MSOs are Motivated for Mobility

By Victor R. Blake, Independent Consultant

What’s the oldest wireless mobile technology? It is radio. It allows the consumer to roam freely with seamless service anywhere within the broadcast area. The cost, technological complexity, and poor quality of streaming mobile voice services show that cellular is far from ideal for some wireless mobile services. After broadcast radio, next came two way radio, and later broadcast television. While cellular mobile remains an efficient technology for unicast voice, it remains to be seen what mix of technologies will best serve mobile broadband and mobile broadcast service needs beyond the very basic functions required of voice. Let’s face it, besides email and messaging, voice is one of the least challenging applications on the Internet. Voice bandwidth requirements are low and session lengths are short. Although much has been made about jitter, the fact is that most voice service in the US today operates over IP. The transition from “it will never work” to technology dominance has been well less than 10 years and the entire technology cycle less than 20 years.

But what about the consumers that were outside of the footprint of broadcast radio or broadcast television ? The idea of community antenna television (CATV - what we now call cable television) was to pick up over the air broadcasts within the footprint of the broadcast and then carry and deliver the transmission over a dedicated coaxial cable. From the beginning, it has been the mission of cable operators to bring content directly to consumers and to package both accessibility and content together.

Cellular wireless technology split from broadcasting on its way through unlicensed radio to become a telephony service. Although the cellular business has evolved beyond its limits in telephony, the core of the business has for years been focused on voice service. Today we have cellular operators branching out into data services and video. We have telephone companies that have either built (Verizon) or built and acquired (AT&T) wireless operations, and data and video service operators that will either build or acquire wireless operations. MSOs fall into this category.

The term “MSO” (Multiple System Operator) was originally coined to label operators that were consolidating multiple cable television systems. Since there are only a few, if any, single system operators left, MSO is now used somewhat synonymously with “cable operator,” especially when the author or speaker does not want to limit the label to video services. A more modern and accurate use for MSO might be Multiple Service Operator. Today all of the top three tiers of MSOs operate multiple services including broadcast video, video on demand (non-linear video), Internet, business data services, and both residential and business voice services. Most of the operators also have or are working on multiple forms of wireless services.

Each time MSOs have reached beyond their roots to add new services they have stretched the capacity of their organizations to take on new services, without burdening finances or operations with redundant functions. Most importantly MSOs have in the past, and continue now, to embrace new technology and the change that it brings. MSOs correctly anticipated the need to expand into wireless many years ago when they directed their strategy for voice technology onto a converged path with wireless cellular standards efforts. With the leadership of key technology strategists at the MSOs, Cable Labs was directed to converge Packet Cable 2.0 development with 3GPP’s IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) standards. During the last few years most of the MSOs have quietly been designing, deploying and scaling up IMS systems operating behind Packet Cable 1.5 services that still provide primary line residential telephony. Although most are well positioned to make the transition from Packet Cable 1.5 to Packet Cable 2.0 (and SIP/IMS) many have held off on the upgrade until it is required with release of new integrated wireline and wireless services. With the voice technology for wireless already in place, the final stepping stones to quad play service revolve primarily around build, buy, or joint wireless operations.

MSO wireless strategies range from MVNO business relationships, through joint ventures, marketing and business deals all the way to go it alone design and build. Technologies range from unlicensed WiFi to cellular and broadcast wireless technologies. Although the “mobile broadband” (formerly the “cellular”) industry seems fixated on cellular only technologies, it is clear that MSOs multi-pronged strategy with WiFi, cellular, and broadcast technologies will be operationally and economically superior. WiFi is the VoIP of our decade. The kinds of comments the cellular industry has about WiFi are frighteningly similar to those that the telephony industry had about VoIP. “It won’t work.” “It has no QoS.” “There is no way to monetize it.” Sound familiar ? Between WiFi and cellular are solutions like WiMAX and the coming WRAN technologies that bridge the gap between current data centric (WiFi) and voice centric (cellular) technologies. We are likely to see a couple to a few hybrids of these technologies dominating particular mobile needs such as indoor services (WiFi), vehicular mobile (WRAN) and macro-personal mobile (4G). MSO wireless strategies are not limited to a single wireless technology. They will include broadcast and cellular technologies, licensed and unlicensed, mobile and fixed wireless, and support a variety of consumer devices.

We can expect MSOs to leverage their expertise in IP (TCP/IP) technologies, distributed systems, and deep local networks to radically alter the assumptions that have driven cellular wireless technologies for years. Why bother doubling the capex for a marginal RF improvement when adding microcells is or more macrocells is more efficient ? The broad availability of both DOCSIS and fiber (PON) access throughout the network infrastructure turns on its head the prevailing cellular design models. This is not to say that good RF design isn’t critical. Of course it is. (And don’t be surprised when you discover that MSO engineers know a thing or two about RF as well). But RF design isn’t the only way to improve service. Overall, expect cellular designs to become a lot more like WiFi. More pervasive, lower cost backhaul, smaller cells, optimization for data, etc. WiFi has itself become more like cellular in terms of configuration, management, and most particularly in terms of service control (some people would call this QoS).

When we look back on the entrance of MSOs into wireless and the wireless community inclusion of MSOs we will find that the most lasting impact will be an outside of the box perspective on what have been entrenched assumptions about network design, consumer technologies, and the broadband experience. The coming mobile broadband experience promises exciting services for all of us as consumers and equally exciting opportunities for both operators and vendors. If we all remain open to learning from colleagues in different parts of the industry and with different areas of expertise, we will find in the coming years that the joint work of the cellular and broadband industry will change the Internet itself.

Packet Cable 1.5
The protocol suite that describes the application, signaling, and bearer protocols for most DOCSIS based primary line residential telephony services in North America. It features a protocol called NCS which is a derivative of MGCP.

Packet Cable 2.0
The next generation VoIP and multimedia service to replace Packet Cable 1.5. Packet Cable 2.0 features SIP, alignment with 3GPP IMS, additional codec and feature support, and numerous other enhancements designed for both wireline and wireless multimedia services.

Victor R. Blake - victorblake@victorblake.com

Received his B.S. in Computer Engineering Technology from Rochester Institute of Technology and M.S. from Syracuse University. He is an experienced strategist, architect, and operations engineer. He also has significant marketing and product management experience. Mr. Blake is an advisor and consultant for service providers and vendors. He has done work for companies including multiple cable operators, ISPs, Foundry Networks, Redback Networks, PMC-Sierra, et. al. At Bright House Networks Mr. Blake initiated a converged services project integrating all network services into a single IP network. He was active in the development of DOCSIS 3.0 and in particular the IPv6 requirements for DOCSIS. Today he is active in SCTE, IEEE, and ITU-T standards work in PON access technologies for cable. Prior to BHN, he was the Manager of Network Architecture for America Online, where he oversaw the design, development, and implementation of all data networks and telecommunications facilities for dial, Internet, and data center networks. This included the deployment of the first regional pure all optical networks by an ISP in the United States. He has published articles and papers, under his current or former name as Victor R. Parente, in Communications Technology, Data Communications, LAN Times, Business Communications Review, and Network VAR. He has also taught undergraduate and graduate courses at both RIT and Syracuse University.