Next Generation Communications - Next-Generation Communications Archives

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.

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.”

Telecom Operators Need to Improve Leadership, Customer Experience Management

2012-04-17T16:27:07Z

By Erin Harrison

We won’t sugarcoat it: European telecom operators are not reaching their full market potential due to a lack of leadership and customer visibility. In fact, just 12 percent of C-suite executives are leading the customer experience agenda at major operators, according to a new survey conducted by European Communications—the results of which appear in a recent special edition, “Customer Experience.”

Of concern, no one is leading a customer experience effort in 8 percent of operators. In a majority of cases, (41 percent) individual managers are taking it upon themselves, while for 39 percent of respondents, a dedicated customer experience manager has been put in charge.

While the findings cast a negative shadow on the customer experience focus by European service providers (SPs), the study’s results should be motivation for the SPs’ IT decision makers who want to turnaround their customer experience efforts and become more profitable.

A lack of coherent leadership naturally feeds down to a fragmented implementation of strategy. Although a majority of operators (45 percent) said customer experience is treated as an integral part of everything their organization does across all business units, that means a majority does not.

“A well-established customer experience strategy should be treated as an integral part of the entire organization,” said Michael Opitz, director at management consultancy Arthur D. Little who conducted the survey.

Two interesting graphics from the survey are of note: In the first one, respondents were asked if they had a 360-degree view of their customers. Unfortunately, and not surprisingly, the answer was that most did not or did not know.

In the second one, those surveyed were asked to define what attributes they felt should be included in a holistic view. As can be noted from the list, much of the information that would be necessary for a holistic approach to creating a better customer experience currently resides in databases that typically do not interact with each other. This highlights an area of opportunity where the effective use of “Big Data” could yield significant benefits. These include better internal insights into operations as well as identification of customer contact areas that need to be improved so that experiences are optimized.

As we all know, a significant part of transforming the customer experience is making a good first impression. 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.

ALU’s solutions can help create successful network, device, application and service set-up and activation, and also helps fuel marketing campaigns. In addition, these services boost first call resolution and cut average handle time for technical support and service management inquires – such efficiencies help service providers stand out and succeed.

While operators are slightly more optimistic about the performance of their own company when compared to the telecoms industry as a whole, according to the EC survey, overwhelmingly operators said they regarded network congestion and other quality of service issues as the biggest source of poor customer experience.

Using Motive CXM solutions from Alcatel-Lucent, 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

As consumers continue to gravitate toward more complex devices and services, which are connected to fixed line and mobile networks, the effort to deliver a consistent, quality customer experience is multiplying costs for communications service providers. Simplifying customer interactions helps service providers improve quality of experience (QoE) and build stronger, longer-lasting and more profitable customer relationships.

While the European Communications survey shed a bright light on the deficiencies of Europe’s SPs, the reality is that similar studies in the past few years by a number of respected firms have come to the same conclusion globally. In one of the interesting ironies of our times those who are foundational players in enabling others to use Big Data and analytics to gain competitive edge as woefully behind culturally and technologically themselves in do so. In fact, many of the studies have also concluded that telecom SP failure to leverage the insights they have into a transformation of the way in which their customers experience their products, people and processes is leaving a huge competitive opportunity for OTTs and other third parties to fill the breach.

This is a crucial operations area. It is a survey, indeed an entire issue of the publication, that commands attention.

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)

Optimizing Networks in a Demand for Video Everywhere Era

2012-04-09T20:52:02Z

By Mae Kowalke

In my blog last week, I focused on some of the changes and challenges in digital media delivery that vendors likeVelocix (an Alcatel-Lucent company) are developing to help service providers maximize the quality of end user experiences while minimizing network traffic. In that piece I cited the first article in a two part series by Richard Gibbs, Vice President Worldwide Technical and Business Consulting at Velocix’s article in the Alcatel-Lucent e-zine TechZine, “A New Approach to Publishing and Caching Video.” It focused on the architecture and design considerations for a Content Delivery Network (CDN). This post picks up the story with the second Gibbs post, “Optimize Delivery to Meet Demand for “Video Everywhere,” which looks in detail at the delivery, management and control functions needed for efficient CDN operation.

First a little background refresh. A CDN (in the example one architected for a cable TV MSO) is a system of distributed caches containing copies of data, placed within a network to maximize bandwidth for data access. They rely on a series of processes and functions categorized as publishing/storage, caching, delivery, and management and control to assure the delivery of the best quality experiences to end-user devices with the new solutions also ensuring that this is done with minimal strain on network resources. These processes include:

Delivery

In his second article, Gibbs noted that delivery is the last step in a chain that includes logging/auditing, encryption, request routing, cache selection, geo-configuration and authentication. Simply put, delivery means a consumer request is received, authenticated, and then routed to a relevant device for fulfillment.

All delivery interactions with a CDN follow a three step process:

The publisher domain name server (DNS) issues a redirect to the request router — critical since CDNs only deliver content a publisher has authorized for distribution.
The request router issues a redirect to a surrogate, which is a delivery cache with replicated content.
The surrogate serves the content.

Authentication

A critical element for obvious reasons. Protection of intellectual property and getting compensated for its use can only happen when content requests have been properly processed and validated, i.e., authenticated. Gibbs explained that authentication methods used by CDNs include secure tokens, hash-based message authentication code (HMAC), and Shockwave Flash (SWF) verification. He did not note that all have their strengths and weakness since determined hackers have proven adept at circumventing even the most comprehensive authentication methodologies, but each can be highly effective and the choice of which of them, and possibly in combination, is something to be discussed with your solution provider with consideration for such things as ease-of-use and administration entering the mix.

Other crucial CDN delivery functions are summarized below:

Geo-configuration – mechanism for applying policy to content delivery; defines where content can be stored and where and to whom it can be delivered.

Cache selection – process that determines which cache will deliver the content, taking into account cost, performance, location, and protocol among other factors.

Request routing – combining of all available information about end user, requested resource and state of the network, so the most appropriate surrogate can be selected for content delivery.

Logging/auditing – measurement of delivery events, for reporting and billing purposes.

Management/control – responsible for the configuration and provisioning of CDN services.

Management and configuration – tools for dynamically configuring services and a balancing them across devices based on load and capacity demand.

Monitoring – components that provider relevant hardware and service alerts when problems occur.

Content owner management and reporting – real-time viewing statistics and delivery information crucial for managing content and delivery portals.

In the blog post, Gibbs recommends that providers use a range of delivery device specifications to achieve consistent delivery and high QoE, since specific content services many require different capacities or capabilities. For example, video on demand (VoD) services require large capacity edge disk caches, whereas live streaming services require higher throughputs and memory rather than larger disk caches.

“The surge in consumer demand for high quality multimedia entertainment on television, personal computers and mobile devices has had a profound impact on the network infrastructures and business models in place,” summarized Gibbs in the blog post.

That is actually a bit of an understatement. Reality is, based on sales of iPads and other tablets, and the explosive growth of the smartphone population and their users’ insatiable appetites for both streamed and interactive video (from real-time teleconferencing to watch movies to interactive gaming), a tsunami of video traffic is heading operators way and user expectations of quality experiences on every video-enable device they own and operate are high. The old ways of delivering video to specific places with a limited number of screen types is over.

New ways of meeting the requirements of the era of demand for digital video being everywhere are necessitating carriers to rethink, and do so quickly, how best to deliver content and do so securely, at high quality, with optimized network performance and at a profit. To learn more about solutions to the challenges of delivering quality video content everywhere check out the links above and also the Velocix white paper, Video Distribution in the Digital Lifestyle Era…”

Consumer Demand Drives LTE and Creates Wireless Carrier Success

2012-04-09T19:04:13Z

By Mae Kowalke

In the U.S., it is no secret that there is a substantial customer as well political interest in seeing that under-served areas have access to state-of-the art communications networks. In fact, it can be argued that the data needs of such critical parts of the economy as agriculture and oil and gas exploration are as intense if not more so than those of industries in densely populated areas. Plus, the desires and expectations of families in the areas are no less important than they are to families in other areas of the country.

What all of this translates into is that while fiber optics and WiFi have allowed most Americans broadband access vast parts of the U.S. have remained under-served for broadband. All of that is changing. As the major wired carriers continue to fiber their franchise areas and the national wireless carriers rush to deploy 4G LTE networks, WiFi hotspots, femtocells, etc. Alcatel-Lucent has been leveraging the capabilities of its lightRadio™ portfolio of solutions to help mobile operators who serve less populous areas provide high-seed services to their customers at price points and performance capabilities that enable customers to enjoy the advantages of next generation devices and all the Internet has to offer in terms of content and applications. And, it allows the operators to do so at competitive prices and at a profit.

“While many of these operators are hardly household names among consumers, don’t let that fool you – these carriers are squarely focused on the needs of their consumers, and are committed to providing them with the benefits (and speeds) that today’s 4G networks have to offer,” noted Sandy Motley, VP of Wireless Accounts at Alcatel-Lucent, on a blog from the recent Rural Cellular Association (RCA) Show in Orlando.

Competitive carriers face several unique challenges, different from national carriers: intense competition, wireless spectrum constraints and limited access to the newest devices consumers crave. That doesn’t stop them from continuing to innovate, though. “While this list of challenges might be daunting to some, competitive carriers are a hearty lot – they see opportunities where others see roadblocks – they have a fiercely loyal customer base and they truly value innovation, in every sense of the word,” Motley said.

This trend toward broadband access being a key to success of local mobile operators via 4G LTE was highlighted by regional wireless service providers Sprocket Wireless and Fuego Wireless.

Like other regional carriers customer demand and competition has pushed them to innovate to survive. This includes not just introducing new technology, but also new business models and new ways of collaborating with other carriers.

Sprocket Wireless and Alcatel-Lucent teamed up to develop fast broadband services for business and consumer customers in Eastern and Southeastern Oklahoma. The 4G LTE network they developed expanded mobile broadband access and availability of services like video calling throughout the region. “By working with Alcatel-Lucent to deploy a 4G LTE network in our service area in rural Oklahoma, we are able to meet the fast-growing demand for mobile broadband services,” explained V David Mill, President of Sprocket Wireless, stated in a recent press release announcing 4G LTE service from his company. He continued that, “These services will help to increase the efficiency of businesses in the region, and support a range of consumer services that have never been seen before in these areas.”

In New Mexico and Texas, Fuego Wireless (a Peñasco Valley Telecommunications brand) has been busy—in collaboration with Alcatel-Lucent—rolling out 4G LTE services to people in the region who have never had access to high-speed internet access before. This region encompasses expansive and diverse terrain, metro areas like Santa Fe and Las Cruces, and rural agricultural communities. They like to highlight that the deployment of 4G LTE brings services to consumers and businesses that have been a communications backwater because of inhospitable terrain and the high-cost of serving the sparse and widely dispersed population.

“Our residents often wait years for the best technology to finally arrive,” said Glenn Lovelace, Chief Executive Officer of PVT, stated in the announcement of Fuego’s rollout of 4G LTE. “Now we are on the leading edge, enabling the most advanced and fastest communications technology available anywhere. Working hand-in-hand with Alcatel-Lucent, PVT will deliver 4G LTE under our new brand Fuego Wireless, so that our customers in New Mexico and Texas can benefit from the same high speeds and quality services that customers enjoy in the largest cities in the world.”

It is interesting to not in both cases the emphasis each company has placed on how important 4G LTE access is to businesses in their respective regions. Fuego pointed out that, “For instance, 4G LTE is able to provide real-time video monitoring of remote locations which can be of great benefit to many industries operating in remote locations, such as the many oil and gas and agriculture companies across New Mexico.”

In both instances, ALU provided complete end-to-end 4G LTE solutions, using LTE base stations and its IP-based Evolved Packet Core, as well as project management, installation, integrations and maintenance services.

At the end of the day, as Motley emphasized, now is the time for competitive carriers to leverage 4G LTE to provide profitable services to customers that can meet most if not all of their broadband needs.

A Holistic Approach is Necessary for Quality Customer Experiences

2012-04-09T17:45:37Z

By Mae Kowalke

For the hotly competitive world of mobile communications service providers, it’s no longer enough simply to provide fast, reliable connections for a variety of devices at competitive rates.

A recent article in the Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) e-zine Enriching Communications titled, “Taking Care of the Customer Experience,” co-authored by ALU’s Ben Geller, Senior Director of Marketing and Oliver Krahn, Customer Experience Transformation Growth Program Leader, on this subject is worth a read. They explain how, “Service providers are learning that they cannot differentiate with devices, services or pricing.” This is clearly a dramatic change from the past.

If the old practices are not the optimal path to success it leads to an interesting question, what really does differentiate a service provider anymore? As you probably have guessed from the title of this blog and the ALU article, the answer is providing an outstanding customer experience based on a holistic approach.

Geller and Krahn believe a large part of creating such experiences involved making things easy. This means easy in the customer’s eyes. They believe there are four main elements to viewing an experience through the eyes of a customer:

Services and devices are simple to start using right away
Network connectivity is always available when it’s needed
Devices and applications work the way they’re supposed to
Problems will be quickly identified and resolved

At the end of the day, service providers are both the creators of the customer experience as well as the enablers for others. This puts significant pressure on them to consistently provide a good quality of experience (QoE) regardless of the type of customer, or their location and to do so according to their expectations, needs and contractual relationships. What it means is the ability to manage these anywhere customers and to use analytics to gain insights into how to constantly improve the (QoE) and their value to the service provider as can be done with ALU's Motive Customer Experience Solutions portfolio. This includes careful attention to the speed and quality of response when problems occur which is a priority for retaining customer loyalty.

The good news is that providers have many assets that support an outstanding customer experience. It’s just a matter of appropriately leveraging those assets.

As Geller and Krahn note, “They own robust, secure and scalable networks that can support an array of services…They have access to innovative devices with open platforms that support application innovation. In short, they have all the components required to deliver a market-leading customer experience.” Indeed, these tools include such things as the ability to optimize bandwidth without sacrificing performance through such capabilities as mobile smartloading, and giving third-parties and internal developers the ability to use open APIs to create new revenue-generating applications and services

The last item about open APIs is crucial for success going forward, especially when combined with the insights gained from leveraging the information generated by customer services management tools. As the authors explain, creative partnerships are important and making sure everybody in the ecosystem is in a position to ensure the end customer has a compelling experience is key. “Service providers with robust infrastructures, networks, billing systems and help desks can essentially become service providers to application and content providers (ACPs),” Geller and Krahn point out. “Collaboration with ACPs can drive innovation in the application space, generate new revenue and influence the customer experience.”

They also explain that part of making things easy for customers means recognizing there is no one-size-fits-all approach or procedure for delivering an outstanding customer experience. New thinking, new strategies and new priorities, applied in customized ways, are critical. They emphasize that, “Every service provider plots its own path to transformation, often starting with a desire to address a specific pain point or opportunity…The right starting point and goals are essential.”

Some strategies service providers are using for managing the customer experience include:

Multi-channel customer care: to ensure the same quality of information and experience across all channels (phone, web, e-mail, IM, etc.).
Analytics: to measure how likely customers are to recommend service to others.
Maximizing network capacity yield: shifting usage patterns and rewarding customers for using the network during off-peak periods.

As with so many aspects of accommodating the dynamics of a changing world where the pace of everything is speeding up, and challenges can arise from almost anywhere at any time, Geller and Krahn present a powerful case as to why a holistic approach to the creation, substance and growth of quality customer experiences rest on service providers knocking down their operationally silos and embracing a holistic approach that is QoE-centric.

It is difficult to argue with their conclusion that, “To compete in the long term, executives must find ways to align departments and ensure that every person in the service provider organization is focused on delivering the best possible customer experience.” What this means is according to them is, “Extending consistency, universality and intuitiveness across every customer contact channel including call centers, web portals, IVRs and retail stores.”

Finally, it should be noted that this idea of a holistic approach must be viewed in the context of understanding that creating an end-user (the front end of the value-chain) quality customer experience can be considered the output of creating quality customer experiences for the back-end as well. Holism means making business processes and practices, and the people who use them more efficient and effective by empowering them with information from across the enterprise. This is not theory. It is best practice.

Digital Media Delivery Innovations Maximize Video QoE and Minimize Network Traffic

2012-04-02T15:25:13Z

Mae Kowalke

As the consumer appetite for online video content grows, communication service providers (CSPs) find themselves increasingly marginalized in the market. Video content is usually delivered by third-party providers (e.g. companies such as BBC, Hulu, Netflix, CANAL+), which have their own relationships with end users and therefore earn any resulting incremental revenue.

Given marketplace realities, CSPs need to broaden their core businesses beyond merely providing connectivity. They must also offer enhanced digital media delivery. Doing this successfully requires innovative new methods of publishing/storage and caching using next generation content delivery networks (CDNs). These networks enable CSPs to transform themselves into entertainment providers and also allow them to leverage their networks without creating traffic bottlenecks near servers.

Velocix is an Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) company that offers a comprehensive appliance-based CDN solution for CSPs. Richard Gibbs, Vice President of Worldwide Technical and Business Consulting at Velocix highlighted in a recent ALU TechZine article, A New Approach to Publishing and Caching Video, that:

“A CDN is a system of caches containing copies of data…This data is distributed at various points in a network, which maximizes the bandwidth required to access the data from clients throughout the network. A client accesses a copy of the data nearest to the client, as opposed to all clients accessing the same central server.”

He noted that content delivered using a CDN can be downloadable objects like software and documents, as well as applications and real-time media streams.

Velocix advises that when designing a CDN architecture—which differs from internet web-caching services—CSPs must take six key principles into consideration: availability, operation, performance, resilience, security, and efficiency.

These principles should be applied to the main appliance components of a CDN: delivery nodes, storage nodes, origin nodes, and control nodes. Together, these components perform nine processes and functions, summarized below.

Publishing/Storage - process of acquiring or publishing/ingesting content, using pre-ingest, acquire on demand, and live ingesting models.

Authorization and Registration - process that allows content owners to authorize delivery using the CDN.

Ingest – pre-publishing using standard technologies that allow integration with content management systems (e.g. FTP, RSYNC, third-party upload accelerators, batch control scripts, and programmatic HTTP)

Store – replication of ingested content within the CDN.

Availability – notification provided to the content owner, enabling content to be made available within any delivery portal.

Caching – means of replicating and storing content effectively on edge and storage devices without needing to reacquire content from multiple sources.

Acquisition – mechanism for an edge cache to acquire content from a CDN storage node or origin server for delivery.

Replication – means of physically acquiring or replicating content across distributed caching devices.

Caching – It also is a means of reducing network traffic by delivering content from caches as close to the requesting consumer as possible.

The graphic below shows what the Velocix solution looks like from a high level.

As can be seen, it is capable of delivering a high-quality, multi-screen solution. When properly set up and utilized through optimal publishing and caching processes, CDNs maximize accessibility and minimize network traffic. They are integral parts of ALU’s vision of a High Leverage Network than enables CSPs to not just be critical parts of evolving next generation services ecosystems, but also positioned to offer new innovative multiple media services of their own.

Demand for Connected Services Drives Need for Customer Experience Solutions

2012-04-02T13:06:40Z

By Erin Harrison

Demand for broadband services is growing at an explosive pace as consumers look for richer and more personalized connected customer experiences. But service providers’ fast and reliable networks can’t win over every customer. In addition, competition from new brands is making it tougher to differentiate with devices, services and pricing. In short, to stay competitive, service providers (SPs) have an imperative to cater to the needs of the market that goes beyond traditional approaches.

While consumers are aware that new technologies can bring added complexity, they also expect their devices and services to keep bringing them simpler and more compelling experiences. Based on these trends, SPs need new differentiators to remain competitive. To stand out and deliver market leading customer experiences, SPs need to make their offers easier to buy, easier to use with more user-friendly options for payment.

Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive portfolio of solutions offers a four-pronged approach for SPs to step up their games:

Motive CX Management is focused on getting new devices, applications and services up and running quickly, by simplifying their introduction on the network, managing upgrades and service modifications, and providing a consistent, low-hassle experience for customers.
Motive CX Analytics provides monitoring tools that track the performance of the devices, applications and services running on the network. These tools, which leverage unique algorithms developed by Bell Labs, provide key insights and dashboards that infer overall customer experience and allow for detailed customer experience insights.
Motive CX Optimization empowers SPs to provide customers with the best service experience possible while making better use of network capacity. Using historical data about customers, devices, applications and the network, SPs can examine trends, experiences and usage patterns – segmented by types of users – and take accurate and proactive actions with yield management and loyalty.
Motive CX Consulting consists of a dedicated team that – using a patent-pending methodology – identifies unique opportunities to improve the wide range of customer experience touch points within a service provider organization.

The portfolio, as seen below, is comprehensive in terms of dealing with all aspects of SP operations that need to be engaged to creating optimal customer experiences in regard to the granularity of the prongs.

Source: Alcatel-Lucent Motive

At the end of the day, SP ability to improve the customer experience is about engendering more immersive and enriching engagements. In fact, Alcatel-Lucent contends that with Motive Customer Experience Solutions SPs can increase profitability by:

Simplifying customer interactions
Improving business performance using customer insights
Enhancing loyalty and profitability
Improving the customer experience

With commoditization fast becoming the norm in many service markets, and alternatives only a click away, it is becoming increasingly clear that customer experience management may be the most important competitive differentiator in the future. SPs understand this and are aware that having the right tools in place to accurately measure and manage their relationships with customers will be critical to their success.

The Five "Ps" for Service Provider M2M Success: Prioritize, Placement, Participate, Partners and Persona

2012-03-25T19:14:04Z

By Erin Harrison

The burgeoning of machine-to-machine (M2M) applications in our increasingly connected world — partly characterized as consisting of an “Internet of Things” — has made telecommunication companies look to diversify their M2M offerings beyond what can easily become ones based primarily on commoditized connectivity.

A recent Alcatel-Lucent Enriching Communications article, “The 5-Ps of M2M Key to Service Provider Success,” describes the five “P’s” as:

Prioritize opportunities
Properly place their teams
Participate knowledgeably in the supply chain
Partner effectively
Establish a credible persona

They are based on findings of research firm Analysys Mason’s recently published, “M2M Communication Service Provider Scorecard: 2011.”

The potential for the success of M2M for service providers is evidenced also in work done by Frost & Sullivan. They say M2M connectivity revenue in Europe, which was 3 percent in 2010 and 4.2 percent in 2011 of M2M revenues, will grow significantly to more than 20 percent by 2017 as the monetization of M2M data drives the aggressive growth in the forecast.

Prioritize Opportunities

Careful prioritization of these opportunities will yield healthy, profitable businesses, according to Analysys Mason. The emphasis is on the word careful because some of the highest revenue-generating M2M applications can generate low profitability for service providers. Hence, prioritizing which sectors to move into based on profitability is critical. This is particularly true given that by 2020 there will be 2.1 billion network-aware devices with 90 percent connected via wireless networks. However, prioritizing which sectors to get involved in and measuring profitability will not be an easy task.

Proper Placement

The most successful service providers have overall M2M organizations of 50-100 employees with centralized staff for R&D, partnership management and product marketing, according to Analysys Mason. Certain resources will need to be centralized including R&D, partnership management and OSS/BSS support, but variances among organizations means they need to consider, for example, where the technical pre- and post-sales resources should be placed and what the size or headcount of each M2M functional areas should be.

Participation

Based on the Scorecard, there are three ways for service providers to participate in the M2M supply chain, which include: co-selling a partner’s solutions; selling/reselling a service provider’s own solutions; and acquiring solutions

Alcatel-Lucent believe service providers should partner to provide M2M hardware (modems/modules and equipment) and they should sell or resell their own connectivity, platform and integration services.

Partnerships

Due to the enormous number of opportunities in the market, no one single service provider has all of the resources and tools to offer an end-to-end M2M service. Therefore, partners are necessary as service providers develop their M2M market approach, according to Alcatel-Lucent.

Carefully selecting the right partners – rather than having the biggest number of partners – is critical in developing a profitable M2M business. To select the ideal partners, service providers need to consider their options to include geography, market sector and M2M application.

Persona

The fifth “P,” persona, could be the most important consideration for service providers looking to implement a successful M2M product for their business. Associating your company as an M2M provider is critical to market success.

Analysys Mason recommends a two-pronged approach to developing a service provider’s persona. Service providers first need to develop a strategy to determine where they will participate in the M2M value chain, which will help them create their M2M persona and build brand awareness with potential buyers and partners.

Knowing who you are – understanding perceptions and realities

In addition, service providers need to engage in market research to understand existing market perceptions of their M2M persona. As Alcatel-Lucent points out, “service providers that do not create a strong M2M persona may be overlooked in favor of a systems integrator (SI), other IT channel partner or an IT vendor.”

Taking Public Safety to the Next Level with Video Surveillance Using 4G LTE Wireless Broadband

2012-03-19T18:12:33Z

By Mae Kowalke

Situational awareness is the perception of what is happening in one’s vicinity and understanding how information, events and actions will impact outcomes immediately and in the future. For public safety officials, situational awareness is achieved both through direct observations and through information conveyed by technology, often voice communications.

Voice communications is so ubiquitous in public safety, in fact, that one might think it’s the only means by which situational information is conveyed.

In a LifeTalk article, “Video is the Game Changer for Public Safety,” Philippe Agard, Vice President of Business Development at Alcatel-Lucent’s public safety division states that, “With the emphasis on voice radio, it’s easy to forget that voice is only one medium we use to communicate with one another, and not even the primary channel in face-to-face communications.” He adds that, “Most experts will tell you that a relatively small portion of our message comes through in words, the remainder transmitted by tone, inflection, volume and body language.”

Voice communications is so ubiquitous for public safety because, until recently, it was the fastest and most reliable way to convey information to and from the field. Widespread deployment of 4G LTE wireless broadband networks is changing the game. These networks make it possible for public safety organizations to enrich their communications through tools like Alcatel-Lucent’s Striker vehicle communications system, featuring push-to-talk radio integrated with high definition video surveillance for a variety of devices including iPads and notebook computers.

“Data from health-monitoring devices in the Striker vehicle could be transferred through the cloud to a doctor’s office or hospital,” Agard explains. “Using a secure LTE broadband base station in the vehicle, it also serves personnel when traveling in an area without cellular connectivity.”

The video surveillance component of Striker and other next-generation communications systems is perhaps the most transformative for public safety as can be seen in all of the resources available in the recent issue of LifeTalk. No longer are officials limited to communicating via a car radio. And, in fact, to keep pace with the way citizens are using wireless technology, officials must add more capabilities to their own arsenal to keep pace.

“Extended protests and demonstrations such as the current Occupy Wall Street movements in many U.S. cities are not the disorganized crowds of years past,” Agard says. “These groups employ scouts equipped with smartphones and social networks like Twitter and Google Maps to keep tabs on law enforcement units and each other.”

Freeing public safety officials from the limitations of vehicle radios, and adding the richness of video, means it’s possible to stay ahead of crowds, enhancing safety for everyone involved.

Using video surveillance as part of public safety communications, as in the Striker system, employs LTE wireless broadband to make sure everyone is seeing the same picture. This changes the game from ‘what-you-see-is-what-you-get’ to ‘what-I-see-is-what-you-see.’

Systems like Striker, designed specifically for public safety, are made more powerful by integrating consumer devices into the network.

“Smartphones and tablet computers can display the same maps, photographs or blueprints simultaneously to all the users on the network,” says Agard. He amplified this stating that, “When a Police chief says, ‘I need somebody here,’ he can point to a place and drop a pin on a Google Map, everyone will see the same thing without a doubt.”

Access to video, in other words, changes the entire fabric of incident management. It changes how people in the field respond to nearby events, and how remote commanders make decisions about deploying officers. Virtual briefings can be held anytime.

Alcatel-Lucent is working with public safety officials in the U.S. and elsewhere to deploy communications systems that include video. An expanded demonstration project in São Paulo, Brazil, is already having great success.

“With a 20-30 MB/sec LTE connection to a first responder, there is a tremendous opportunity to rapidly communicate a considerable amount of visual information like pictures and surveillance footage to improve their safety and situational awareness,” Agard summarized, describing how São Paulo’s Polícia Militar is using the technology.

The São Paulo system uses an application called First Responder Video to stream video in and out of police cars, over an LTE wireless broadband network. This provides a dynamic, real time user interface on first responders’ laptops, smartphones and tablets.

Portable assets like the Striker vehicle can be used to create a temporary wireless broadband network in cases where permanent LTE installations aren’t yet available.

Increasingly, LTE wireless broadband networks are taking public safety to the next level, and will become even more widespread before long. “LTE is the new generation technology to increase responsiveness everywhere and enhance safety for everyone,” Agard concludes. Enriched communications and broader coverage via a cost-effective solution is the reason, and public safety officials around the world are taking notice.

Leveraging the Power of the Cloud to Deliver Teleworking, Social Networking Services

2012-03-19T16:00:15Z

By Beecher Tuttle

The idea that a company exists within the four walls of an office is quickly becoming antiquated. Today's enterprises are increasingly relying on remote workers – aka, “teleworkers” – to contribute to their core business.

The newfound prevalence of teleworking is due to a variety of factors, including recent advancements in technology, social trends and the sheer number of benefits that it can provide to both enterprises and their employees. These factors were recently referenced in a recent Enriching Communications posting, The Office is Not Always the Premises, by Bryan Davies, Director of Advanced Communications Solutions at Alcatel-Lucent (ALU).

Companies have begun to accept teleworking as a viable option because of its proven ability to help reduce costs. By hiring remote workers, enterprises can continue to grow in their current facility without needing to add office space or absorb an uptick in energy consumption. In addition, companies can reduce absenteeism by creating fewer impediments to an employee coming to work, says Davies.

But perhaps best of all, teleworking enables a company to recruit and retain top level talent from across the country and even the globe, rather than resigning themselves to hiring the best candidates within a 50-mile radius. Finally, hiring remote working can increase a company's operational reach, enabling them to retain employees in several different time zones and locales.

Looking past operational incentives, teleworking also provides a number of social benefits. Offering this option can take cars off the road, minimizing carbon emissions, and give commuting time back to each worker, further improving employee morale. Another contributing factor is the widespread adoption of social networking, which has made people more accustomed to online interactions.

Clearly, enterprises ready for teleworking just need the technology and the broadband access necessary to make it happen. As such, service providers are in a tremendous position to help enterprises succeed with teleworking helping to make enterprise more productive, flexible and profitable.

Service Providers Well-Positioned to Lend a Hand

Teleworkers cannot thrive with average technology or less than adequate connectivity. To exchange large assets and be mobile, remote employees require faster and more flexible wireless connections in addition to the obvious bandwidth requirements needed to support video telephony and conferencing.

As owners of evolving 4G LTE access networks, service providers are well-positioned to provide these necessary services to enterprises. Operators can tap into the trend of teleworking in a few different ways.

Promote Cloud-Based Communications: Cloud services enable employees to work not just from home, but from any location with an Internet connection. Service providers have unique advantages in this area because, unlike other types of providers, they can guarantee a superior quality of service (QoS). Available carrier-provided cloud services include hosted IP-PBX, hosted IP Centrex and hosted unified communications solutions.
Accelerate the Deployment of Video Telephony and Conferencing: These hosted communication solutions benefit enterprises – as they make remote interactions more personal – and service providers, who only need to enable one good connection at each location.
Hosted Social Networks: By deploying hosted versions of social networking services, operators can help enterprises engage employees at a minimal cost of ownership. On-premise solutions, meanwhile, force enterprises to buy, configure and test servers.

Davies acknowledges that certain barriers do exist that are impeding the progress of teleworking, including employee fear, company culture, security and the lack of interpersonal communication.

However, the technology provided by operators and software vendors can help mitigate these barriers as they push to create a telework-friendly environment.

"Service providers can’t overcome all of the obstacles facing enterprises and remote workers. But with cloud services that encourage connectivity, flexibility and employee interaction, service providers can play an active role in encouraging the telework movement," says Davies.