Paul Tingey

The emergence of the Femtocell

Amongst all the news (and some would say hype) about Fixed Mobile Convergence, there is another market dynamic being played out which may lead to an alternative form of change. Fixed-to-Mobile Substitution (or FMS) aims to increase the proportion of calls made from traditional 2G/3G mobile handsets at the expense of those made from other devices such as fixed lines or dual-mode (or converged) handsets.

In reality this is a trend started by consumers themselves who, attracted by falling mobile call rates, have begun to use their mobile phones for all their voice calls whether they are outside of or within their homes. This substitution effect is most noticeable (for fixed line operators) amongst new users (i.e. in new households) who are often opting not to have a fixed line phone installed at all.

This is seen by many as being a potentially huge threat to the revenues of fixed line operators. For example whilst about 6% of homes in the UK are "mobile only", in Finland, where the effects of FMS have been particularly marked, the figure is closer to 30% leading to a sizable reduction in fixed line revenues. Obviously mobile operators, with an interest in underpinning their own revenues, are motivated to foster the success of FMS and have shown interest in any technology which enables this. The most significant of these is referred to as the Femtocell.

Femtocells are small "in building" 2G/3G access devices (similar in size to a wireless access point). They connect, on the radio side, to a standard mobile phone and, on the network side, to a users broadband connection and have the advantage of providing excellent mobile coverage within the home as well as low cost calling (via IP backhaul).

Earlier this week some of the big players in the Femtocell market announced the formation of a consortium of their own to "advance the development and adoption of femtocell products and services". Founding members of the Femto Forum include Airvana, ip.access, Netgear, Ubiquisys and picoChip (among others) with other members likely to be announced over the coming months.

The creation of the Femto Forum comes at a time when Femtocell products are just beginning to hit the market. Nokia Siemens Networks have, only this week, announced a 3G Femto Home Access solution which will begin trials at the beginning of 2008 and will be deployed later the same year. Ericsson announced a similar Femtocell product early this year which may become available later in 2007.

As our love affair with mobile telephony continues to move from strength to strength, it's just possible that we could see Femtocell technology becoming as commonplace as wireless access points are today. And, if the Femto Forum works its magic, it could happen sooner than we think !

Carrier Grade Linux version 4.0 specification is released

Last week saw Carrier Grade Linux take a further step forward with the release of the latest version of the specification. The CGL 4.0 document, released on 26th February 2007, is the result of work by individuals in many organizations and heralds a new level of collaboration between all those involved in the Carrier Grade equipment business.

CGL 4.0 is the first version of the Carrier Grade Linux specification to be released by the Linux Foundation, a recently created group formed by the merger of the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group.

Improved alignment between the requirements of the telecoms equipment providers and the contents of the CGL Specification itself has been made possible through the work of the SCOPE Alliance. This consortium of equipment providers (such as Motorola, Alcatel/Lucent, Nokia, Huawei and others) has created a profile to outline those features of a carrier grade system which are most important for them and their customers to act as a kind of guidance system to keep the CGL specification in line with end user requirements.

The CGL profile created by SCOPE defines a total of approximately 250 individual requirements or features divided into seven groups; Availability, Clustering, Serviceability, Performance, Standards, Hardware and Security. Each of the individual requirements is assigned one of three priority levels; Mandatory, Desired and Roadmap. Obviously those requirements defined as Mandatory are seen as necessary to a successful Carrier Grade Linux system and, as such, must be present in any CGL 4.0 registered distribution.

Prior to CGL 4.0 there was no formalized registration process for Linux distributions claiming compliance. However, CGL 4.0 introduces a formal registration process and requires that any compliant distribution must meet all of the 135 Mandatory requirements.

The next step in the evolution of CGL will see the specification aligned with the Linux Standards Base (LSB) with the aim of increasing compatibility between CGL compliant and mainline distributions such that applications will run on either type of Linux in exactly the same way.

The CGL specification has been through a number of iterations (the first version was released in 2002) but the collaboration between standards groups, Linux vendors and equipment providers which is such a feature of the development of the CGL 4.0 specification marks a particularly important milestone in the story of Carrier Grade Linux. Cooperation between interested parties of this kind is likely to reinforce the position of CGL as the operating system of choice for telecom systems in the future.

The naked truth about using the phone

Telecoms can be a somewhat dry subject at times so when I recently tripped across a news release which made me giggle I decided it was my responsibility to share it with you.

BT recently carried out a survey (Starkers Talkers) asking what British people did while they were using the phone. Most interesting (in a purely scientific way) is the fact that 49% of British people are happy to talk on the telephone while naked in the privacy of their own home.

Before I go further I should save the blushes of myself and other Brits by adding that, whilst the results are from a survey of British phone users, I can think of no good reason why they would not be similarly valid in other parts of the world. I do not believe that the British would be any more predisposed to naked telephony than other similar cultures.

This BT survey also outlines the fact that 25% of British people have used the phone to pretend that they were somewhere else while 83% carry out others activities while on the phone (although those "other activities" apparently include watching TV which is, I would suggest, hardly an activity).

A spokesperson from BT commented that:

Talking on the phone is an everyday activity for most people, what’s interesting about this research is the variety of different ways in which we go about it. Some of the facts revealed here might make us think about our phone calls a bit more and start to wonder what the person at the other end of the line is actually doing!

What is more interesting for me is the fact that this survey shows us that, while we use the phone as a tool to open up the world by enabling us to communicate with almost anyone, anywhere and at any time, we simultaneously use its limitations (i.e. its non-visual nature) as a cloak to hide behind and to retain some element of our own personal privacy in an increasingly open world. The fact that people cannot actually see where we are, what we are doing or our facial expressions creates a veil of privacy within which we feel secure.

Maybe this veil of privacy explains why, despite the fact that webcams are cheaper than they have ever been, only about 15% of my Skype contacts have (or admit to having) a webcam. Maybe, in a world of increasingly open communications, most people find video calling just a little to open for comfort.

So I'm left wondering whether videophones and video mobiles will continue to be seen as simply Sci-Fi movies gadgets or will the potential of 3G and FMC enabled handsets be fully realized to allow us to see who we are talking to ?  Do we want to see who we are talking to or, more to the point, do they want us to see them ?

In the meantime, please be patient when calling the UK; if we take a long time to answer we may just be making ourselves a little more presentable before we pick up the phone !

I am not a number - I am a presence !

It came as somewhat of a surprise to me but I've recently realized that, between my wife and myself, we have six phone numbers; two mobile phones (one for work and one for personal use), three landlines (a home office number, a fax number and a personal number) and a desk phone at a Wind River office. This situation seems unsatisfactory in a number of ways:

• these numbers represent six potential "points of presence" for me and my wife
• the numbers are, in themselves, random collections of digits and are not representative of me as a person
• either my employer or myself is paying for replicated services
• it just seems overly complicated

Like Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, I would like to claim that "I am not a number". Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that I am actually represented by six different  telephone numbers.

In response to this situation, communications in the future will not be based on numbers but on the notion of presence and it seems likely to revolutionize the way we use communications....

Firstly, and most importantly, presence information is about individuals like you and I. That's different to current communications systems which are about devices and networks. For example, when people attempt to contact me today, they do not phone me as a person; they phone a number which represents a device which they hope is somewhere near me. If they fail then they may assume that they used the wrong network (e.g. maybe I'm on my mobile) and try the same thing over a different network. Of course they may have failed because I was on the phone, or asleep, or watching TV. The caller has no significant indication of (or feedback from) my particular state at that point in time.

In the future, communications systems will attempt to wrestle back control of communications to us as individuals - they will become user-centric. Hand-in-hand with a single handset which operates over multiple networks transparently (see my earlier post), will be the concept of a single presence which may be evaluated in terms of an individuals:

• willingness to communicate
• location
• communication capabilities (e.g. voice, video, chat, etc)
• etc, etc

These factors together with time and date information and any customizations applied by the user will define presence in terms of an individual's status or mode (analogous to working, relaxing, out to lunch, etc). This concept is similar to, but expands on, the type of capabilities which Instant Messaging currently offers us.

Of course, we could make a crude attempt to represent similar states on our mobile phones today but unfortunately the representation is largely binary in nature; either we are available or we are not. In the future our presence will become a dynamic, intelligent representation of our state. For example:

• if my calendar says I'm on vacation then I'm probably relaxing
• otherwise if it's 4pm on a weekday then I'm working
• but at 7pm on a weekday I'm likely to be relaxing
• unless I'm still using my business laptop in which case I'm probably still working
• if I'm in a restaurant at 8pm I'm probably out to lunch
• but if I'm in a movie theater then I'm unavailable
• at midnight I'm probably sleeping
• unless I'm in a different time zone....

Each of these states is a representation of where I am (locally and geographically), what time it is, what day it is, entries in my diary/calendar, what equipment I'm actively using at the time and a host of other information. Furthermore, I will be able to control my availability for each of these states (for example, if I'm relaxing then I want my friends and family to be able to contact me but not my work colleagues). On the basis of presence, callers and callees as well as the network itself can decide exactly what to do with a communications attempt. Callers may even be able to subscribe to a service which, for example, notifies them when the movie I'm watching finishes and I become available again.

The most exciting thing about presence is that it is not a fanciful concept. Presence is actually a service of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), the technology which will underpin Fixed Mobile Convergence in the future and the IETF is currently working on SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions) which will enable SIP based devices to provide presence information in a standardized way.

If you would like to read more about presence, Alec Saunders has written a fascinating article (New Presence and the Voice 2.0 Manifesto) which expands on what I have outlined above.

Of course, there is one interesting "issue" which is yet to be overcome. What happens when you leave home without your mobile communications device in your pocket ?  Well, there's no need to worry because there is always the option of having it implanted into your tooth !

Telecoms equipment can be cool (honestly)

Many years ago, at a previous company, I spent my days writing assembler code for the 68302 processor and watched enviously as other (more fortunate) engineers wrote "modern" C++ applications for Pentium-II desktop PCs. In the canteen at lunchtime, no-one wanted to listen to my witty anecdotes about humorous 68K register names. At a technology level, embedded systems just weren't "cool".

However, times are changing. Desktop PCs may now offer dual core processors but, in reality, todays technology revolution is driven by a telecoms infrastructure that enables rich applications based on VoIP, Multimedia services and mobile communications. On the back of this revolution, the technology inside telecoms infrastructure equipment is getting pretty cool.

Wind River today announced Carrier Grade Linux support for the Sun Microsystems UltraSPARC T1 processor, a device which can include up to eight cores (that's at least four times as many cores as are in a desktop machine) and offers a glimpse into the future of network equipment.

So what's so cool about this device? Well, until recently each blade in a chassis based telecoms system had a distinct purpose; there were blades for the application plane, blades for the control plane and blades for the data plane. However, Sun's latest CP3060 ATCA blade, running an UltraSPARC T1 multi-core processor, is capable of performing all of these multiple roles simultaneously.

The UltraSPARC T1 processor, which includes up to eight individual cores each of which runs four threads, does this by offering it's resources as (up to) 32 virtual processors. So an ATCA chassis populated with a number of Sun CP3060 blades could offer hundreds of virtual processors each of which can be allocated to either application plane, control plane or data plane processing. This offers the possibility of consolidating several blades into a single slot and therefore reducing the size of the overall system.

The performance of the UltraSPARC T1 [Wikipedia reference] is impressive too. The device uses hardware multi-threading to minimize idle time in each core which in turn increases performance per watt. That means that the UltraSPARC T1 processor only requires about 35% of the power budget of an ATCA slot meaning that it runs cooler and it leaves more of the power budget available for other features such as increased memory. What you end with is increased processing power for the same power budget.

Crucially, this improved power efficiency leads to a reduced power/cooling requirement for the same processing power. In fact, for this reason the UltraSPARC T1 has already won an award for being the Worlds First Eco-Responsible Processor. Any technology which attempts to bridge the gap between our hunger for technology and our need to cut energy consumption is to be welcomed.

The kind of flexibility offered by the UltraSPARC T1 processor will be crucial as the IP Multimedia Subsystem or IMS (a topic which I'll cover over the coming weeks) begins to roll out. As well as the core benefits offered by ATCA and a CGL compliant operating system (high-availability, manageability, etc), IMS also demands exactly the kind of high performance and scalability which the UltraSPARC T1 processor offers.

Despite what you may think, telecoms infrastructure equipment can be quite cool...

Is standard based telecom equipment coming of age?

At the beginning of each day I try to spend a little time reading press releases and news items from the various industry sectors I take an interest in. As I read I often find individual items which catch my eye and make me explore a little deeper but, over the last few days, something else became apparent to me. What struck me was the number of news items related to AdvancedTCA and telecoms equipment which reported on the creation of partnerships and/or alliances.

So what does this indicate? Well, I feel that what we are seeing is a solidifying of the ecosystem around telecoms solutions based on industry standards such as AdvancedTCA and Carrier Grade Linux.

Take for example these news items over the last couple of weeks:

• Wind River Partners with Kontron to Develop Linux Based Industry Standard Telecom Solutions
• Performance Technologies and GoAhead Team to Offer High Availability AdvancedTCA® and CompactPCI® Platforms
• OpenClovis and RadiSys Partner to Deliver Pre-Integrated, High Availability ATCA Solutions for Telecom Equipment Manufacturers

These announcements indicate to me that AdvancedTCA and it's associated technologies are coming of age. Vendors, who independently offer component technologies such as hardware, high-availability middleware, operating systems and tools, are working together to offer "solutions" to their customers. An abundance of these cross-vendor solutions is, for me, a good sign of a vibrant ecosystem.

Each of the vendor companies involved is unlikely to succeed in the marketplace in isolation but, by interacting with each other in the ecosystem, they increase their chances of success in what is a dynamic and complex environment. Furthermore the environment itself (in this case, the market for telecoms equipment based on industry standards) is stabilized and strengthened once a strong and stable ecosystem of vendors has formed.

Companies who embrace the Device Software Optimization methodology understand the importance of a burgeoning ecosystem and open standards. I believe that these newly emerging partnerships in the telecoms equipment market will resonate with those companies and the pace of acceptance of AdvancedTCA and it's associated technologies will accelerate as a result. For that reason, we should probably expect more of this kind of announcement over the coming weeks and months.

ATCA stars in its own show

This week sees the AdvancedTCA Summit 2006 in full swing in Santa Clara. This gathering of over 100 companies and consortia who sponsor, use or develop equipment based on the ATCA (and associated) specifications is proof that ATCA is now a "force to be reckoned with". Let's face it, it's not often that a hardware standard gets its own show, let alone a summit.

ATCA's strengths are many and varied but its success has mainly been driven by its flexibility and interoperability. To understand more let's take a whirlwind tour through its history....

Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (better known as AdvancedTCA or ATCA) is an open specification developed by the PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturers Group (PICMG) to be a successor to its earlier CompactPCI specification. It first appeared in 2003 and included several features which made it ideal for high density, packet-based telecoms infrastructure equipment. Those features, amongst other, include:

• large form factor
• hot swap support
• high power capability
• backplane support for multiple fabric technologies
• IPMI management support

A couple of years later PICMG introduced a standard for a mezzanine card for use in ATCA systems. The new standard, known as Advanced Mezzanine Card (or AdvancedMC or AMC), extends the flexibility of ATCA by allowing AMC modules to be plugged onto ATCA cards. Crucially, AMC modules are themselves, hot-swappable. This means that an ATCA based platform which incorporates AMC modules is highly versatile and scalable to a very fine degree whilst also being highly-available in the carrier grade sense (i.e. 99.999% availability).

But the story doesn't stop there....

While ATCA provides an ideal open architecture platform for packet based telecoms equipment in the edge or core networks (i.e. deep in the core of the mobile or IP network), it's often too large and costly for equipment in the access network (i.e. the parts of a network which connect consumers with the mobile or IP network). For this reason PICMG have recently ratified a new standard called MicroTCA (also known as MTCA or uTCA) which is more suited for the access network in devices such as IP-PBXs, WiMAX access points and DSLAMs. The clever bit is that, while MicroTCA is a chassis solution which is physically smaller than an ATCA chassis, it still uses AMCs as its basic building block. Since AMCs can include the same base features as ATCA cards (such as hot-swap capability and system management) they, together with MicroTCA, provide a way for system designers to create physically smaller but still very powerful and flexible carrier grade telecoms equipment.

Expect to see and hear much more about ATCA, AMC and MicroTCA over the next few months. I fully expect these technologies to migrate into new markets areas (such as industrial control and medical equipment) as the standards mature and hardware vendors develop their product portfolios. We will also see a growth in the use of these open architecture hardware platforms in the telecoms industry itself as Telecom Equipment Manufacturers adopt them (as well as other open standards such as Carrier Grade Linux) to benefit from the advantages they provide (such as reduced risk, reduced cost and faster time-to-market). Indeed, market analysts have predicted a multi-billion dollar ATCA market over the next few years.

You can also expect to read more about ATCA and its "sister" standards on this blog over the next few weeks. I'll be highlighting ATCA (and MicroTCA) news as its released and I'll also be talking to ATCA vendors themselves to learn about their views on this exciting new technology.

Is Carrier Grade Linux finding new friends?

While browsing the web recently I was interested to find an article (Carrier Grade Linux moves beyond telecoms into data centers, virtualization) featuring an interview with Bill Weinberg of the OSDL. In the article Weinberg outlines his view that Carrier Grade Linux has matured to a point where it's pushing out from it's traditional heartland of management blades and shelf controllers in telecoms infrastructure equipment. CGL is now finding new uses in new markets (for example Aerospace and Medical equipment) as well as new uses in its traditional market of telecoms equipment (such as managed nodes rather than management blades).

So why all this interest in Carrier Grade Linux?

In a word; reliability. Whilst many Linux based devices may not necessarily require high-availability, high reliability is now a ubiquitous requirement. CGL includes features such as health monitoring, live patching and remote management which are particularly attractive when reliability is crucial (even if high-availability features such as application fail-over, storage mirroring and hot-swap are simply not required).

Weinberg also suggests a potential marriage between CGL and virtualization technology in devices such as media gateways. The idea is that server virtualization could be used to run multiple instances of CGL on a single physical server (or server blade) with an application load balanced across the entire set of instances. This configuration provides for a more flexible approach to system design in a dynamic environment since server resources can be scaled to match the application workload.

However, I believe we should not expect this marriage of technologies to happen too soon. Whereas the CGL requirements documentation (and CGL registered distros) have reached relative maturity, virtualization in the baseline Linux kernel, on the other hand, is still in its relatively early development stages.

But the end goal is clear; an architecture framework which offers both reliability and flexibility. Could these twin benefits be enough to ensure that virtualized systems running Carrier Grade Linux will be commonplace across a number of market sectors in the years to come?