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Broadband Access
"PBT could be catastrophic," says Juniper CEO
Warns operators that buying cheap could cost them dear
by Ken Wieland
Juniper CEO, Scott Kriens, is warning operators not to let
the “theoretically cheaper” hardware associated with PBT, a
carrier Ethernet technology, unduly influence them.
“PBT would be an interesting idea if you didn’t already have a
better solution developed, which is MPLS,” says Kriens in a
conversation with Telecommunications at the BBWF event in
Berlin.
It is perhaps no great shock that Juniper, which supplies
MPLS-enabled IP routers (the very equipment that PBT seeks
to replace), sees little future for PBT (provider backbone
transport). What may be a surprise is how scathing Kriens is
of PBT as a way of managing traffic over the network.
“PBT is a feature and not a market segment in its own right,
but operators don’t want to buy individual features for their
networks,” he says. “They want an operating system that can
engineer traffic across the entire network, which includes
aggregating Ethernet traffic. That is why we have MPLS.”
Arguably, PBT has thrown down the gauntlet to the likes of
Juniper, Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco to lower IP router prices, as
it is their expense that contributes to PBT’s appeal.
Kriens prefers to talk, however, about lowering the total cost
of ownership for operators, while still providing a network that
is highly scaleable. A cheaper bit of hardware, which is
unrelated to the rest of the network architecture, is not going
to lower TCO, he says.
“The inability of the [PBT] network to scale and remain
reliable that comes with the cheap-priced strategy means the
cost will exceed many times [the initial cost saving on the
hardware],” he says. “PBT could turn out to be dangerously
expensive and catastrophic for the operator. MPLS, on the
other hand, is proven and scalable.”
PBT is not without its own high-level backers, such as Nortel,
Nokia Siemens Networks and Ciena. Kriens, however, has no
intention of ploughing any of its R&D funds into PBT.
Juniper’s R&D budget is currently running at US$500 million per
year, a level which Kriens wants maintain. Juniper’s projected
revenue for this year is between $2.73 billion and $2.76 billion.
Opportunities in advertising
A recurrent theme at BBWF is network operator business
models based on advertising. Kriens believes this is a
potentially huge, and so far untapped, market for operators.
“Network operators have opportunities to take advantage of
their customer relationships by providing knowledge to
advertisers,” he says. “One way to do this could be to lower
subscription costs in exchange for information that would be
demographically interesting to potential advertisers.”
Last summer, Juniper joined forces with Packet Vision to
provide an interactive advertising service for IPTV players.
The solution allows operators to insert ads into particular
programmes viewed by customers that fit the demographic
profile target of the advertiser.
“It’s still early days for operators in advertising, as most of
the ideas are just coming out of marketing departments,”
says Kriens.
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