Ofcom consultation on BT's NGN

This report is very interesting. In it, the UK regulator OFCOM responds to changes in BT's investment plans in its network upgrade. In the process, the consultation does a good job in laying out the technology and regulatory implications not just for consumers but also for competitors. It is a bit technical but well worth the read if you're interested in NGNs.

NGN in New Zealand

Last week, New Zealand's Ministry of Economic Development released this document, which, basically, is an investigation into how universal service will be provided in that country.

According to this article this investigation was prompted because

... the PSTN network and so-called plain old telephone service (POTS) will be discontinued came in a document from the country's Ministry of Economic Development released last Thursday. Ostensibly, the document does no more than request comments about what the effect of the NGN plans will be on Telecom New Zealand's (TNZ) so-called "Kiwi Share Obligations" (KSO) - the requirement that the carrier provide basic phone service to all residents of the country, more formally called the Telecommunications Service Obligations (TSO). The KSO, the Ministry notes, was of "crucial importance" when TNZ was privatized in 1990.

The issue now is how TNZ will fulfil the KSO once its planned NGN is in place, and in order to discuss that - public comments are being solicited until Sept. 28 - it was obviously necessary to outline the issues. The biggest issue is turning out to be that, once TNZ converts over to an all-NGN, line-powered telephones won't work any more using power from the phone line because NGNs don't dish up the voltage that's standard on POTS.

Are we facing the same debate in the US as Verizon and AT&T's efforts to replace the copper local loop with fiber? Will New Zealand once again be leaders in telecom policy?

Private incentives and public networks

This article does a good job articulating the problems that any major redesign of the Internet will face. Quoting the article:

Commercial and policy interests will likely play a bigger role this time as researchers explore "clean slate" designs that scrap the Internet's underlying architecture to better address security, mobility and other emerging needs.

*snip*

Participants in a new network also could include law-enforcement officials, who are already demanding that Internet service providers retrofit the existing network to ease wiretapping of Internet-based phone calls. Governments around the world, including the United States, also could seek ways to block porn and politically sensitive Web sites - and better identify those who distribute the forbidden.

Do you think that one of the reasons that we see an incremental approach to upgrading the Internet has to do with what is possible given the divergent interests of the heterogenous stakeholders? What does the redesign effort have to do with the "Next Generation Networks" that are being widely touted?

Recent international meetings of interest

You might enjoy the papers located at this OECD site. OECD's interest is preparation for a ministerial level meeting on this subject that is scheduled for 2008.

In a similar fashion, the ITU recently held a workshop on spectrum management. This workshop addressed the use of market mechanisms as well as spectrum trading. They also held another workshop on "The Future of Voice", which addressed (among other things) voice communications in NGNs.