When data networks first came into prominence they shared a handful of defining characteristics. They were completely wire-based, not wireless, and assumed that all signaling functions would be performed by SS7 deep in the core of the network. They took for granted that end-user devices had no innate intelligence and that any required networking intelligence would be centralized in the core. The network, by nearly everyone's definition, terminated within the central office (or, according to some radical definitions, at the protector box on the side of the customer's house or at a business premise). It was assumed that the overwhelming majority of the data transmitted would be transactional, low-speed and shared between fixed devices.
What a difference a couple of decades can make. Since those early (and by today's standards, charmingly naive) days of networking, much has changed. In fact, every one of those benchmarks has been cast aside. Although the wireline infrastructure still plays a central role in data networking (and will continue to do so), access is increasingly mobile, and therefore wireless. Signaling, once the exclusive domain of SS7 and executed in the network core on behalf of "dumb devices," is increasingly being performed at the edge (in fact, within the user's mobile device) and is often SIP-based rather than SS7-dependent. The network no longer ends at the walls of the central office or the box on the side of the house, but extends all the way into the customers' homes or offices, usually by request in exchange for better and more granular service quality. And the transmitted data? Increasing amounts of it are richly contextual, multimedia-based, bandwidth-hungry and two-way in nature and, more often than not, are transmitted between mobile devices.
This evolution has taken place for all of the right reasons, some of them painfully wrenching for service providers but all of them necessary. The driving force most germane to this discussion is the inexorable and entirely predictable shift in the nature of customer demand.
When network-based services were delivered from the core of the network, the ability to customize them was extraordinarily difficult and prohibitively expensive. Because the ability to create customer-specific content was simply not within the budgets of most carriers, "mass customization" was the norm: a small number of core-based features from which customers could pick and choose.
As time went on and the sophistication level of the modern network improved, network designers began to realize that they were leaving money on the table because of the centralized nature of their network architectures. Intellectual property (IP) became a key design consideration, and with it came what is for all intents and purposes a "functional inversion" of the network. Content, once exclusively housed on the customer's device, began to creep into the network, taking up residence on servers hosted there. SS7 signaling functions began to leak out of the network on their way to end users' devices in the form of a SIP client. Network-based content severed user dependency on a particular type of device (or on any device, for that matter), and device-based signaling made it possible for users to identify themselves to networks along with their content, device, access modality and billing preferences. Furthermore, it became clear that service customization could be done cost-effectively if three changes took place: first, all customization must be done only at the edge of the network; second, customization must be done exclusively in software; and, finally, customers must be given the ability to self-provision customized services.
This transformation is well underway and is being embraced by both traditional carriers and nontraditional providers as well, such as Google, Apple, Yahoo and AOL. Helped along by mass adoption of mobility propelled by low-cost multimedia devices and the strong proliferation of broadband wireless, networking has become a broadband, multimedia, two-way, mobile game.
This evolution is critical to content and network providers alike. To content players it represents a new, and as yet untapped, market. To network providers it represents an opportunity to improve a flat or declining revenue stream and to grow in marketplace relevance by offering increasingly customized services to individual customers. To do this, however, providers must establish a service-monitoring beachhead as close to customers as possible: and today that means within residences or small businesses. As network access becomes increasingly wireless, it makes sense to create a service-provider-manageable in-building wireless access point: not a Wi-Fi hotspot (Wi-Fi does not facilitate mobility), but an access point serving as a functional extension of the existing mobile network and working effectively within the confines of the home or small office.
