Wi-Fi was on the lips of every keynote speaker at the Optical Fiber Communications conference, perhaps proving the rule that if a market darling becomes trendy enough, everyone has to name-drop. Certainly, when Eric Mentzner, chief technology officer in Intel's communication group, brought up Wi-Fi and Centrino at the end of his speech, there was a sense of the obligatory—that every Intel speech from flash memory to flavored cheeses had to end with a nod to wireless meshes.
But something more serious was afoot. Speaker after speaker at the OFC business sessions warned that future network growth is no longer contingent upon what a network service provider decides it can afford for core expansion. Recovery from a downturn this deep is driven from the bottom up. That implies pushing line card replacement ahead of the all-in-one "godbox." It also implies the consumer is in the driver's seat—not just for access systems, but in pacing the expansion of core transport services.
That point was evident in an OFC talk by Kevin Kalkhoven, formerly of JDSU. For a guy who once had to sell directly into every telco carrier community, Kalkhoven was none too optimistic about carrier executives' formulating a vision of how optical cross-connect meshes, Ethernet passive optical networks or generalized multiprotocol label switching will be deployed. (Now that Sprint execs have followed their compatriots at WorldCom and Global Crossing down the path of fraud and folly, there may be few such folks in the next few years who will remain unindicted, let alone serve as visionaries.)
OFC speakers suggested looking to the broadband users at the lowest level—those who are cobbling together Wi-Fi meshes in community links, with or without a Cometa behind them. Those purchasing video peripherals and using a mix of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 1394 to create their own home multimedia nets. Look also to the folks working with real estate developers and community organizations to pull together their own PON or coaxial or fiber-to-the-home networks, in lieu of slow telephone and cable carrier deployments. These are the people, expanding their residential networks neighborhood by neighborhood, who will force local and long-haul carriers to upgrade their fiber plants and to shift to all-packet networks.
Call them the krill. They don't really get swallowed bones and all by the carrier whales out there, because the carriers need an intelligent and informed lumpen mass audience to drive the broadband business. But the krill provide the nutrition in another way, allowing the whales to justify network transitions to their fickle shareholders. Let's hope that consumer spending can stay high enough to ensure that the whales get fed with all the Wi-Fi and GPRS and residential gateways they need to survive.
Errata: Friends from the Cato Institute were pleased to see mention of their survey in the March CSD, but they wanted it known that they are not affiliated with the Libertarian Party.
Loring Wirbel is editorial director of Communication Systems Design and the editorial director for CMP Media's Communications Initiative. He can be reached at lwirbel@cmp.com.
