Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2023. Read them in this 15th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
A New Year, And A New Telecoms Industry
By Richard
Brandon, VP of Strategy at RtBrick
Looking ahead to
2023, the importance of reliable, high-speed Internet has never been higher. We
rely on fixed broadband technology for work, education, and entertainment daily.
To boost the performance
of and access to these fixed networks, $65 billion was designated in November 2021 for
broadband programs and grants in the US. While these initiatives are
well-intentioned, the funding has been put towards approaches that have
remained relatively unchanged for 25 years.
So, what opportunities
for change do we see coming over the broadband horizon in 2023?
Open
Disaggregated Networks
Probably the most
significant change will be a consequence of advances in merchant-silicon
(chipsets developed by independent companies, rather than traditional telco
vendors). This has enabled a new generation of open switches, and a whole new
approach to building networks that is disrupting the industry. It is more
flexible, costs less, and is power-efficient. Most importantly, it has broken
the tie-in between hardware and software - similar to what happened in the
computing industry many years ago. This network disaggregation will give
carriers more choice and more control over their networks.
We're already
seeing top carriers adopting disaggregated architectures in the network core,
the fixed edge, and the mobile RAN, but 2023 will see it become mainstream. Aside
from bringing its own direct benefits, disaggregation will also have some secondary
effects in other aspects of the industry.
A New Wave of Vendors
The telco market
has been dominated by a few companies that have been around for, quite
literally, centuries - with a heritage in traditional telephone systems. To
limit choice even further, these industry giants have been steadily
consolidating, with Nokia absorbing Alcatel and Lucent, leaving Ericsson and
Huawei as the only other remaining contenders in this category.
Then there is the
generation of vendors that arrived with the Internet-era, who typically
specialize in switching or transport, such as Cisco, Juniper, and Ciena. Twenty
or thirty years ago, this was a space full of dynamic startups bringing new
innovations to the market. But this category of vendors has also stagnated in
recent years, and new players are rare.
This isn't
surprising when you look at the barriers to entry for any conventional telco
vendor. Satisfying the performance demands of modern networks has required the
development of purpose-built silicon that carries a huge fixed cost.
Fortunately,
off-the-shelf silicon developed by independent chip vendors such as Broadcom
and Intel is now suitable for a wide range of network applications and has
removed this barrier to entry. As a result, 2023 will see the beginnings of a
new vendor landscape.
It's important to
recognize that new vendors will typically fall into one of two distinct camps: either
hardware or software providers, but rarely both. Open hardware vendors, such as
EdgeCore and UfiSpace, are providing high-performance platforms that can be
used across a wide range of network applications. In contrast, software vendors
tend to specialize, each concentrating on a different set of network
challenges. For example, companies such as Drivenets focus on core routing,
building a high-throughput fabric out of open switches. RtBrick and others focus
on the edge of the fixed network, with expertise in driving high scale service
features on the underlying silicon.
In 2023, the
decline in the number of telco vendors will reverse, welcoming innovation to a
sector that has seen little change for decades.
More Reliable
Broadband
Ever since the
days of dial-up Internet, the key service differentiator has been speed. ISPs
and technologies have competed head-to-head on delivering faster and faster
broadband. But while consumers will continue to demand higher throughputs from
their broadband providers, we're starting to see a focus on service reliability
as being equally important. After all, what's the point of having hundreds of
Megabits of connectivity if it suffers from interruptions?
This in turn will
see greater demand for the underlying features that deliver high levels of
reliability: sub-second failovers if there is a line break, and faster route
convergence times (or the time it takes to re-learn the paths across the
Internet). The good news is these technologies will take leaps forward in 2023,
and disaggregated networks will actually surpass the reliability of traditional
networks in this regard.
Moving Forward
Nothing has really changed in fixed
networking since the first IP services more than thirty years ago, and certainly
since we moved away from dial-up. By contrast, 2023 promises to be a year of
huge change for the better for both operators and their customers, as we enter the
year of open networking for telecoms.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Brandon has more than thirty
years of experience in networking. Currently head of marketing at router
software pioneer RtBrick, Richard was previously CMO at Edgeware, VP of
Worldwide Marketing at Juniper Networks, CMO at Intune Networks and MLL
Telecom, and Head of Service Provider Marketing in EMEA at Cisco Systems.
Richard also spent his earlier career in British Telecom. He has spoken at
multiple forums including Broadband World Forum, NAB, and IBC, as well as the
European Parliament. Richard holds a BSc in Physics from Imperial College,
London.