Challenges and Opportunities of Triple-Play Service Delivery
Triple-play service delivery — blend- ing voice, video and data services in an integrated service bundle — is a generational leap that carries with it certain challenges.
•Today’s Internet service-delivery networks are optimized for flat-rate, best-effort commodity services.
With the advent of triple play, high-revenue services such as inter- active multimedia applications, VoIP, VoD and broadcast TV (BTV) become the dominant network- design drivers. These services place unprecedented scalability, reliability, flexibility and QoS requirements on the IP-network infrastructure.
•New user devices such as residen- tial gateways (RGs), IPTV set-top boxes, IP phones and gaming con- soles are being introduced in the digital home network and must be managed and controlled. Fiber-to- the-node (FTTN) and fiber-to-the-
user (FTTU) access technologies, a shift from ATM to Ethernet-based service aggregation, IP/MPLS serv- ice routing, IP multicast, and on- demand session-admission control are driving operational support requirements for which legacy systems were not designed.
•While transforming to a converged, multiservice IP infrastructure, ser- vice providers need to leverage and migrate strategic assets from the installed base of TDM voice and high-speed Internet (HSI) services to effectively up-sell existing sub- scribers to a triple-play offering. This migration needs to be non- disruptive for the service provider and transparent to subscribers by allowing legacy service features to be seamlessly ported to the next-generation network (NGN) infrastructure while minimizing operational impacts and costs.
Beyond a profound network transfor- mation, a centralized and reliable subscriber-management and policy- control infrastructure is required to enable millions of triple-play sub- scribers and end-user devices to securely access and use network-based applications, services and content with assured quality of experience. The Alcatel-Lucent 5750 SSC is purpose-built to address these needs. The system enables service providers to be optimally positioned to success- fully conduct network and service transformation to converged triple- play service delivery and unlock its full revenue potential.
4 Alcatel-Lucent 5750 Subscriber Services Controller
