Will the Telco survive to an ever changing world ? Technical considerations leading to disruptive scenarios Roberto Minerva To cite this version: Roberto Minerva. Will the Telco survive to an ever changing world ? Technical considerations leading to disruptive scenarios. Other [cs.OH]. Institut National des Télécommunications, 2013. English. NNT : 2013TELE0011. tel-00917966 HAL Id: tel-00917966 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00917966 Submitted on 12 Dec 2013 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. THESE DE DOCTORAT CONJOINT TELECOM SUDPARIS et L’UNIVERSITE PIERRE ET MARIE CURIE Spécialité: Informatique et Télécommunications Ecole doctorale: Informatique, Télécommunications et Electronique de Paris Présentée par : Roberto Minerva Pour obtenir le grade de DOCTEUR DE TELECOM SUDPARIS LES OPERATEURS SAURONT-ILS SURVIVRE DANS UN MONDE EN CONSTANTE EVOLUTION? CONSIDERATIONS TECHNIQUES CONDUISANT A DES SCENARIOS DE RUPTURE Soutenue le 12 Juin 2013 devant le jury composé de : Noel CRESPI Professeur, HDR, IMT, TSP Directeur de thèse Stéphane FRENOT Professeur, HDR, INSA Lyon Rapporteur Yvon KERMARREC Professeur, HDR, Telecom Bretagne Rapporteur David HAUSHEER Professeur, TU Darmstadt, Allemagne Examinateur Guy PUJOLLE Professeur, HDR, UPMC Examinateur Joerg WIDMER Chief Researcher, IMDEA Examinateur Max MICHEL Docteur, Networks and IT Coordination Examinateur Director, Group IT, Orange Thèse n° 2013TELE0011 Page 2 Dedication To my kids: Mauro, Fabrizio and Sveva, evoking their appalling past and wishing them a bright future; and to Stefania; their courageous mother and my beautiful wife. Page 3 Acknowledgments During 2008 I was researching in the “usual way” within the Innovation department of my company. That was the period of a deep transformation from Research to Innovation. At that time, researchers were put within v ery confined and limited terrains to explore. It was a sort of intellectual “prison” that many Operators were constructing in order to tackle the challenges of the Web world. Instead of opening up minds and research, the approach was to leverage the assets and competitive advantages of the Operators. This approach was aggravating even more the “attitude” of Operators to feel better and more capable of other Competitors. I felt a compelling need to break these glass walls and breath fresh air. On the other side, the success of Web Companies was so stimulating and challenging that there was (is) the need to understand how to build the future of communication service. One thing was puzzling me: how much the needs and rights of users were disregarded. So I decided to put on my “User Hat ” and figure out if a more user centric web was possible. This was the main personal motivation to enter in a Doctorate. This thesis is the result of many lucky circumstances, the first is the encounter with Professor Noël Crespi that greatly helped me in finding a way towards the enrollment in a Doctorate and constantly supported me with patience and scientific rigor towards the completion of this thesis; to Dr. Roberto Saracco that allowed me to endeavor this journey within my company, Telecom Italia, demonstrating once more his open mind; to my colleagues and friends, Antonio Manzalini and Corrado Moiso that supported me with a lot of technical discussions and cooperative work in writing papers and technical documentation. Other colleagues have variously helped me during these years, from Dr. Giovanni Colombo to Ing. Carlo Eynard that encouraged me and helped in finding good research topics. Thanks also to Prof. Djamal Zeghlache for showing me viable paths and objectives. I want also to thank Prof. Tiziana Margaria and Prof. Yvon Kermarrec for their valuable and enlighten suggestions during the mid-term review. Other important people were: Prof. Stephane Frenot and Prof. Yvon Kermarrec that, as Rapporteurs, devoted valuable time in reviewing and suggesting a lot of improvements to this work. I’m pretty sure that their insights helped a lot in increasing the value of this document. My gratitude goes also to all the Examiners that spent time in reading and commenting the document. I want to thank also all the people in the Institute given a hand in sorting out all kinds of problems and issues and acknowledge the people of TMSP and UPMC for easing the administrative matters. Finally thanks to all my family that patiently has supported me in undertaking this enterprise and has waited for me to finish. Roberto Minerva 12 June 2013 Page 4 Abstract The telecom sector is going through a very challenging phase due to radical technological developments (even transformations) -- driven mainly by the constant evolution of the Internet. -- These transformations will have a huge impact on the telecom industry as a whole and, as a consequence, on the future deployment of new networks, platforms, and services. These new technologies and new solutions can be differently shaped according to the specific views, paradigms and models proposed by the various actors in the communication industry. Much of this innovation is promoted and introduced by prominent actors in their efforts to conquer new shares of the Internet market. This approach is particularly fierce in the mobile sector, where the rapid innovation in mobile platforms (e.g., new operating systems such as iOS or Android) has led, on one hand, to the explosion of the mobile internet nurtured by the boom of so called “smartphones”, while simultaneously contributing to the creation of closed environments that are fully controlled (at the client and at the server level) by a single company. As a consequence, the (mobile) Internet is highly fragmented and users are usually trapped into walled gardens. The situation of mobile internet users is just one case, as the whole Internet is going through several major transformations. For instance, some of the disruptions are determined by the intertwining of technological issues that different disciplines are analyzing and solving. This yields to multiple solutions produced by different industries; solutions that can be adopted in different contexts. One clear-cut example is the case of NBIC (Nano, bio, information and cognitive) technologies. It obviously will be quite useful to identify when these transformations will accelerate in accordance with the maturation of technological and industry factors. The industry is heavily impacted and hence transformed during these rapid changes, which occur during what this thesis defines as Inflection Points. A first goal is to identify a set of potential and future inflection points made possible by the evolution of technologies. The evolution of the Internet has a particularly strong impact on Telecomm Operators (TelCos). In fact, the telecommunication industry is on the verge of substantial changes due to many factors: e.g., the progressive commoditization of connectivity, the increasing importance of software-based solutions and the flexibility that introduces (compared to the static TelCo systems), and the dominance in the service realm of Web Companies (WebCos). Page 5 The thesis is not centered on a socio-political discussion, but elaborates, proposes and compares possible inflection points in evolutionary contexts in order to determine and consolidate possible scenarios based on solutions and approaches that are technologically viable (i.e., that follow a plausible technological trajectory). The identified scenarios cover a broad range of possibilities: 1) Traditional TelCos, an evolutionary path: the TelCos will essentially maintain their role in connectivity and related services (even if it must be in a consolidated market -- i.e., a market that is not growing, but essentially maintaining the same perimeter); 2) TelCos as Bit Carriers: this scenario is made possible by the progressive decrease in the value of connectivity and related services. Connectivity is a commodity and TelCos will build networks capable of conveying large amount of data with minimal infrastructural costs. The TelCo will merely forward data from edge to edge with the simplest possible network; 3) TelCos as Platform Enablers: Operators will be able to accommodate for the needs of customers by putting together different classes of resources such as connectivity, processing, storage and sensing/actuation. The TelCo will be able to create a networked platform offering resources and control/management functions that customers will be using to create overlay solutions on top of this infrastructure. This scenario can be seen as a logical evolution of the introduction of the XaaS in the TelCo Networks, where X stands for {N= network, P = platform, I = infrastructure}. Services will mainly be provided by third parties; 4) TelCos as Service Providers: this is an optimistic scenario in which Operators are able to position themselves as successful Service Providers. In this scenario, the networked platform is used by the TelCo to directly provide desirable services to their customers. These services are communication services, as well as new