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Carrier Services
MultiService Forum announces more targeted initiatives for 2009
Focuses on network core, wireless and NGN specs
by Doug Allen
The MultiService Forum (MSF) has announced a revamped agenda for its ongoing 2009 initiatives and beyond. The prime beneficiaries of the testing body’s shift in focus will be standards for the core network, particularly those based on 3GPP’s Evolved Packet System and 4G mobile broadband access protocols such as LTE.
A separate division, called the Services Working Group, will craft service descriptions and use cases for Next Generation Network (NGN)-focused service providers, and will lean heavily on the carrier community for participation. The group will work to ensure any new next-gen architecture can indeed support the rich array of applications, particularly in communications and entertainment, being developed, as well as validate real-world business models to guide carrier build-out schedules and long-range investment.
Gearing up for the wide-ranging battery of interoperability demonstrations set for GMI 2010, these MSF initiatives reflect a greater focus on the service and vendor specifications required for NGN services, now that broader standards and architectures for these emerging applications have become relatively well-established, if not fully deployed (see Multi Service Forum proves GMI 2008 underway). To that end, the MSF is moving towards incorporating smaller, more targeted events on a frequent basis that underpin the larger GMI event, a kind of Interoperability Olympics if you will.
These testing events are designed to speed overall time-to-market by setting verification and validation milestones at shorter, more regular intervals. This pace allows providers to move ahead with their implementations well in advance of more methodical (not to say ponderous) complete ecosystem-level testing, and allows vendors and providers to make more frequent adjustments to evolving specs, tweak products and systems for compliance, and set plans for future product or service development, which in turn can provide valuable feedback to the spec writers.
The MSF also announced a working partnership with the Alliance of Telecommunications Solutions (ATIS) in addition to other as-yet unnamed industry groups, to help validate its ATIS IIF IPTV standards. The work is part of a larger effort to bring together a number of specs that define a larger ecosystem or architecture that will meet the needs of NGN carriers who are loathe to implement such systems without more detailed standards in place that govern both its own and third-party networks.
Geoffrey Hunt, senior analyst of telecom infrastructure at Current Analysis, writing in a recent Competitive Ingelligence Report, predicts market impact will be “Moderate on the mobile backhaul and core network markets, because continuous refinement and real-world adjustments to the MSF’s priorities are to be expected. Now hat the standards have moved beyond the high level and into the implementation and trail phases, a more hands-on specific agenda is what the MSF needs to ‘ready’ the industry for GMI 2010 and to prepare for real implementations. The timing of the new agenda comes as vendors are readying their initial next-generation solutions to meet early implementation of 3GPP’s Evolved Packet System, as well as refinements to the initial round of new services that will be possible given a superior service delivery framework… The newly established partnership with the Alliance for Telecommunications Solutions to validate its IPTV standards is also significant.”
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