Increased competition has caused higher customer churn as faster and/or cheaper alternatives are offered. Bundling services has become a means to providing a more attractive offering, with the purpose of retaining customers. The sought-after combination of telephony, broadband and TV services in a single bundle has become known as Triple Play.

The global broadband market is in a high-growth phase, but with competition increasing and prices falling, operators must consider upgrades that will enable them to provide enriched service bundles. “Fixed operators are realizing that their main assets are not in telephony but in the broadband services they provide to enterprises and residential homes," Thedéen says. "It is the networks, supporting broadband services, that need further investment if fixed operators are to stay competitive.”

Telecom operators have begun to rethink their strategies for delivering broadband services. The inherent limitations in ATM have been a catalyst for technologies that are more scaleable and better suited for real-time applications like IPTV. “TV is such an important factor that nobody wants to make investments in a technology that has restrictions in broadcasting,” Thedéen says.

Operators will be able to realize new revenue streams with services such as IPTV, but there will also be new capacity requirements on the networks. For example, the bandwidth required for 30 minutes of IPTV is equivalent to one month’s internet usage; and an IP-based TV service will need to function with little or no downtime, while its network will need to support a variety of non-standard terminals.”

Ethernet is the chosen technology for providing High Performance Broadband. It is the most cost-efficient technology and is capable of incorporating the abundance of different legacy networks in service. Ethernet also brings Internet Protocol (IP) to the public network and enables quality mechanisms – crucial for delivering IPTV with a very low bit-error rate.

For an industry that is rapidly moving away from traditional network technologies such as ATM, Ericsson can provide additional value with its experience in Ethernet. Several years ago, Ericsson made an important decision to focus its development on Ethernet-based networks. Ericsson made significant investments in IP-DSLAMs very early on, and with the valuable experience gained from numerous customer implementations, we are now in a excellent position to grab market share during this ongoing technology change. It is the combination of products, research and system integration – as well as the global service organization – that makes Ericsson an important partner for delivering enriched services over High Performance Broadband networks, Thedéen says.