Reducing the cost of consumption

Alcatel-Lucent continues to make strong progress in the Middle East and North Africa. The company’s president for the region, Pierre Chaume, sat down and detailed the company’s areas of progress

Pierre Chaume says Alcatel-Lucent in MENA is well set to mobilise the full range of the company’s assets and resources to achieve a decisive swing in the group’s industrial focus in line with ‘The Shift Plan’

Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (eMBMS) is a standard that is gaining momentum, and which Alcatel-Lucent is at the forefront of. It is a point-to-multipoint interface specification for existing and upcoming cellular networks, and is designed to provide efficient delivery of broadcast and multicast services, both within a cell as well as within the core network. For broadcast transmission across multiple cells, it defines transmission via single-frequency network configurations, and lends itself to applications including mobile TV and radio broadcasting, as well as file delivery and emergency alerts.

Alcatel-Lucent conducted a live demonstration of its eMBMS solution at GITEX in Dubai in October in cooperation with Etisalat and showcased ways in which the technology could be utilised by enterprises, offering a multicast solution for video broadcasting in a high capacity environment.

Earlier this year Ericsson’s Consumer Labs found that 67 per cent of consumers use mobile devices to consume TV services, so managing the traffic efficiently is vital for profitability and the customer experience. Significantly, Ericsson announced that Verizon Wireless will launch the service in 2014, while Telstra will trial the solution this year.

“Alcatel-Lucent is the last remaining technology provider that offers a product portfolio that spans the entire telecom network infrastructure space including fixed access, GPON, VDSL, vectoring, IT and optics, as well as LTE,” Pierre Chaume said. “We are very well recognised in the IP space and are strong in IP aggregation, and all these areas add up to the company being in a strong position to capitalise on the growth of broadband services.”

In June, Alcatel-Lucent outlined an ambitious new strategy to overhaul it in the coming three years, repositioning it as a specialist provider of IP networking and ultra-broadband access. According to the strategy, known as ‘The Shift Plan’, Alcatel-Lucent is to focus on the high-value equipment and services that lie at the heart of the high-performance networks of the future.

The plan is set to mobilise the full range of Alcatel-Lucent’s assets and resources to achieve a decisive swing in the group’s industrial focus that will concentrate the company on the priorities of its telecom customers as they deploy next-generation networks to address the explosive growth in bandwidth-hungry data traffic.

According to Alcatel-Lucent, ‘The Shift Plan’ entails a differentiated approach to the management of high-growth businesses – core networking – as opposed to those that will be managed with cash generation as the clear priority. The ‘managed for cash’ businesses will include key wireless, fixed access and other businesses that will play an important role in the company’s medium and long-term development.

Alcatel-Lucent conducted a live demonstration of its eMBMS solution at GITEX in Dubai in October in cooperation with Etisalat and showcased ways in which the technology could be utilised by enterprises

Chaume says across his region of responsibility ‘The Shift Plan’ has very real implications as high-end services are being demanded in the advanced markets. “Given the growth in digital traffic today, the name of the game is in the reduction of the cost per bit, which is important to achieve,” he said. “DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) application is a key area of development for Alcatel-Lucent, and our Light Radio base stations offer a range of flexible solutions,” he added.

DWDM is an optical technology used to increase bandwidth over existing fibre optic backbones. It works by combining and transmitting multiple signals simultaneously at different wavelengths on the same fibre.

Looking to Alcatel Lucent’s success factors for the future in the region, Chaume points to knowing the customer better, and helping the customer to prioritise its requirements more.

“We are moving towards a flat network infrastructure where there is IP everywhere,” Chaume said. “Alcatel-Lucent brings the tools to ensure better customer experience, and our IP Platforms business is a strategic area for us.”