AT&T Pushes the All-IP Telco

AT&T has, for the last two months, been petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to prepare for the closure of traditional phone networks and implement the move to the all-IP telco, what AT&T expects will inevitably take over. The FCC has suggested that the Public Switched Telephone Network could retire around 2018, and AT&T has since been internally focused on the transition.

The VP of AT&T's federal regulatory division, Hank Hultquist, stated: "This telephone network we've grown up with is now an obsolete platform, or at least a rapidly obsolescing platform. It will not be sustainable for the indefinite future. Nobody's making this network technology anymore. It's become more and more difficult to find spare parts for it. And it's becoming more and more difficult to find trained technicians and engineers to work on it."

Despite being an indication of the death of the traditional telephone network, Hultquist is certain that all-IP and Internet Protocol-based networks will have greater quality and importance. This runs en par with the integration of voice on the Web, and has been pioneered by the likes of Skype, Facebook and Google Hangouts.

Hulquist said: "Voice is the most efficient way to communicate. We have had the same voice service for 80 years. The voice quality you get when you make a call on the iPhone today is the same voice quality Bell Laboratories thought you should have in 1933."

The founder of a startup called VCXC (the Voice Communication Exchange Committee), Daniel Berninger, moderated the AT&T panel at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where Hultquist presented "Introducing the All-IP Telco." According to Berninger, the merging of the telecom and IT industries are also anticipated, should everything become IP.

Berninger also noted that by ensuring the reliability, access to emergency services and other positive attributes of the traditional telephone service, the transition will certainly be successful. It will also be the case that AT&T and similar companies will be able to become more simplified, and could also save a great amount of money due to network services and content delivery being deployed through the same technology.

Indeed, implementing an all-IP network would mean that there will be no traditional circuiting. Berninger stated: "If you take a central office, pull out all the TDM (time-division multiplexing) equipment, and put in all IP equipment, guess what happens? The central office disappears. The first thing the telcos get is a whole lot of free real estate. ... It's going to be a really great thing for AT&T. BT made a lot of money when they switched over to IP."

Hulquist states that although the switch to all-IP would result in simplified and cheaper systems, the transition itself will be more complex than the move to all-digital television. He said: "TV was one service. Phone companies like AT&T have thousands of services based on this legacy technology." This is because ordering a traditional phone service means that a choice must be made from "a dizzying array of different combinations of features: With/out voicemail, caller ID and various kinds of dialing capabilities."

As each combination represents a Universal Service Ordering Code (USOC), the integration of these into a small number of providers will improve service efficiency. Certainly, many customers have chosen to switch to all-IP networks voluntarily, utilizing cell phones and VoIP services. Hulquist states: "We do believe there are significant opportunities here for expense savings," with regard to the falling number of U.S. landlines. "There are some cost savings opportunities here and it's a good thing because the base of customers supporting that platform is so much smaller now than it was ten years ago."

Ensuring that specific cities or regions lay-down their TDM equipment completely in favor of providing IP-based phone services is one suggested means AT&T has addressed in its petition to the FCC. Through testing all-IP on a small scale, hindrances to the technologies and transition can also be identified. Furthermore, this trial is available not just to AT&T, but to any phone company. Public comments are currently being taken on AT&T's proposal.

It is also inferred that AT&T will be seeking less government interference and a more friendly regulatory environment: "AT&T believes that this regulatory experiment will show that conventional public-utility style regulation is no longer necessary or appropriate in the emerging all-IP ecosystem." According to the company, it is impossible to justify "monopoly-era regulatory obligations" in the Internet martketplace.

Panelists at CES emphasized the point that although the Internet is not a regulated industry, telecom is; additionally, they do not seem open to the prospect of this order changing.

A newly appointed Los Angeles Country Superior Court Judge, Daniel Brenner, previously specialized on FCC policy and regulatory matters. He stated: "If we oppose Internet regulation at the international level because it doesn't make sense, we need to make sure Internet regulation in the US does makes sense. Network neutrality was very controversial. And really for many of us who didn't think that was a wise decision, it's because you needed market failure, something going on in a market that causes the regulator to come in. That hadn't really been demonstrated to the minds of many of us in the net neutrality context. Don't make it worse by regulating."

It is evident that the cases for and against Internet standards, related settings and network neutrality will be presented more vigorously in the upcoming future. Additionally, it is interesting to note that if AT&T gets all it wants from its FCC petition, the huge transition will ensure that there are fewer rules in the IP future. Berninger stated: "We have 100 years of traditional telecom playing out, colliding with 50 or 60 years of information technology, and the thing that comes out of that collision is an all-IP telco. In five years we'll know what that looks like. At this point we can just guess. But it's going to be a very big deal." (CY) Link