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>itself a ton of money.
Except, they drank the ATM Kool-Aid and spent billions on the failed ION project... I don't think they dislike MPLS, they just blew their budget on ION and couldn't afford to rebuild their network twice in a few years... They are now behind.
Oh yeah? Cisco's got a ton of kool-aid flavors. How about all-IP UTI L2TPv3 stuff? Let's use a different tunneling technology, and make Peter L happy.
-eeps
Whats growing and whats shrinking?
Are most revenues still coming from voice? Whats the growth rate of voice vs. data revenues?
And how about a breakdown between Internet/IP and frame relay/ATM revenues? Which are larger in terms of total revenues, and which ones are gowing the fastest?
Margins on each of these would be nice.
Were any of you analysts at the analyst meeting? Care to share some insights with us?
Thanks in advance,
BBboy
Hey fiber, I agree with you about ION, that was a money pitt. I don't think it was necessarily a wrong technology, its just that the integrated access over packet turned out to be alot harder than they realized. And I heard (from a Sprint engineer) they had a lot to trouble getting that Cisco prem box to work right.
That's why I am not so sure Sprint would necessarily be better off with MPLS. I mean, where is the business case that says you have to use MPLS? If they are trying to sell IP--VPNs to enterprise businesses, why do they need MPLS? Maybe they don't want to run tunnels inside of tunnels.
I would like to challenge you to name one specific revenue generating "thing" that your network can do because of MPLS, that Sprint cannot do becuase they don't have it.
Interested?
BBboy
I would like to challenge you to name one specific revenue generating "thing" that your network can do because of MPLS, that Sprint cannot do becuase they don't have it.
My comment:
Me too. I'm always a fan of new technology but I've yet to see real good reasons to deploy MPLS? What can it give a network (and the business behind it) that an IP network can't? All I hear is that is can do VPN/VLAN stuff which I seem to think we already have licked? I sometimes think MPLS was pushed by ATM vendors as a way of keeping ATM alive one way or another. But if I had a few m(b)illion in my pocket and I decided to start up this 'cozy little ISP' and it was 100% IP/POS, what would a customer have to ask of me that I could not do. No remarks like QoS, or Frame Relay or ATM either please. IP DSCP takes care of the QoS. As for FR/ATM usually there is an IP router at the end of that PVC, so if its routing I wanna do then IP only! Voice you say? I can do that over IP now too.
Seriously though....anyone got a good web link or book that I should start referencing?
Me
2. What's growing and whats shrinking?
3. Are most revenues still coming from voice? Whats the growth rate of voice vs. data revenues?
4. And how about a breakdown between Internet/IP and frame relay/ATM revenues? Which are larger in terms of total revenues, and which ones are gowing the fastest?
5. Margins on each of these would be nice.
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1. Only guesses are possible because no really knows what's going through each pipe. For example, more than half of all residential second lines are used for dial-up modems, which go through the circuit voice network. How would you classify these lines? How would you classify a business PRI that has 15 channels dedicated to the PBX and 9 channels hooked to the router?
2. Voice grows pretty much with the population and the economy. Typically 3%-5% a year. At times like now, more like 1%. The voice mix is tilting more toward wireless and UNE-P CLECs, so you've seen a decline in RBOC access lines.
Wireline L.D. voice has dropped quite a bit because of the any-distance wireless pricing, along with big buckets of minutes. Overall, however, there's no reason to think that overall LD traffic isn't on the long-term growth path of 3%-5%.
3. The circuit switched network generates 85% of the revenues and all of the profits. The price of a 64 kb channel sold as "voice" is at least five times that of 64 kb channel sold as "data." This is why the "data CLECs" were doomed from the very start.
4. This is impossible, because a very large share of the IP traffic runs over frame relay and ATM.
5. Data loses money. Cash flow margins on voice are well above 50%. On residential second lines, the cash flow margins are above 90%. This is why the phone companies haven't exactly been easger to roll out ADSL or to reduce prices on it.