Developments of Next Generation Networks (NGN): country case studies © ITU 2009 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report was prepared by Dr. Vaiva Lazauskaite, RME/BDT. © ITU 2009 International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Geneva All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, by any means whatsoever, without the prior written permission of ITU. Denominations and classifications employed in this publication do not imply any opinion on the part of the International Telecommunication Union concerning the legal or other status of any territory or any endorsement or acceptance of any boundary. Where the designation ―country‖ appears in this publication, it covers countries and territories. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of ITU or of its membership. Please consider the environment before printing this report. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 5 2. What are NGNs? How do we understand NGNs? .............................................................. 6 3. Overview of VoIP, IPTV and FTTH markets ....................................................................... 10 4. NGN in Europe ...................................................................................................................... 13 4.1. Austria ....................................................................................................................... 13 4.2. Belgium ..................................................................................................................... 15 4.3. Denmark .................................................................................................................... 17 4.4. France ....................................................................................................................... 19 4.5. Germany ................................................................................................................... 22 4.6. Greece ...................................................................................................................... 24 4.7. Ireland ....................................................................................................................... 26 4.8. Italy ........................................................................................................................... 28 4.9. Latvia ........................................................................................................................ 31 4.10. Lithuania .................................................................................................................... 33 4.11. The Netherlands ........................................................................................................ 36 4.12. Norway ...................................................................................................................... 39 4.13. Poland ....................................................................................................................... 42 4.14. Portugal ..................................................................................................................... 44 4.15. Romania .................................................................................................................... 46 4.16. Slovak Republic ......................................................................................................... 48 4.17. Slovenia .................................................................................................................... 50 4.18. Spain ......................................................................................................................... 52 4.19. Sweden ..................................................................................................................... 54 4.20. Switzerland ................................................................................................................ 57 4.21. United Kingdom ......................................................................................................... 59 5. Asia and Pacific .................................................................................................................... 62 5.1. Australia .................................................................................................................... 62 5.2. China ......................................................................................................................... 64 5.3. Hong Kong, China ..................................................................................................... 66 5.4. Japan ........................................................................................................................ 68 5.5. Malaysia .................................................................................................................... 71 5.6. Nepal ......................................................................................................................... 72 5.7. New Zealand ............................................................................................................. 73 5.8. Singapore .................................................................................................................. 75 5.9. The Republic of Korea ............................................................................................... 77 5.10. Taiwan, China ........................................................................................................... 78 6. The Americas ........................................................................................................................ 79 6.1. The United States ...................................................................................................... 79 6.2. Canada ...................................................................................................................... 82 6.3. Brazil ......................................................................................................................... 85 6.4. Colombia ................................................................................................................... 88 6.5. Chile .......................................................................................................................... 91 6.6. Paraguay ................................................................................................................... 94 3 7. Africa ..................................................................................................................................... 96 7.1. Angola ....................................................................................................................... 96 7.2. Namibia ..................................................................................................................... 97 7.3. South Africa ............................................................................................................... 99 7.4. Tanzania ................................................................................................................. 101 7.5. Uganda .................................................................................................................... 103 8. Arab States.......................................................................................................................... 105 8.1. Bahrain .................................................................................................................... 105 8.2. Egypt ....................................................................................................................... 107 8.3. Libya ....................................................................................................................... 109 8.4. United Arab Emirates (UAE) .................................................................................... 110 8.5. Saudi Arabia ............................................................................................................ 112 9. Conclusions ........................................................................................................................ 114 4 1. INTRODUCTION The move to Next Generation Networks (NGN) has been discussed in the ICT community for some time. Not only discussed. Developments in the market reflect the move, where a number of market players around the world are already operating NGN core networks, increasing numbers of market players are deploying NGN access, and others have made significant commitments to roll out fibre access networks (FTTx) or have migration plans for moving to all-IP networks. Many previous discussions on this topic concluded that there is no single way of migrating to NGN. Operators can choose (and actually are choosing) different strategies and scenarios of migration, and rollout plans. Some say that NGN core networks represent a logical commercial development for all operators as they increase efficiency, facilitate service and pricing innovations and allow lowering backbone transmission costs. For example, British Telecom calculated that its new NGN core network could deliver savings of GBP 1 billion per annum by 2008/09. 1 According to the European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA), some of its members, such as Telecom Italia, Telekom Austria, Cable & Wireless,