Iceland Telecom chooses a Cisco aggregation network to be the first to bring full-fledged IPTV over IP to its market.
BUSINESS CHALLENGES
Iceland is one of the most sophisticated countries in terms of demand for and adoption of information and communication technology. Iceland Telecom Ltd has a long heritage, and today enjoys a reputation as one of the country's most trustworthy companies.
Iceland Telecom has established market leadership with a continuous rollout of new services over the past decade. For example, the company offers:
• Fixed-line services: Standard telephony delivered over a public switched telephone network (PSTN); ISDN and a variety of value-added services.
• Basic TV service: A geographically limited hybrid fiber to the curb/building TV network for digital broadband services (approximately 70 channels of TV programming and cable modem service).
• Residentialdata services: High-speed data services over an ATM network for aggregating asymmetric digital subscriber lines (ADSLs) and ISP services; volume-based charging for international traffic.
• Business services: Point-to-point business services using Frame Relay, ATM, and Private Line VPNs; Layer 3 MPLS VPNs, supported by an MPLS core of Cisco® 12000 Series routers.
• Public WLAN hot-spot service: Traffic supported over Cisco 7200 Series routers and Service Selection Gateway (SSG).
To set itself apart from telco and media company competitors, enhance customer loyalty, and increase average revenue per subscriber, Iceland Telecom set out to roll out truly compelling "triple-play" services to its entire subscriber base of residential customers.
These goals posed some significant challenges: how to get the desired bandwidth for video, performance for high-speed business services, and avoid a costly buildout of the FTTC/B network. Network complexity was adding to the cost concerns, since the support of multiple separate networks was increasing OpEx.
NETWORK SOLUTIONS
To simplify operations and streamline delivery of future services, the company aimed to converge all networks onto its IP/MPLS core network, which was designed in compliance with IP Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) foundational concepts. While convergence of all traffic could be accomplished gradually, the company's requirements for a rapid rollout of video services presented immediate challenges. The company first offered TV services on FTTC/B network in 1994 as part of its fiber rollout. In the end of 2004, the company offered basic IPTV broadcast services over its existing ATM network, gradually expanding to nationwide coverage. Iceland Telecom wanted to broadly deploy a more compelling IPTV service, including enhancements such as an interactive services, video on demand (VoD), and future services such as access to web content and other rich media services. When evaluating the options for reaching all of its existing telco subscribers with the new IPTV services, utilizing its installed copper loop access infrastructure emerged as the cost-effective choice in comparison to upgrading the existing FTTC/B network. However, further analysis showed that the ATM aggregation network could not provide cost-effective bandwidth for delivering VoD services to the full subscriber base.
For a full rollout of TV service, the decision was made to utilize the company's in-place IP NGN core with the buildout of a new Ethernet aggregation network. The key requirements for supporting current and future services on the new aggregation network included:
• Complete geographic coverage, supporting a triple-play offering to the largest addressable market possible.
• Enough bandwidth and service support functionality for "triple-play" services (data, voice, and video) even after converging multiple networks onto the IP core.
• Aggregation layer support for native Layer 3 multicast and unicast required to efficiently deliver the highest-quality video services.
• MPLS pseudowires to transport Ethernet business services and backhaul high-speed residential data services to broadband remote access servers (BRASs).
• Integration of the existing middleware solutions for TV services.
• Availability and uptime, especially for meeting the service level required for video and voice traffic.
• Getting to market first with IPTV and maintaining market leadership.
After evaluating different proposals for architectural approaches, Iceland Telecom made the decision to build the new aggregation network using Cisco 7600 Series routers. The expanded network gave Iceland Telecom the intelligence required to differentiate high-speed Internet traffic and video and apply the optimal approach to deliver each service. The selection came as a result of several key factors:
• The strong Cisco portfolio, with the Cisco 7600 Series routers, provided a cost-effective chassis, high uptime, and the "triple-play" service features required by Iceland Telecom. A thorough product evaluation focused on ensuring carrier-class availability and resilience within the Iceland Telecom network environment.
• The Cisco 7600 Series routers serve as aggregators for Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexers (DSLAMs), and support native IP routing for VoD (unicast) and PIM Source Specific Multicast (SSM) for broadcast video (multicast) in the aggregation network gave Iceland Telecom the optimal way to distribute video. The Layer 3 video delivery scheme feeds video to the Cisco 7600 aggregation routers over Ethernet, and traffic is then routed over Ethernet to the DSLAMs and on to a residential gateway in subscriber homes via ADSL. Traffic is finally delivered over 100M Ethernet connections to set-top boxes (STBs) in homes.
"Already 20 percent of households have purchased our IPTV services. Cisco helped us by getting us to market first, making the most of the pent-up interest in video services."
- Erlendur Steinn Gudnason, Director of Development, Iceland Telecom
• The 7600 Series routers also provide MPLS pseudowire transport of high-speed data from DSLAMs back to the Cisco 7200 Series BRASs. The Cisco 7200 Series routers make possible a migration path from Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) to Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol IP over Ethernet (DHCP IPoE), providing flexibility for future service opportunities.
• The Cisco 7600 Series foundation for the metro aggregation build out results in one network that can simultaneously deliver Ethernet and MPLS VPN services to businesses and "triple-play" services to residential users.
• The assistance provided by Cisco Systems® included a video and Metro Ethernet experienced team. The Cisco team participated on a technical level with the network architecture design, test, and deployment.
• By efficiently integrating the Cisco 7600 Series into the existing Cisco 7200 Series BRAS and Cisco 12000 Series core IP/MPLS network and seamlessly integrating with the existing middleware and video delivery infrastructure, Cisco was able to offer Iceland Telecom the most aggressive time to market.
Within the final network design (Figure 1), a single broadcast video or VoD stream can be sent to each DSLAM. The DSLAMs can broadcast multiple streams to viewing sites, efficiently minimizing the bandwidth used whenever content is sent to multiple sites simultaneously. The multicast technology ensures smooth scalability of the network, as the distribution network grows to support the expanding video subscriber base. Iceland Telecom uses Layer 3 aggregation for all video traffic.
Figure 1. The Iceland Telecom MPLS Network
BUSINESS RESULTS
The Cisco IP/MPLS network continues to set Iceland Telecom apart from its competitors. Now, besides having the most widespread IP/MPLS network in Iceland, it has become the first provider to market IPTV services and VoD in Iceland and one of the few providers in all of Europe to deliver video over IP. The Cisco solution yielded several other benefits:
• By delivering video through Layer 3 unicast (VoD) and PIM-SSM multicast (broadcast video), bandwidth can be conserved compared to a Layer 2 approach such as hierarchical virtual private LAN service (H-VPLS).
• The Layer 3 approach also provides consistent and rapid recovery for any type of failure, including broadcast source redundancy by using Anycast.
• Iceland Telecom users gain a very high-quality viewing experience from the Cisco platform.
• The same network transporting "triple-play" services can support a rich set of MPLS-enabled Ethernet business services.
The new services available to all customers and supported by the Cisco build out include:
• High-speed Internet service
• IPTV service (now 74 channels), and a new VoD service for movies, TV episodes, news, and music videos
• Access to Web-style news on the TV
• Enhanced electronic program guide
• Ethernet access to Layer 3 MPLS VPNs with support for multipoint-to-multipoint connectivity and multiple attachment circuits (Ethernet, ATM, Frame Relay, T1)
• Point-to-point Layer 2 Ethernet over MPLS VPNs
The speed of the deployment contributed to the success of the new services. Making efficient use of the service-optimized carrier Ethernet IP NGN architecture and the Cisco 7600 Series routers allowed Iceland Telecom to deploy new "triple-play" services over the copper infrastructure and make them available to the entire subscriber base. The new services provide a higher level of digital entertainment to Iceland consumers, and the video service uptake has exceeded the expectations of the company after only eight months. "Already 20 percent of households - or 22,000 customers - have purchased our IPTV services," says Erlendur Steinn Gudnason, director of development for Iceland Telecom. "Cisco helped us by getting us to market first, making the most of the pent-up interest in the English premiere league. We are also enjoying being the first in our markets with video on demand, and have seen strong customer acceptance of this new capability. Our aggressive results support our company's branding to our customers as a powerful choice to fulfill and enjoy their lives."
NEXT STEPS
The introduction of IPTV services has given Iceland Telecom a proven foundation for future interactive services. Already Iceland Telecom is beta testing their photo album converged service called "Safnid," where Iceland Telecom's Internet and mobile users can add their personal photos to a central secure and fully backed-up storage. This also enables them showing friends and family their pictures on their TV through Iceland Telecom's IPTV platform. Other areas that can be considered since the introduction of this new medium include viewer voting on TV and video content (providing feedback to content developers and program producers), usage-related content delivery, and online shopping.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
To find out more about Cisco Next-Generation Network (NGN) solutions, go to: http://www.cisco.com/.
