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.

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.”

By Susan J. Campbell  A balance between performance and cost is a true challenge for contact centers to find. When that contact center is mission critical to the business, it must be able to achieve differentiation from competitors in the market,...

By Ed SilversteinThe growth of broadband has helped to shift user focus from voice and personal communication to multi-media and content communication, and that's just the beginning for a smart network that makes application enablement a reality.The increase in data...

By David SimsConnie Torres, director of market advantage research, Alcatel-Lucent, recently authored a piece titled "Meeting Application Demand Profitably with a Smart Network."She notes that the Information Age "has evolved from a Web 1.0 Read Only environment to a Web...

Alcatel-Lucent this week announced a five-year agreement with U.K.-based BT for the evolution of its 21st Century Network (21CN). Company officials said that this project leverages Alcatel-Lucent's High Leverage Network architecture and transformational services. It is expected to further evolve BT's infrastructure and will...

Given the state of the market, operators need a new strategy to differentiate and compete successfully. Reducing capital and operating expenses and generating new revenue while defining the business models that can help in meeting critical business goals is one...

What it means is there is an ongoing opportunity for network operators, whose services are viewed as a much more fundamental part of everyday life than other leisure activities. Indeed, broadband service can be considered recession-proof.

These capabilities, made available to in-house developers or third-party partners, will allow for increased efficiency in the development of new services that can run on different platforms to support a wider user base.

By embracing a the applications enablement ideal, and a high leverage network, operators will put themselves, and their partners, well on the path to a sustainable, mutually beneficial business model for the next generation communications environment. And ultimately, both will benefit from the ability to combine to deliver new, innovative, and rich set of applications to the user community.

The simple fact is that no single company has the resources or the knowledge to effectively understand which on which services they should focus their efforts for maximum uptake and exposure, let alone develop them for the widest possible audience.

It's a model that works well for both sides. The network owners are able to increase the return on their network investments thanks to increased "rental" traffic, and the "renters" gain access to subscribers in areas in which they don't own network assets without having to invest time and capital in building out their infrastructures.

Such investment is also the only path to being able to support end user demands for more interactive broadband services, including multimedia services, as well as tighter integration between telecom and other media.

So, now that Stage One is well underway, with the user community deeply into the process of integrating Web 2.0 capabilities into their daily routines, the question becomes, how can businesses monetize Web 2.0? How can they join the broadband economy?

More specifically, 84 percent of survey respondents agree that broadband is an essential service, making it a less likely target for cost cutting efforts. Perhaps more importantly, subscribers indicate a propensity for upgrading their broadband services -- or, subscribing to a service, for those currently without it.

Using Alcatel-Lucent's Triple Play Service Delivery Architecture, AT&T has been able to integrate its U-verse TV service into its overall infrastructure, ensuring it can reliably deliver an expanding set of feature-rich services to its growing subscriber base.

Now, it is looking to leverage HP's expertise to reduce the complexity of the migration process for both service providers and enterprises, as they seek to create and deliver more efficient and truly integrated communications environments.

The latest provider to adopt Alcatel-Lucent's TPSDA is Kenya Data Networks (KDN), one of Africa's largest communications carriers, which is enhancing its service capabilities in 12 metro areas in Kenya to deliver higher quality and more reliable mobile, residential, and business services.

Not only is its growth and overall market share competitively notable, since it comes at the expense of Alcatel-Lucent's competition, but at a time when service providers are more cautious than ever with their investments, retaining the top position provides it increased leverage when the economy finally revives.

It appears that the global economic malaise is not sparing the UK broadband market.  In April of this year, Point-Topic predicted an additional 800,000 broadband lines would be deployed in the latter half of 2008. But now, according to Tim Johnson,...

A research study conducted by In-Stat found that broadband services are maintaining high levels of demand globally. The report posits that over the past 12 months, approximately 80 million new broadband subscribers signed up for high-speed access to the Internet, with...

In cooperation with the East Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) consortium, Alcatel-Lucent plans to provide regional bandwidth capacity of 1.4 Terabit/s via a combined submarine and terrestrial optical solution. The company says the bandwidth will be enough to "satisfy broadband needs...

A recent survey of the online population in Scotland found that 84% want high-speed downloads and 87% would like TV and films on demand. The survey was commissioned by Mott MacDonald, a management and engineering consultancy. The challenge facing these would-be...