Can we move away from physical layer competition Prof. David Payne Dr Marco Ruffini Trinity College Dublin

Problems with telecoms today a customer perspective Services provided in contractual bundles. Customers locked into contracts for fixed periods. No mechanism for pick and mix of services. No mechanism for access to multiple service providers.

Problems with telecoms today a network perspective Bandwidth growth and cost of provision not matched by revenue growth. Network resources not used to maximum efficiency. Network services tend to be fixed bandwidth products.

Problems with telecoms today a regulation perspective No clear path to avoid the digital divide. Competition provided at physical layer. No incentive for network investment. Local Loop Unbundling a barrier to FTTP? No mechanism for competition using shared resources. No guidance for products and services for sharing resources.

Standards perspective for competition and network services ITU-T Recommendation Y.2012

Resource (e.g. B’width) Utilisation Issues Today’s End Users Access Pipes Service Providers SP1 SP2 SPr SPN Network Products: B’width Pipes Traffic Concentrators Network/s Network interface ports Fewer customers per aggregator: = low utilised access ports Average Traffic Pipe Size Access pipe bandwidth cannot be shared across users: = low utilisation

SP2 SPr SPN D ISCUS: Shared resources End Users CPE Shared Access Pipe Service Providers SP1 Network Products: B’width Pipes Traffic concentrators Network/s Network interface ports Pipe more efficiently utilised More users sharing access pipe and network port: = higher utilisation 512 to 1024 Users Bandwidth assignment determined by end users Bandwidth pipe assigned to one SP Network ports per user reduced: = lower cost and power

D ISCUS proposition: End users share access pipe and interfaces. Smaller SPs can connect via shared (access) pipes. End Users have bandwidth assigned on demand. Large SPs have wavelengths and capacity assigned Reduced network ports – lower cost and lower power. Can also support today’s pipe model – but less efficient. Need shared network products and services to Need regulatory environment that supports sharing infrastructure and resources.