Keep Regulation National for Deployment’s Sake, Executives Tell Globalcomm
CHICAGO -- Uniform regulation is the biggest national policy issue as the industry looks ahead 3-5 years, a keynote panel of manufacturing executives said at Globalcomm here Wed. Because convergence isn’t just in technology, but also in corporations and their cultures, executives from Siemens, Lucent, Nortel and Tellabs were nearly solid in their opposition to local and state policies, like video franchising laws, that they think complicate business and stunt growth.
If there’s going to be regulation, let it be “more national versus local,” said Lucent Net Solutions Group Pres. Cindy Cristy. No matter the motivation behind regulation, she said it’s important to give carriers the ability to choose how to deliver their services. Tellabs CEO Krish Prabhu agreed national rulemaking would be vastly preferable to local. Careful to say he and Tellabs weren’t taking sides in the Bell-cable conflict, he said “as we try to justify the investments we made… we shouldn’t be squabbling over nationwide video franchises.”
Technology uptake and research funding were other pressing govt. issues for the panel. Harold Braun, Siemens pres.-networks div., said the govt. should do more to encourage new technology adoption when asked the most pressing inside-the-Beltway issue. Nortel Chief Strategy Officer George Reidel said the R&D corporate tax credit expired in Dec., and that’s bad. He proposed permanent, retroactive reinstatement of the credit to keep U.S. product development apace with the rest of the developed world.
All panelists decried the level of taxation. Cristy said that “no industry is taxed like mobility” and warned against the adoption of similarly steep taxation of IP technology, claiming it “will stop consumer adoption.” The govt. can generate more tax revenue “with broader adoption rather than jacking up the costs,” she added.
The current frenzied focus of U.S. carriers on infrastructure upgrades will determine where the industry sits over the next 3-5 years, Prabhu said: The upgrades will help the industry move, finally, toward a ubiquitous, “smart” network that combines data and voice. Braun said carriers have a common goal: An IMS network with a feature-rich application layer, which of course needs “a pipe to get that through.” Cristy said the ideal network will be IMS-based but have the capability to handle IMS and non-IMS traffic. She set a date of 3-5 years for that goal, as well. “We're becoming more focused on the end-user,” she added. “The technologies are less static… more learning.”
Innovations Summit Notebook…
A separate panel of executives spoke on the industry’s technology future Wed. at Globalcomm’s Innovations Summit. Panelists said infrastructure changes will provide the main action short term, as major carriers and their manufacturers move to capture the increasingly individualized user experience.
Standards funding is up 2006-2007, after staying constant a few years, said Simon Szykman, federal Networking & Information Technology Research & Development (NITRD) program dir. His group, which coordinates R&D funding and efforts for 13 agencies and the White House, was allotted $3.1 billion for 2007. President Bush’s American Competitive Initiative calls for doubling investment in physical sciences and engineering over 10 years at the National Science Foundation, Dept. of Energy and National Institute of Standards & Technology, he said, and the OMB R&D memo for 2007 calls for “advanced networking research… on hardware and software… tools that provide communication.” Szykman said the funding, paired with a likely rewrite of the Telecom Act, will play a major role in deploying next-gen networks near term.
Rajeev Chand of Rutberg & Co. laid out 5 questions with “contrarian” answers about the industry’s future. (1) Where is the next billion-dollar startup? While this is the hardest question to answer, he said, companies like Limbo, which merges eBay-style e-commerce with text messaging technology have the brightest future. Chand said he had no connection to the company. (2) What’s overvalued? Mobile advertising, Chand said. Mobile carriers have “a little concern about users getting annoyed” and don’t have an immediate need to subsidize the relatively small amount of rich content they're offering, he said. Significant mobile advertising could be as far off as 3 years, he said. (3) What’s undervalued? Mobile search. Tests are overwhelmingly encouraging, he said, and search offers advertisers a window so user-specific it would avoid the problems of blanket of mobile advertising. (4) What technology is underused? Chand asked why every handset doesn’t have a stock ticker or sports update bar running on its idle screen. Such a highly customized service is cheap to provide and could be popular, he said. (5) What area has the biggest need for research? Voice recognition (VR). Because this is the “holy grail” of mobile interface, it’s the area in most desperate need of work, he said. VR platforms recognize 90-93% of the commands they're given, he said, well below the 95-98% Rutberg views as an absolute minimum for widescale consumer uptake.
Ultimately, the biggest technology development may come from convergence itself, said Juniper Networks Vp-Strategy & Planning Judy Beningson. Asserting ads have a major role in the individualized experience that next-generation networks will offer in the next few years, she said the entire billing, delivery and access mechanisms will change to reflect that. “Your future communications bill may come from Google and be paid for by Nike,” she said.