EDITORIAL: A New Vision of What Is Telecommunications
Dr. Jerry Lucas
01/01/2005
Year 2005 will become the watershed where a new vision of telecommunications emerges. Why is a new vision needed? Because this year it will become clear that you won't be able to differentiate between a telecommunications service and an information service. This editorial is about why this vision will become reality, why telecommunications executives have got to get on board, and what it means to billing and OSS professionals and their vendors.
Wave-Particle Duality: A New Vision Example
Creating a new vision generally requires abstract thinking. So where do you go in search of examples of abstract thinking? Physics for starters. Besides, the example is relevant to the telecommunications issues at hand.
A central dilemma of theoretical physics in the early 20th century was whether light and electrons and other matter were waves or particles. Experimental data on the one hand indicated that light or electrons behaved like waves propagating on a pond of water, and other data showed they were like billiard balls bumping together on a pool table. To solve the dilemma, a new vision was created known as wave-particle duality, holding that there is no clear distinction between waves and particles. The result was the development of quantum mechanics, which led to the discovery of the transistor effect, lasers and—alas—nuclear weapons. (There always seems to be a downside to good things.)
So, what's the point? If you drop the notion (or vision) that you are either a telecommunications service or an information service business, and come to grips with the reality that you are in the services business, then you have made a good start for the upcoming year. If not, you'll eventually be out of business, just like those early 20th century theoretical physicists who didn't jump on the quantum physics bandwagon. As for 2005, events and industry forces will require adopting a new vision of what telecommunications is becoming.
Forces Redefining Telecommunications
Many forces or events in the upcoming year will require a new vision. Here are five, for starters.
1) CALEA: The first major decision in 2005 that the FCC will likely make involves requirements for VoIP and other IP-based services to support CALEA (the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act). Here is the VoIP service dilemma. The Telecom Act of 1996 treats a VoIP call as an information service. Under CALEA, passed by Congress in 1994, a VoIP call can't be considered anything but a telecommunications service.
Consider an Al Qaeda surveillance target making a call over the PSTN. In this case a service provider can lawfully intercept this call under court order. But if the Al Qaeda suspect makes the same call using VoIP technology, you can't lawfully intercept this call, because the suspect is using an information service. This makes no logical sense.
So why will the FCC ruling on VoIP and CALEA be so important? It will establish that under one set of laws (CALEA) an electronic service (VoIP) is a telecommunications service, and under another set of laws (the Telecommunications Act of 1996) the same service can be considered an information service.
2) Here Come the Tax People: The FCC doesn't have anything to do with taxes directly, but it does have influence with tax officials when it comes to defining services. The likely FCC decision on CALEA will open a Pandora's box when it comes to taxation. If the FCC rules that you can't label VoIP and other IP-based services as always information services because of CALEA, why should it be considered a non-telecommunications service when it comes to taxation laws?
Congress, the states and municipalities create the tax laws. So if the FCC says that VoIP and other IP services are neither telecommunications or information services 100 percent of the time, it must be something else for taxation purposes. Bottom line: Telecommunications tax laws will likely go a long way toward redefining what telecommunications is in 2005.
3) New Players: Defining telecommunications also becomes a challenge if you look at the new players in the industry today. You have the state of Utah operating state-wide fiber networks as a wholesaler to AT&T and other service providers, the city of Philadelphia as a Wi-Fi network operator soon to be providing Internet access to its citizens for a fee, and other municipalities across the United States operating as service providers. Given these new government players, do telecommunications services become just like water, sewage and trash services?
4) New Wireless Technologies: Just when you think you are getting a handle on telecommunications and information processing technology, and the fact that they are the same animal when it comes to services, you haven't seen it all. In year 2005, you will see the emergence of the Internet interconnecting objects to objects. How do you classify the communications between a quart of milk and an Internet ASP via a refrigerator that processes RFID or UWB signals? Is the service telecommunications or what?
5) Classifying New Services: Finally, in year 2005 new services will emerge that defy traditional classification, such as the new wireless ring tone services about to be launched. Here, you associate a ring tone with an incoming caller based on the telephone number of the calling party. When your friend is calling you, you hear a special ring tone, and your caller friend hears the same ring tone. Is this a telecommunications service (voice call), information service (caller ID) or entertainment content?
New-Vision Thinking
New visions take time to settle in, let alone evolve. Here are a few considerations on new-vision thinking in general and telecommunications in particular.
1) Try Abstract Thinking: Physicists create abstract thinking models of the world and describe them in the form of mathematical equations that can't be easily envisioned. For example, "string theory" attempts to explain everything from gravity to quantum effects in a single equation. The mathematics involved envisions our world in 11 dimensions. OK, you can handle four: up, down, sideways and time—but how do you picture 11? String theory may turn out to be wrong, but at least the ball is moving towards a single theory for everything.
So, when it comes to the new telecommunications vision, you have got to look at things in the abstract. For starters, forget about whether something is telecommunications or information, and focus on service. The new-vision players are service providers who focus their offerings around, perhaps, service control technology.
2) Stop Thinking Network Technology: Before grappling with the abstract concept of service control technology, telecommunications folks should stop defining or envisioning their business using a network-centric view. The classic or legacy PSTN phone business is described by access, switching and transport building blocks with back-office billing, provisioning and other systems. The new VoIP providers describe their business as broadband access, softswitches, gateways, routers and so on.
The problem with this network-centric vision is that it doesn't track with the functional reality of the new telecommunications business and what processes are involved. A voice call will be a combination of current switching, SIP processing and a whole set of other things including OSS/BSS. The result of network-centric thinking is the many OSS/BSS silos that exist in today's networks, each associated with a specific network service. Things collapse upon themselves when you begin to try to create integrated and/or personalized service.
3) Service Control Technology—New Vision or Hype?: Service control technology may not be the entire new-generation telecommunications vision, but it's a starting point because it kills three birds with one stone. First, it allows decoupling of OSS/BSS from network elements. Second, if all service requests go through a service control platform, the problems with CALEA for VoIP and IP-based services are solved. Finally, the taxation issues are also solved, because you know what service is being provided, what network elements were used, for how long and where they were used. Taxation then just becomes applying another rating element to a service event.
If you want to learn more about new visions in telecommunications in general or service control technology in particular, plan to attend the TeleStrategies "Service Control Technology Conference" on March 31 and April 1, 2005, in Mclean VA. Go to www.telestrategies.com for more information or to register.
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