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Occam in the News

(Part I of II) Occam ups presence in the DSL Forum
By Sean Buckley
August 30, 2007

When CTO Mark Rumer, a former Cisco packet-networking guru, founded Occam Networks in the late-1990s, the notion of packetizing the last mile network was really nothing more than a pipe dream. Since that time, Occam Networks has found a growing set of independent and larger tier-2 telephone operators that are set on making that dream a reality over copper or fiber.

In the midst of hosting the DSL Forum's Q3 meeting in Nashville, Tenn., Bob Howard-Anderson, President and CEO of Occam Networks, spoke with Executive Editor Sean Buckley about its role in the forum's standards efforts and the growth of IP-based services in the access network. Telecom-munications: Occam is sponsoring the DSL Forum's Q3 meeting in Nashville. To start, what drove Occam to sponsor this event?

"It's been a long-term relationship, which has been growing as they have migrated more into IP world. Now, with their expansion into fiber-to-the-home, it's a natural fit for us to get more involved." — Bob Howard-Anderson, President and CEO, Occam Networks, on involvement with the DSL Forum Howard-Anderson: We have been involved with the DSL Forum since our inception. Way back when they did WT-101 for how, a specification for building IP and Ethernet-based DSLAM networks, we saw them shifting towards enabling our kind of vision of making the access network IP and Ethernet-oriented. It's been a long-term relationship, which has been growing as they have migrated more into IP world. Now, with their expansion into fiber-to-the-home, it's a natural fit for us to get more involved. It was probably four to five months ago that Dov Zimring (Occam's director of strategic technology and solutions) was appointed ambassador and now chair of the Forum's ambassador committee. It's a natural progression of our vision being shared and enabling the world of IP-based broadband services.

Telecommunications: An ongoing topic of discussion for the DSL Forum has been the Broadband Suite. With a product set that spans everything from the BLC down to the ONT (optical network terminal), are there specific elements that Occam wants to contribute to the growth of these specifications?

Howard-Anderson: Almost all of them are relevant. TR-69 is an important element of that suite. They got methods to managed VoIP, and even home storage devices. All of that is stuff that Occam sees is fueling the demand for bandwidth and for more intelligent pipes into the home.

Telecommunications: One of the areas of Broadband Suite you touched upon is managing the home network. Do you see this as one of the new frontiers for service providers to manage?

Howard-Anderson: Absolutely. There are applications devices we can't even envision that I guarantee you will be here in the next 18 months. The world, in my opinion, is accelerating in terms of the differentiation of devices and services that are being offered at the end points of the network. What's going on in those endpoints is becoming richer and more complex and offering a whole new quality of life. The providers that are going to win are the ones that keep up with those emerging demands in providing bandwidth, but also manage the bandwidth.

Telecommunications: Occam was one of the early proponents of the IP/Ethernet approach in the access network. Do you see that concept reaching a level of maturity now?

Howard-Anderson: Well, yeah maturing, but constantly evolving as well. I think it's gotten richer. The types of services and devices are demanding better management and control and higher bandwidth. There are various layers and the world keeps adding to those layers in terms of the richness of what you can accomplish in the online world.

(Part II of II) Occam ups its DSL Forum presence

In part two of a two-part interview, Telecommunications Magazine Executive Editor Sean Buckley spoke with Occam Networks President and CEO Bob Howard-Anderson about the telecommunications industry's migration from copper to fiber, IPTV, and the inevitable consolidation of the crowded access vendor space.

Telecom-munications: A big part of the DSL Forum's growth and broadband growth overall is the ongoing migration to fiber-based access networks. How does Occam see this playing out?

Howard-Anderson: I recently commented at an investor conference that we only introduced fiber-to-the subscriber capabilities at this time last year. Surprisingly, the first orders of '07 our fiber-to-the-prem blade took the second highest volume spot out of the dozen of flavors of blades we ship. This is second only to our POTS/DSL blade. That frankly surprised me. We knew fiber was going to be important and we knew some customers were going to be converting some percentage of their lines to fiber over the next three to five years. Both the percentage of customers and the percentage of lines are higher than we initially targeted. That's a trend across the industry, not just for Occam.

"We knew fiber was going to be important and we knew some customers were going to be converting some percentage of their lines to fiber over the next three to five years. Both the percentage of customers and the percentage of lines are higher than we initially targeted." — Bob Howard-Anderson, President and CEO, Occam Networks

Telecommunications: Despite the love of fiber, copper is still king. Not only that but there's a steady stream of bonding techniques to get more life out copper. Do you believe that copper bonding will be complementary to the ongoing fiber builds?

Howard-Anderson: Don't mistake what I am saying; copper will still be the large majority of our business for a long time. Like I said before that fiber blade took second place to our POTS/DSL combo blade, but the difference between those two products is huge. As we have been moving up to bigger and bigger customers that will still be the case. Verizon is doing FiOS in a big way, but they are only over a million subs, which is still a tiny percentage. We think this year it's coming into the mainstream, and a lot of STBs (set top boxes) are starting to mature.

Telecommunications: Speaking about STBs, there's always the question of IPTV. What do you see as IPTV's main value for the service provider and the end user?

Howard-Anderson: I think there are several benefits, but we have not seen them all be delivered yet. One is definitely the open standardness of the IP world is certainly more a benefit to the service provider than the consumer. I believe it definitely flows through to the consumer in terms of interoperability and multiple choices of what works with what. Having more choices and more opportunities for different devices and applications to interconnect with each other is a big part of the promise of the IP world.

I think another one that is directly relevant to the consumer is the ability to make it ‘My TV'. This is not just what the broadcaster sends me, but I can watch any title, anytime or anywhere, which will probably break the whole broadcasting and advertising model. I think there's going to be lot more bi-directional video like You Tube did where people will do bi- directional content for the web or bi-directional video conferencing or monitoring of your remote home. Video is going to have flow in the other direction, which is why we believe active fiber architecture is the be all and end all because it's bi-directional.

Telecommunications: Outside of Occam, there seems to be a new wave of consolidation of the BLC market as Pannaway buys TelStrat's access business, for example. Do you see further consolidation of this market segment?

Howard-Anderson: I don't know if I would call it a wave, but rather it's a continuous aspect of the market. Let's face it, the space is fairly crowded now as opposed to other times. It's driven by a number of things. I think there are some standalone fiber companies that really have trouble making it as a standalone company. Quantum Bridge, for example, got taken out. There are also some legacy companies that really have not gotten into the IP world, and the only way they can is by acquiring into it. Then, I think there's that legacy company that won't be able to move that fast, so they might get taken out by someone else. I think this will happen on all sides.