With more than 6,000 exhibitors and around half a million visitors, the massive CeBIT 2006 show in Hanover was dominated by a single theme, Inter-operability.   It was evident everywhere and not just in the narrow sense of Next Generation Networks. 

CeBIT 2006 – the all-IP mix-n-match show

IP is the lingua franca that is driving our joined-up world – from new IPTV services to mobile broadband and a vast range of convergent products.  Even where technologies have developed for decades along parallel tracks, manufacturers are racing to add IP components to make products more acceptable to buyers who demand simplicity and future-proofing. 

So it was no surprise to find a rash of VoIP phones and fascinating product combinations.   Cellular phones with added WiFi VoIP capability and many new service designs extend the theme, launched last year as BT Fusion, to meet consumer demands for multi-purpose products. 

One of the most technically challenging arenas is in full mobility.  WiFi hotspots may be spreading faster than avian flu but, for most of us, hunting them down is still a hassle.  At the same time traditional cellular phone systems are being stretched and tested to their technological limits.   Professing ‘seamless inter-operability’, the manufacturers are rushing to adapt their old ATM voice-optimised designs to the new world of packetised data traffic.  Seamlessness in this transitional world usually means that somewhere in the works there’ll be yet another gateway, another protocol conversion, and inevitably a little more latency. 

Like earthquakes, when technologies are pressured to their limits there is, at some unpredictable moment, a seismic flip to a different order.   IP conversion is a huge upheaval in slow motion but CeBIT gave us some clues about the shape of things to come when the dust settles.  Finding these clues amongst more 6,000 exhibitors made this years’ show more like an executive fitness programme.  

True IP mobility – way beyond the localised coverage of WiFi and WiMAX hotspots – was on show at the Kyocera stand in Hall 12.  High Capacity Spatial Division Multiple Access (HC-SDMA) is the ANSI code-name for a cellular system that provides real broadband Internet access on the move with full hand-off between base stations at high speed.  It does this by using a radically different approach to signals processing and ‘adaptive antennas’.  The result is a service that delivers a better IP broadband Internet access service to far more users indoors and out and on the move – and it uses far less spectrum than the the old GSM and 3G voice designs.   Apart from the CeBIT show the only European pilot is in Northern Ireland but it already has real commercial traction in Australia and South Africa and, branded iBurst,  seems set to be a basis for the new IEEE 802.20 standard later this year. 

All the major Telco’s have massive programmes for IP conversion and their suppliers were amongst the biggest exhibitors at CeBIT.   But these conversion programmes are massive long-term projects.   To get some idea of what the Next Generation world will offer it was worth looking at the suppliers to the alt-Nets – the ISP’s who are becoming ITSP’s - Internet Telephony Service Providers.  

World market leader in terms of ‘voice over broadband’ lines supported by their Class 5 Softswitch platform is Thomson Cirpack, a French manufacturer that works in conjunction with IBM.  In France alone they support two thirds of a market that is expected to double to 6 million VoIP lines this year.  French consumers and businesses are getting a fantastic deal – typically an 8Mb/s service with multiple IPTV channels and unlimited national voice calls for around the same price as basic broadband in the UK – reflecting the advanced regulatory attitude in France towards encouraging competition through Local Loop Unbundling.  As the minutes slip away it’s not surprising that France Telecom are countering with up-market premium quality offerings such a monthly fixed price but unlimited volume national calls with CD quality sound.  

One market that has yet to become clear is IP Centrex.  The service capacity is inherent in the NGN’s but so far the manufacturers of IP PBX’s have managed to stem the tide.  At CeBIT there signs that the IP PBX market will move in two directions – to the top of the market for very large corporate installations and right at the opposite end of the scale with LAN-based software for very small businesses who want a little more than single-user VoIP services such as  Skype and Vonage.   The vast middle market of SME’s is now becoming ripe for IP Centrex but, given their caution, the tipping point will depend on the arrival of the major Telco’s NGN programmes such as BT’s 21CN. 

For consumers the accent was again on the interoperability of everything – typified by  Aztech’s residential gateway.  In one box it has connections for DSL2+, VoIP, DECT, WiFi, USB and Ethernet ports with the promise of a Bluetooth module on the next upgrade.    It goes beyond offering a base station for VoIP and cordless DECT phones, Internet surfing,  storage, file-sharing and IPTV over DSL and links to their 200Mb/s Homeplug system to allow Standard or High Definition Video to be pumped around your home over the mains power wiring.   It comes, of course, from a world where the expected standard for fixed broadband connections is now around 25Mb/s.    

Some say that CeBIT has become too big, but, for those who remember the aftermath of the dot.com crash, the hassle in Hanover is a welcome sign that IT and networks innovation is once again driving economic growth – and waking up Europe’s Telco’s.