IPsphere Forum Offers Up Framework for Carriers, Content Companies to Join Forces

Network-based service providers have been somewhat at odds with content and application providers of late as debates over fair use and net neutrality have escalated. But, in the end, both sides need to work together to ensure they each get a piece of the pie, and that end users get the content and applications they want at the performance levels they expect.

Addressing that reality, a group called the IPsphere Forum on Monday unveiled a white paper outlining a plan for how the multitude of pipe providers and content companies can work together so everybody gets what they want.

IPsphere Forum (which got its start in 2004 as the Infranet Initiative Forum) consists of major equipment companies such at Alcatel, Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks and Lucent Technologies Inc., among others, and some of the world’s largest telcos, including AT&T Inc., BT, France Telecom and Verizon Communications Inc.

“I really think what IPsphere Forum is promoting is a market-driven alternative to legislating fair use,” said Joe McGarvey, principal analyst at Current Analysis. “And, in my opinion, that's the only thing that is going to work. Service providers, both facilities-based and non-facilities-based, need each other to keep all of their subscribers happy. Instead of involving the government, which frankly seems to be in the business of screwing things up lately, service providers and producers of all types need to get together to work out there differences and ensure that an equitable solution can be reached in which both tiered services and best-effort service options are available to subscribers.”

Now that broadband access has become mainstream, there’s a proliferation of more bandwidth-intensive content available to make use of those pipes, noted Kevin Dillon, chairman of the board IPsphere Forum and vice president of technology at Juniper Networks. That has created a need for even more bandwidth. So the telecommunications industry is hitting a “copper ceiling,” and there’s a need to move optics further into the loop, he added.

That will require an injection of capital in the neighborhood of $45 million, he said, but it’s unclear where that money will come from. And if the network service providers are unable to deliver more bandwidth, the content community hits a roadblock, he said, adding “we’re moving into, or in some places of world we’ve already hit, where the last mile of access is holding back what the producers may want to sell into the marketplace.”

To avoid this impasse, the IPsphere Forum is offering up a framework that “codifies” how network operators – which it refers to as “the channel” – can show what they have to offer in terms of broadband connections so content and application then can invoke the appropriate type of link over which to provide a particular piece of content or application to the end user.

Of course, for all this to work, the forum will have to win the hearts and minds of the content community, which is not yet represented in a significant way within its existing membership. As McGarvey of Current Analysis noted, the forum still “needs to attract a major player from that space, such as a Google or Vonage or Yahoo! to send a message that it is not an advocacy group for incumbent carriers or anti-net neutrality groups.”

While the forum seeks the embrace of the content community, it also is in the midst of working on the technical aspects of how to implement the solution outlined in the “commercial framework” that is its white paper, said Dillon. Three releases of the group’s technical frameworks are expected to be released later this year, he said.

Current Analysis www.currentanalysis.com
IPsphere Forum www.ipsphereforum.org

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