Telenor's - Ericsson

little – if any – growth in revenues. Telstra,
on the other hand, has invested in the cables
and routes and can now leverage off these
assets and enhance transmission capacity relatively
cheaply and flexibly.
New technology breakthroughs are also
providing further cost savings for Telstra.
The vast distances involved in many routes
across Australia mean that a chain of
optical repeaters must be used to create
the transmission path, and historically
Telstra had spaced these repeater sites at
50km intervals.
New transmission equipment can span
much longer distances. Consequently, a
program to eliminate intermediate repeater
sites has begun, leaving optical spans of
100km. A recently built section in the
remote Arnhem Land area in northern Australia
has a span of 200km. The benefits of
fewer repeater sites include enhanced reliability,
saving on building maintenance and
site rent and reduced energy consumption
and emissions.
So, despite the somewhat higher power
lasers and optical amplifiers required to span
these longer distances, the net result is a reduction
in capital and operational expenditure,
emissions and an overall improvement
in link performance.
SUPPORTING NEW BUSINESS
The business benefits for Telstra go beyond
simple cost savings. Telstra has now built a
national transmission network that covers
every town and city in Australia; a network
that has ample capacity, and on which scalability
for growth is largely decoupled from
equipment investment spending. New network
services can be rolled out rapidly, and
at low incremental cost.
For example, from 2006 to 2010, the network
has been leveraged to support annual
speed increases on 3g mobile broadband from
3.6Mbps to 14.4Mbps to 21Mbps to 42Mbps.
The scalability of the national transmission
network and the fact that the majority
of mobile base stations now have gigabit Ethernet
interfaces, means Telstra has been able
to repeatedly increase the speeds of the 3g
hspa access network without a specific transmission
upgrade program. Instead, capacity
has been increased incrementally as part of
the ongoing updating of transmission speeds
from 2.5Gbps to 10Gbps to 40Gbps.
As an early adopter of the next generation
of mobile telephony msc-s nodes, which are
used to establish telephone calls through the
mobile network, Telstra is transforming the
mobile network core from 18 msc-s nodes
deployed all over the country, to four nodes
deployed in two diverse locations, to create
a national pool. This means considerable sav-
ings. Such a highly centralized network is
only possible because the underlying transmission
network is reliable and has more
than enough capacity to support the traffic,
even under “fail over” conditions.
The new transmission network is also the
foundation for Telstra’s new iptv service. To
support the delivery of content for its new T-
Box service, Telstra is building a content distribution
network (cdn) that caches video
content at key transmission points around
Australia. Telstra has introduced the cdn
quickly, because the transmission architecture
is well suited to hosting the cdn server
farms at the access edge and because the scalability
of the transmission network means
that no special transmission upgrade program
is required. Rather, the video capacity
requirements are simply rolled into the overall
capacity growth program.
The network strategy adopted by Telstra
is not limited to exploiting cost efficiencies.
It is firmly grounded in the operator’s future
business requirements. Telstra’s success with
its network transformation is a lesson about
the close connection between network strategy
and business benefits, as well as between
technology solution provider and carrier. ●
AUTHOR
▶ COLIN GOODWIN is
Broadband Strategy Manager
for Ericsson Australia-NZ,
responsible for the Fixed and
Transmission product lines.
He has more than 25 years of experience in telecommunications,
first in technical development and support,
then in consulting on technical and financial aspects
of telecommunications strategy, and then in
product development and management. Before joining
Ericsson in 2001, he worked as a Senior Product
Manager for Telstra. Colin has a Master of Engineering
Science from Monash University, Australia.
(colin.goodwin@ericsson.com)
AUTHOR
▶ MARK CHASELING is a
Network Strategy Consultant
specializing in fixed network
transformation in Southeast
Asia. He has more than 14
years of experience in telecommunications, beginning
in network operations, planning and technical
development before moving into management and
consulting. Before joining Ericsson in 2008, he
worked as a Senior Engineer for T-Mobile International,
responsible for defining its pan-European IP/
MPLS commercial and technical strategy. Mark has
an Honours degree in Telecommunications Engineering
from the University of Technology in Sydney,
Australia and a Master of International Business from
Melbourne University, also in Australia.
(mark.chaseling@ericsson.com)
The brand sensitive issue
of resilience
broadband strategy
▶ FROM TIME TO TIME, the telecoms
industry sees reports of carriers that have
experienced highly disruptive extended
transmission outages. While the media tend
to focus on the inconvenience to end users
and the loss of service revenues to the operator,
the main damage to the operator is a
long-term loss of brand value and customer
dissatisfaction.
Telstra is acutely aware that the national
transmission network is essential to the
valuable revenues derived from the services
that run over it. Telstra positions itself as
providing premium services and its brand is
synonymous with high quality and reliability.
A decision was made in 2009 to enhance
the resilience of the transmission network
by adding further diverse routes between
major cities. These “third routes” complement
the existing coastal and inland routes
between capital cities.
This did not necessitate a major cablelaying
program. Rather, the third routes are
logical paths that make use of previously
unused wavelengths and fi bers in existing
cables. Consequently, deploying physically
diverse routes between major cities only
required small stretches of new cable to be
laid and only a modest investment in new
active transmission equipment.
The existence of a well-structured hierarchical
network and a consistent set of
equipment with a common management
system means a third route can be added
quickly and economically. The project is due
for completion in 2011.
By comparison, many carriers have procurement
processes that drive them to treat
transmission purchases on a link-by-link
basis, meaning they have a patchwork of
transmission solutions and technologies
and element management systems that
defy integration. Such an approach makes
innovative programs such as Telstra’s third
routes impossible.
Transmission network
cost distribution
Cables buildings
power
Transmission
equipment
Source: Ericsson
Civil works
Typical cost breakdown from Ericsson global
accounts.
EBR #3 2010 47