I recently heard a new twist on PBT that I’d like to share with you. It is that interest in Provider Backbone Transport (PBT), and Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) may be driven in large part by contracts that ban union employees from working with IP technology.

Manu Kaycee, vice president of product technology and strategy at Telco Systems mentioned this to me during a recent interview for an eBook on Carrier Ethernet that will post on the xchange website www.xchangemag.com May 19.

PBT is an emerging standard based on PBB. BT, Nortel and a handful of other vendors have positioned PBT as a way to bring Carrier Ethernet into transport networks without what some perceive as the the high cost and complexity of MPLS. One key tenet to the technology is that, from a network management standpoint, it makes Carrier Ethernet look much like SONET/SDH, meaning telcos don’t need to retrain technicians on a new technology.

Telco Systems’ Kaycee has told xchange that, although his company will support PBT if the market calls for it, there’s no real technical requirement for the technology. However, he added, because PBT from a network management standpoint looks a lot like SONET/SDH, it could enable some tier 1s to get around troublesome wording in their contracts with the unions. Kaycee declined to name the tier 1 service provider(s) in question, but said it is not AT&T.

“...union contracts specifically forbid them from having to work on IP-based technologies – working only on Layer 2 and below, going back to the whole SONET thing,” Kaycee told xchange. “And that is one of the main reasons many of the carriers, the tier 1s, are looking at PBB and PBT. It is not quite technology that is driving them to deploy these services and these options; it is more so operational principles and actually their business contracts.”

If that’s the case, I asked him, why don’t these service providers simply renegotiate the union contracts to include IP, which is clearly the present and the future of networking?

“They have tried to change it, but they’ve received tremendous pushback, and so what’s been happening is that the unions have come back and said ‘If you want us to address all additional technologies, what we’d like to do is actually renegotiate salaries and raises and benefits and all the other aspects,’” said Kaycee. “And, so, given that, they’ve been forced to stay at Layer 2.”

However, at least two tier 1 service providers – BT and Verizon – have indicated to xchange that this is not the case.

“The inference made here is a fallacy. BT has more than 30,000 staff qualified and working on IP every day,” Wendy Sycamore, a spokeswoman for BT, which is the central service provider backer of PBT to date, responded via email to xchange. She did not specify whether, or to what extent, that 30,000 includes union workers.

Nick Del Regno, principle member of technical staff at Verizon Business, told xchange he does not see a need for PBT, but does see merit in PBB. He did not comment about whether union issues might play a role in its interest in PBB and/or other carriers’ interest in PBT. However, Verizon spokeswoman Lynn Staggs said there is nothing in Verizon’s union contracts that specify an IP-based exclusion.

I also asked Nortel, the vendor leading the PBT charge, for comment. John Hawkins, senior marketing manager at Nortel, responded to xchange by saying: “The premise of your question, yes, I think telcos are interested in [PBT] because it makes Ethernet behave more like a SONET cloud. That I can confirm, and I’ve heard that from multiple customers. But I’ve never heard that specific an example of a union requirement or something. Interesting, but I can’t confirm that.”

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) did not get back to xchange about its inquiry about this matter.

User Comments !

If there is truth to the suggested contract activity referencing the Union, i.e,. CWA as related to hands off VoIP technology and if the resistance to the technology is prevalent among CWA members, they should look at the demise of the mighty Auto Workers and their business processes being farmed out due to pride and "traditional" expectations.

They need to jump on board with global thinking and be part of tomorrow's future instead of yesterday's relics in the museum.

Posted by: Eddie | April 17 2008 13:33:41