Take 5 with Jennifer Pigg

CEN Feature (Jan 5 2012) Take Five With

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   Jennifer Pigg of Battle Green Research is a member of Yankee Group's Affiliate Program. Her area of expertise is network carrier infrastructure, examining the challenges facing service providers in provisioning the edge and core network, and the solutions and technology that will meet the demands of mobile data networking, cloud computing, Web 2.0 and LTE including mobile backhaul, carrier Ethernet, core and edge routers, packet optical transport and the Evolved Packet Core. CEN caught up with Jennifer to get her insights on industry issues.

   CEN: Small cells are getting big. Are they the answer to service providers' mobile network traffic woes? 

   Jennifer: LTE, increased spectral efficiency, data offload, more macro cell sites—all will assist in handling the growth of mobile data traffic. However, they aren’t enough. In urban areas by 2015 there will still be a 30-50% shortfall in mobile network capacity without the introduction of small cells.  They will help enormously in solving network capacity woes, but they introduce a boat-load of new problems most notably in these early days of small cell—how do you architect a macro/micro cell network, how do you deploy it and how do you manage it?  My research shows about 268,000 macrocells in the US in 2011 with the largest MNOs controlling as many as 55,000 sites. Most of these MNOs have plans to deploy between 7 and 10 small-cells for each macro cell in their urban areas. This introduces enormous cost control and operational challenges. How does an MSO go from deploying 2,500 new (macro) cell sites a year to deploying 50,000 new (small) cell sites in year?  Small cell sites have to meet design criteria that are the polar opposite of those for a Macro cell site.  They have to be inexpensive (about $5000 for RAN and backhaul) one integrated unit, small form factor, low power draw, self-organizing with simple installation, remotely configured and managed.  I could go on in terms of backhaul spectrum, antenna size, support for non-line-of-sight backhaul, and the degree of redundancy needed—but you get the picture.

   CEN: You recently observed that there is (another!) reemergence of copper, in backhaul and that its uses are opportunistic in nature. Where do you see this playing out? 

   Jennifer: Over 60% of mobile backhaul in the US today is still copper based T1 TDM services.  Carriers are using 7-10 T1s (10-15Mbps) and paying $200-$400 on average per T1, per month—so about 3,000 per site, per month.   These TDM facilities are a pain in the neck—they’re inflexible, they’re expensive and they’re running out of gas.  Up until 2011, the MNOs operated under the assumption that the only viable alternatives were microwave and fiber.  Now they realize that, by implementing bonded copper solutions and vectoring, they can sweat the copper assets and achieve, depending on the number of bonded copper pairs, Ethernet speeds anywhere from 10Mpbs to 200Mpbs.  The great thing about vectoring is that the noisier the copper, the better performance gains you will realize.  We see a lot of MNOs, including BT and AT&T, looking at and implementing these solutions in their residential broadband networks and we are seeing the same trend in Mobile backhaul.  The MNO or converged network operator has 5 business units standing in line to grab each dollar of capital budget.  If you tell the operator that he/she can upgrade strategic backhaul connections at 1/10^th (or better) the cost they had budgeted for that upgrade—you better believe you’re the hero.

   CEN: What do you see as the progress and challenges around making global Ethernet connectivity our new network reality, i.e. between carriers and across borders?

   Jennifer: Service providers are determined to increase competitiveness by extending their carrier Ethernet reach, but a lot are still doing it the hard way. There are still service providers out there with over 100 separate NNI (Network-to-Network Interface) agreements, each with a unique connection configuration and performance agreement. These are tough to establish, manage and maintain—but many tier ones, up until now, have felt that this was the only way to guarantee a stable customer experience.  2011 saw widespread testing and some implementation of Carrier Ethernet Global Interconnect and the standardized External Network-to-Network Interface (ENNI), but there are still a number of holes which the MEF E-Access service standard—projected for January 2012 adoption—will attempt to plug. All of these use MEF 26, ratified in 2010, as the blueprint for the manner in which CoS, QoS and SLAs should work across Ethernet Virtual Circuits (EVCS), which span across third-party operator networks. Methods for establishing operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) controls of intra-carrier, end-to-end links are also part of the specification. 

   CEN: Is there a future for Carrier Ethernet Exchanges?

   Jennifer: Most significantly, 2011 saw Tier 1 carrier Ethernet service providers such as Verizon, signing up to use Carrier Ethernet Exchanges such as Telx, CENX and Equinix.

   CEN: You are someone that loves the seaside. Do you find yourself thinking about Carrier Ethernet when you are at the beach and what, if anything, do you do to try to stop that?

   Jennifer: Carrier Ethernet and the beach?  They’re completely compatible—I don’t see the problem.  Ask my family. 

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