.

A recent study conducted in EMEA by European Communications – the results of which appear in a recent special edition, “Customer Experience” – found overwhelmingly that telecom operators are losing their edge when it comes to QoE. Alarmingly, only17 percent of operators say they have a 360-degree view of their customers.

Most important, in a subsequent interview with Ben Geller, senior director of marketing at Alcatel-Lucent, he said the study reveals that the main differentiator between telecom operators these days is found not in the services offered but the customer experience overall.

“The real differentiator [between companies] has ultimately become the customer experience offered,” said Geller. “The days of customer acquisition are largely gone. Markets are pretty much saturated and essentially, the strategy has become one that is not based on grabbing market share, but rather, on retaining market share and getting more value out of the customers that you already have.”

That means even if even if network service is consistently reliable, a bad experience or interaction can have major impact, including lost revenue from the customers that switch to another operator, which lowers customer lifetime value (CLV) and the sets forth an inability to monetize service portfolios.

In fact, more than 70 percent of consumers are willing to spend 10 percent or more with businesses that exceed their expectations, but when customers are dissatisfied, their likelihood of churning increases by a factor of 10, according to statistics from Alcatel-Lucent.

In line with the findings and the need to take a more holistic view, Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) offers Motive Customer Experience Management solutions that can help service providers make a good impression by getting it right the first time.

Using Motive CXM solutions, service providers can:

Improve the order to activation ratio
Reduce the number of calls that come through to the help desk
Reduce average handle time and increase first call resolutions for tech support inquires
Reduce the number of no-defect-found device returns

Those service providers with good QoE are able to reduce their support costs and ultimately improve their bottom line. However, it is imperative to keep in mind there is no one-size-fits-all solution or prescribed path to improve QoE, Geller noted.

“Every provider has their own unique set of problems they are trying to solve,” he said. “Some [operators] are going to want to start with better monetizing the assets that they have…others might want to be able to minimize the number of incoming calls for tech support, while others, still, will have no idea where they want to start.”

Green Telecom & IT Workshop by IISc and Bell Labs

2012-04-23T13:57:53Z

By Vikram Srinivasan, Director, Networking Systems Research, Bell Labs, India

The GreenTouch consortium was formed with the ambitious goal of inventing new technologies that could reduce the energy expenditure of telecommunication networks by a factor of 1000 by 2015. Two of the newest members of the consortium are the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, two premier research institutes in India. We recognized that India faces certain unique challenges and Green is not only far more relevant in emerging markets such as India, but also that emerging markets require certain unique technical challenges in the field of Green Networking. With this in mind, the Green Telecom and IT Workshop was co-organized by Bell Labs and IISc with support from GreenTouch to explore collaborative opportunities, on April 4-5, 2012.

The Workshop was kicked off with two exciting keynotes by Dr. Gee Rittenhouse, President of the GreenTouch consortium and Prof. Rod Tucker from the University of Melbourne. Dr. Gee Rittenhouse outlined the vision of GreenTouch. He outlined some ongoing projects in wireline and wireless networking that would help achieve this goal. Dr. Rod Tucker then delved into the details of why research in Green networking was absolutely essential. His analysis showed that while Telecom comprised about 2% of total energy consumption today, with the rapid growth in data traffic, this fraction could reach alarming proportions in a few years.

Further, on Day two there was a keynote talk by Prof. Vinod Sharma from IISc. Apart from these key notes, there were 21 technical talks from Academia and Industry comprising IISc, IIT Delhi, IIT Chennai, IIT Mumbai, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), IBM Research, Microsoft Research and Bell Labs. The talks were divided into 6 sessions comprising Green IT, Green Access (2 sessions), Green Routers and Transport, Green Devices and Energy Harvested Networks.

The speakers from Bell Labs were Thierry Klein, Peter Vetter, Peter Winzer, David Neilson, Milind Budhikkot, Rouzbeh Razhavi and Vikram Srinivasan. They outlined various approaches by Bell Labs Researchers to tackle the 1000X goal ranging from small cells, dynamic spectrum access and cloud RAN on the wireless side, to bit-interleaved PON, quantum communications and spatial multiplexing and green routers and interconnects on the wireline side.

It was interesting to note that almost all the Academics from India were focused on the design of energy harvested networks. The key challenge in India is that cell sites do not have reliable access to the power grid and up to 70% of the operators OPEX is energy related. Prof. Jamadagni from IISc and a member of TRAI outlined the regulators proposals on making a significant fraction of base stations in rural and urban areas run on energy harvested sources by 2020. Prof. Jhunjunwala from IIT Chennai explored the optimal mix of energy sources (solar, battery and diesel generators) in order to minimize the operator’s OPEX. Prof. Vinod Sharma in his key note talk explored the fundamental information theoretic and queuing theoretic limits of communications in energy harvested scenarios. Other Indian Academics talked about the design of algorithms for communications in energy harvested scenarios, including using cooperative relays etc.

In addition to the technical talks, there was a Panel discussion on “The Innovation Opportunity and need for green telecommunications in India”. The Panel was moderated by Suresh Goyal, Head of Green Research in Bell Labs and included Gee Rittenhouse, Prof. Rod Tucker, Arun Seth (Chairman Alcatel-Lucent, India), Mrs. Shachi Devi ( CTO, Indus Towers), Harish Hande (Co-founder, SELCO, India, Magsaysay award winner), Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, (Professor, IIT Chennai) and Srikantan Moorthy (Senior Vice President and Group Head, Education & Research, Infosys). The Panel discussion was extremely lively and spanned a broad range of topics from Green Telecom to sustainability. The lively debate highlighted some of the unique challenges faced in India from a sustainability and Green perspective.

On the whole, the workshop was well attended with around 150 participants spanning Academia and Industry. It helped build bridges between IISc, IIT Delhi and other Green Touch partners and several areas of potential collaboration have been identified.

More Info: Website url: https://sites.google.com/site/greenworkshops4/?s_cid=smm_tmc0304_bl

Pictures from the workshop: https://picasaweb.google.com/bell.labs.blog/GreenTelecomITWorkshopByIIScAndBellLabs?authuser=0&feat=directlink&_cid=smm_tmc0304_bl

Coherent Technology Enables the Seamless Upgrade to 100 Gb/s

2012-04-15T20:21:04Z

Susan J. Campbell

The demand for data consumption and rich multimedia interactions is driving the call for 100 Gb/s. Fortunately, coherent technology in high-performance electro-optics engines enable the cost and performance benefits of such transmissions to be viable commercially.

A recent Alcatel-Lucent TechZine article by Sam Bucci, Vice President and General Manager, Terrestrial Optics, entitled, Coherent Technology: Making 100 Gb/s Viable, focused on how fiber impairments can decrease the performance and quality of the data transmission as speeds increase. It made a compelling case that such impairment can be overcome with coherent technology which ensures performance and cost benefits are optimized.

While what follows may be a bit technical, the facts are that network challenges exist when moving from slower to faster speeds. Fiber has been a true wonder for the delivery of high-performance and the ever increasing need for higher-speed networks for many years. However, they have not been immune from possible degradation as speeds increase. Indeed, fiber impairments can cause degraded signal quality leading to overall poor performance. The advanced electro-optics engine in the Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) solution leverages the concepts of optimized signal modulation along with coherent detection so that service providers can effectively overcome these challenges in their fiber networks.

As Bucci explains, the presence of coherent detection applied to optimal transmission creates a phase-modulated signal. This signal is then sent to the optimal mixer, which also receives a signal from a local oscillator. He notes that with beating in place, the optical signal operating at the same frequency as the oscillator is amplified, making all other frequencies non-coherent with the oscillator. This process provides an additional 2-dB improvement in the noise sensitivity compared with differential detection. In lay terms, less noise translates into much better signal quality and hence better quality performance.

The good news is that different phase-domain and polarization-domain modulation formats can be combined with coherent detection. This is important in terms of keeping expense down for service providers with heterogeneous optical networks. As the article points out, two formats in phase-domain and polarization domain modulation have emerged as primary candidates to help overcome network challenges in moving to 100-Gb/s optical systems:

With PDM-QPSK, the signal carriers two bits per symbol per polarization
In PDM-BPSK, the signal carries one bit per symbol per polarization

While the coherent architecture is more complex than conventional solutions, two key advantages exist: it provides the optical field carrier amplitude, full polarization and phase signal information for easy retrieval so it can be applied to compensate for linear distortions; and the encoding of multiple information bits is conducted through orthogonal polarizations of the optical signal. This is precisely what customers are looking for: transport capacity is increased and spectral efficiency is optimized.

At the end of the day what operators want, given their substantial fiber network investments with their long life-cycles, are ways to improve the performance and reach of their networks as they migrate to higher speeds and feeds.

This is exactly where coherent technology provides significant value-added. Three main benefits cited by ALU include:

The elimination of dispersion compensation modules
Restoration acceleration
Improvements in signal propagation

In working with Alcatel-Lucent for coherent technology access, optical networks can be upgraded seamlessly to enjoy such benefits as the adaptation of existing dispersion managed links; the addition of older fiber plants without DCMs for transport, and the upgrade to 100 Gb/s in older fiber networks that would normally be a challenge.

We hear a lot of talk in the industry about graceful migrations to the future, and tend to overlook how difficult the plumbing may be to get there. This is especially the case when dealing with literally sunken assets. ALU is providing operators of physical optical networks the capabilities they are going to need to optimize the performance and reach of their networks as the world demands not just higher speeds but high-quality experiences.

Achieving Network Optimization, Cost Savings with IP/MPLS Backhaul Solutions from Alcatel-Lucent (tmcnet.com)
Alcatel-Lucent 7705 SAR Solutions are Revolutionizing the IP/MPLS Backhaul Market (tmcnet.com)
Alcatel-Lucent eyes 400G network leap (zdnet.com)