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Backoffice & OSS
NXTComm 2008: Tech execs like power of home networks
Keynote panelists see ‘VLAN inside the home’ driving new services
by Jim Barthold
The home network, what Verizon Communications likes to call
the “fourth network,” is a territory of untapped potential — and
potential problems — for telecommunications companies, a
panel of industry tech leaders said at an opening day session
at NXTComm 2008.
“The home network is where it happens,” said Pieter Poll,
CTO of Qwest Communications, speaking during an ATIS
TechThink executive panel.
That can be good or bad, depending on how the carrier
approaches that home and what consumers themselves have
installed on it. Telcos, Poll said, can assume a mantle
of “being a trusted entity to our customers” and thus be the
keeper of a home network that connects not only computers
and TVs but eventually a wide variety of devices and
appliances. Those same carriers, he said, must “make sure
that we do embrace multiple ecosystems.”
To do this, it’s necessary to have standards like TR-69 which
is providing a road map for connecting multiple elements
within the household, said Chris Rice, executive vice president
of shared services at AT&T.
The management of the home network “is the next final
frontier that we need to address,” he said.
That’s because the home network is actually an extension of
the wider outside network, said Mark Wegleitner, senior vice
president of technology and networking planning for Verizon,
echoing a longstanding Verizon mantra.
“We call it the fourth network. We’ve built a broadband LAN in
the house” using MoCA and “the key will be to make sure we
can manage it,” he said.
Beyond managing the home network, he said, there will be an
opportunity to use the multi-faceted router “to create any
number of services” such as home surveillance and security
that leverage that network.
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