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Broadband Access
BBWF: Qwest’s CTO Pieter Poll sticks to his guns
Focuses on enhancing the end-user experience
by Sean Buckley
Out of the three remaining RBOCs, Denver-based Qwest, formerly known as US West, is the most conservative of the trio. Unlike AT&T and Verizon, both of which have their own wireless subsidiaries and aggressive video plays, Qwest has neither in hand.
Still, Pieter Poll, CTO of Qwest, is confident that the RBOC has what it takes to provide its customers a freedom of experience in terms of bandwidth and applications.
To reach these goals, Poll sees Qwest converging on three main technology tangents: broadband access, keeping up core networking demands with traffic demands and the movement towards convergence-based services.
“What I would tell you is that Qwest has always believed in the power of public Internet, and it’s our goal to enable that public Internet and we would like to make as much of the bandwidth available for public Internet applications,” said Poll.
Fiber is hitting the node
In the broadband race, Qwest recognizes that the cable operator is a viable threat. Cable continues to enhance its HFC plant with DOCSIS 3.0 capabilities. In essence, DOCSIS 3.0 allows a cable operator to bond 3-8 carriers, with each having 35 Mbps to 250 Mbps, shared across a node.
Not surprisingly, Poll is skeptical about cable’s long term ability to scale bandwidth. Similar to AT&T, Qwest is pursuing a Fiber to the Node (FTTN) last mile upgrade in its existing Brownfield strategy sans IPTV.
“In our case, we have at least a GigE going into what is roughly the same size in terms of the node and dedicating pipes off of that so I truly believe that what we’re doing with Fiber to the Node is superior to DOCSIS 3.0 even though the DOCSIS 3.0 folks could say ‘you can burst at higher rates if you permit that,’” he said.
True to its last mile plan, Qwest launched an aggressive FTTN network build in 2008. This plan coincided with two new residential broadband packages: Titanium and Quantum FTTN services, delivering 12 and 20 Mpbs, respectively.
As of August, Qwest reported its FTTN network can reach over one million potential customers in 18 of its markets. By the end of 2008, Qwest hopes it will be able to reach 20 markets with FTTN. Initially using ADSL2+, Qwest, after getting through modem issues, wants to launch VDSL2 with bonding in early 2009.
So, what about fiber to the home (FTTH)?
While Poll says Qwest will certainly examine the use of FTTH in Greenfield areas, he believes the nature of its existing Brownfield network is better suited for FTTN.
At issue is the nature of Qwest’s existing plant structure. Whereas Verizon has mainly aerial plant, 75 percent of Qwest’s plant is buried. Qwest surmises that the economics to plow through customer’s yards and streets makes the economics more difficult in Brownfield areas.
Delivering 35 Mbps across each node, Qwest has designed its FTTN network to be pulled to a distribution point that serves on average 350 homes. With pair bonding, the operator is confident it can deliver about 40 Mbps capability going into its distribution areas. While acknowledging the savvy of Verizon’s FTTH drive, Poll believes FTTN will give it more than enough bandwidth headroom for residential customers.
“If you look at how people are using their broadband connections, do the math based on MPEG4 HDTV streams — that’s a lot of HDTV streams and data browsing that you’re going to do,” Poll said. “At some point in the future, there could be demands above that and in the small business Ethernet environment there are demands like that.”
Some analysts aren’t so sure about Qwest’s method. Cliff Holliday, President of B&C Consulting Services, and the author of a new report by Boston-based IGI Consulting, Advanced Architectures 2008 — AT&T, Verizon and Qwest Plans and Forecasts, for one, believes that FTTN lacks long-term sustainability.
“At a technical level the idea of using VDSL2 the way AT&T and Qwest are doing it is great if you don’t really need too much bandwidth,” argues Holliday, a former GTE staffer who helped lead some of the early telco video and FTTX trials in the late 1980s. “They are using it from 3-5,000 feet. At 3,000 feet, the best VDSL2 is going to do is 35 Mbps and it drops rapidly and at 5,000 feet it drops down to 21 Mbps."
Multi-purpose network
Qwest’s FTTN network is not just about residential services alone. Through its build order on the cities and routes it is bringing FTTN to residential users, Qwest is keen on leveraging the FTTN investment to deliver business and related wholesale services.
In some situations, it's possible that the business case for FTTN may be proven out in an area where residential demand is nonexistent, but the case for wireless backhaul or business services may be high.
To meet the demand for other non-residential applications, Qwest has adopted what it calls “Smart Builds” approach. With the “Smart Builds” approach, Qwest will extend fiber into strip malls or wireless cell sites for wireless backhaul opportunities that may arise. In essence, this is a combined view of business Ethernet, cell site backhaul and residential broadband that determines the order on where Qwest will bring FTTN.
“We really are going to look at the aggregate return that we’re going to get from these areas on fiber to the node, but that doesn't mean that it's just based on what we expect to get in a residential environment,” said Poll. “If there’s a place that’s rich in cell sites or businesses those may see early fiber to the node activity even though there may be minimal houses in the area.”
Qwest’s Government and Education Services found that the FTTN networking is paying off. In March, Jefferson County School District in Colorado employed Qwest to build a fiber and copper-based Ethernet network that is leveraging the FTTN network. (see Qwest takes fiber to the school).
On the wholesale side, Qwest is also seeing a growing demand for fiber-based wireless backhaul. While Qwest does not have its own wireless network outside of a reseller relationship with Verizon Wireless, wireless operators going through its territories continue to ask for fiber-based backhaul solutions to keep up with their next-gen wireless data and multimedia demands.
“All of a sudden with fiber there’s a lot you can do to bring in cell sites that you could not do earlier,” he said. “Obviously, the wireless carriers are aggressively pushing not just us but anyone with fiber to provide them with capacity because they are experiencing the same thing on the mobile broadband side that we’re experiencing on the fixed broadband side: the use of broadband pipes is going up quickly and they have the same issues with the number of channels brought into a cell site.”
Poll is quick to add that Qwest is not just building out fiber to cell sites. Instead, the point is they will build out the fiber network for various purposes and if cell sites fit into greater fiber build strategy it will bring fiber to those areas.
“What Qwest is not going to do is just do a fiber build simply to get to cell sites,” he said. “Fiber builds to cell sites does not prove a return that you would get from carrier’s in terms of willingness to pay on capacity to cell sites, but when you say that we’re doing builds for a whole bunch of reasons we’re looking at the aggregate demand and then letting that drive our investment.”
No cable replication here
IPTV may be gaining momentum with service providers, but Poll has no interest in simply building a network to replicate cable.
Qwest is not alone in their thinking. FairPoint’s Chairman and CEO Gene Johnson expressed a similar sentiment at the recent Goldman Sach’s Communicopia conference. (see: FairPoint: New England network transition is on target)
Using the analogy of when a cat chasing a mouse by trying to head it off at the pass, Poll is more interested in building a network that plays into changing behavior patterns of video consumption.”
“We don’t plan to do an IPTV solution where we are going to build an infrastructure to do what cable does today,” he said. “We can do that but we don’t think it’s a wise investment on top of fiber to the node, especially if you look at how our customers are expecting to use the Internet in the future and receiving their entertainment in the home. The home is far more about VOD and what’s important to a customer is a very clear way to see what content that you have or what’s available on the Internet."
It’s not like Qwest is a novice player in video. Qwest was one of the early proponents of delivering video over copper — something it still does in a few select markets — and has an ongoing reseller relationship with DirecTV.
Since the late 1990s, the operator has made various investments to its outside plant, which can now serve as a foundation for its FTTN network.
In the near term, Qwest will continue to leverage its DirecTV partnership and build out its broadband network with capabilities that will drive the use of Internet-based video services.
Provided that their activity is not illegal, the video strategy comes back to the idea of enhancing the customer’s experience to access whatever content they want.
Qwest’s video vision extends beyond the simple broadcast one-way consumption to the ongoing emergence of interactive video content. Web 2.0 social networking video applications such as YouTube and Facebook are less about just passively getting video in a broadcast way, but in their ability to be more interactive.
“When we think about video, we assume it’s one way,” said Poll. “Another big thing we’re very big at doing at Qwest is driving our pipes towards greater symmetry and away from extreme asymmetry. What we believe is the customer of the future is going to be more about interacting with one another so broadband is more important.”
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