Service Providers - Provision Your Networks Correctly

Author: Philip Solis, Principal Analyst, Mobile Broadband

Wed, 9 Apr 2008 15:14:58 EDT

The BBC is finding that it has to argue its position against ISPs who want to charge the BBC extra because they are selling more access capacity than their network can handle. This is about wired networks, but there is of course the same issue in mobile wireless networks - for the issue being discussed it's almost irrelevant whether the access is wired or wireless.

The ISPs are trying to tell the BBC (from what I gather) that because the BBC is offering video clips on its website, this increased traffic is affecting the ISPs' network. Having worked enough years for a telecom, and incidentally serving ISP customers spectifically, I find the ISPs to be out of line here. The BBC is paying for monthly Internet access for its servers - it is paying a given price per month for a given capacity of access to the Internet (or access to the ISPs network which is part of the Internet). The limit of the BBCs usage is determined by the capacity provisioned on their access lines (whether it is ATM over SONET, straight SONET, Ethernet over SONET, metro Ethernet, etc.). So the BBC is within their capacity limit on the access line. It is absolutely the ISPs responsibility to ensure that their network and peering connections with other ISPs can handle the capacity they are selling to their customers.

In the mobile wireless world, the same will hold. Service providers will have to ensure there is enough capacity on their RAN backhaul and core networks to handle the traffic appropriately. Even where SLA's (Service Level Agreements) are not involved, as is common for enterprise customers, both consumers and enteprise customers should be able to take advantage of the access speeds they are paying for - or else they can take their business elsewhere. Because of the more limited nature of spectrum resources, truly unlimited data plans will cause problems, so total usage per month should be capped - but should also be priced and marketed accordingly.

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