ETHERNET ALA - Super-fast broadband takes root
Broadband standards are stimulating investment and competition, says Robin Mersh
Broadband technology continues to change our lives. We are so busy emailing, downloading, twittering and updating our Facebooks and LinkedIn sites (to name but a few) that we've forgotten that barely a decade ago broadband users numbered just a few hundred thousand worldwide - not the 400 million plus lines we enjoy today.
The new buzzword on the block today is Super-fast broadband. While the term came to many in the UK for the first time via the mass media when Ofcom - the UK regulator - and BT - the UK incumbent telco - began making announcements earlier this year, the capability has already begun to take root around the world. Japan and Korea are leading the way, according to Ofcom research, but Sweden and Belgium are making their mark, with other countries close behind.
Super-fast broadband offers the prospect of real consumer benefits, building on those of today's broadband services, while supporting high bandwidth applications like video. The services supported by super-fast broadband bring individual, social and economic benefits globally to households and businesses. We are already seeing a massive increase in video communication over broadband and even more information and entertainment content will continually become available. The benefits will also extend to the wider economy, supporting new ways for consumers and online businesses to trade, developing new applications and services and driving creative industries everywhere.
To drive these benefits to the most people, organizations such as Ofcom are doing what they can to encourage an open competitive landscape for superfast broadband. Ofcom's vision is of a wholesale bitstream access that offers competitive communications providers the chance to accommodate innovation and product differentiation beyond the operational challenges of passive access. This type of high quality, fit for purpose bitstream has come to be known as Ethernet Active Line Access - or ALA for short.
So what is the difference of passive and active line access? Passive allows for resale of the access facilities but requires the competitive provider to provide their own equipment. Active Line Access (ALA) provides for the sharing of access facilities and equipment, thereby minimizing collocation complexities as well as unnecessary investment on behalf of the competitive provider.
There are a variety of benefits that are derived from ALA which:
- Is service neutral to the applications
- Video, HDTV, voice, data...
- Is neutral to higher layers
- IP-based applications, voice and video protocols...
- Is transport access agnostic
- Point-to-point fibre, Passive Optical Network (PON) options, copper, bonded copper, wireless...
- Benefits from the economies of scale of Ethernet
- Allows for innovative and differentiated services to be built
- Improves distribution and management of next generation wholesale services
- Customer acquisition by a competitive provider does not necessitate truck roll
- Competitive service providers can interconnect at different points with the network provider
Ethernet was an obvious choice as the interface technology for ALA. It has proven to be simple, low cost, ubiquitous and well developed. There is a wide availability of low cost equipment that is already standardised and Ethernet has flexible bandwidth capability, excellent interoperability and well-established security and Quality of Service (QoS) protocols. Other factors making Ethernet a natural choice were its operating mode at the low Data Link layer of the Open Systems Interconnection Ref Model (OSI), which allows innovation in services and has a standard adopted by telecommunications companies around the world, as well as the significant investment and standardisation invested in it over past years.
Only last month, at the quarterly meeting of the Broadband Forum (BBF) in Valencia, Spain, BBF members were addressed by Chinyelu Onwurah, Ofcom's Head of Telecoms Technology. This was a landmark meeting in itself, as it was the first occasion that the "new" enlarged Broadband Forum had met, following the union with the IP/MPLS Forum, which has now created the global specifications body dedicated to empowering end-to-end broadband network specifications.
While praising the work of the Forum, she also highlighted that many of the Broadband Forum Technical Reports are paving the way for Next Generation Access solutions that meet the vast majority of ALA requirements. Although not written specifically for ALA requirements, these reports coupled with the work, largely in the arena of Ethernet service definition, UNI/NNI definition and business end-user requirements, that have been undertaken by another specifications body, the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), are critical to ALA and open competitive market success.
In a parallel development, the European Commission endorsed the need for standards in relation to wholesale broadband access products in its most recent draft Next Generation Access recommendation which went to public consultation on the 12 June 2009. In the draft recommendation, the Commission calls on national regulators to work with each other and international standards bodies to develop technical requirements that can be turned into widely accepted standards. This follows the work that Ofcom kicked-off in 2007 on Ethernet active line access technical requirements and which were finalised earlier this year.
So what are the requirements and the standards that are already laying the foundation for ALA? The key requirements of ALA are security, QoS, multicast, flexible customer premises equipment and flexible interconnection. These are already being addressed in a variety of approved and available standards as listed in the box.
These reports represent a comprehensive list of specifications that can ensure a super-fast future and the Broadband Forum is dedicated to continuing to serve the industry with the specifications it needs to ensure that consumers have a choice in services and that the communications evolution continues.
Whilst remaining neutral in regards to choosing any one particular approach to broadband regulation and competition policy, the Broadband Forum believes that for communications providers Ethernet ALA means the availability of a standardised wholesale access product sooner, rather than later.
Robin Mersh is Chief Operating Officer, Broadband Forum
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