Architecture vs. Components

The Internet was put together by many people and organizations, loosely coupled through standard protocols developed by the IETF. Some of it works well, some Internet services are beta or worse. The world of the Internet is exploratory, incremental, and sometimes revolutionary and it’s an open environment where anyone can play and innovate. The libertarian ideology associated with the IETF theorizes this phenomenon. The IETF saw (and sees) itself as producing enabling technologies, not closed solutions. Each enabling technology—security protocols, signaling protocols, new transport protocols—is intended to open the door for new kinds of applications. To date, this is exactly what has occurred.

The Internet model is disaggregated—the opposite of vertically integrated. Because the Internet is globally accessible and presents support for an ever-increasing set of protocols (equating to capabilities), anyone with a new service concept can write applications, distribute a free client (if a standard browser will not do), and attempt to secure a revenue stream. This creates a huge dilemma for carriers. In the Internet model, they are infrastructure providers, providing ubiquitous IP connectivity. In the classic tee-shirt slogan “IP over everything,” the carriers are meant to be the “everything.” But “everything” here is restricted to physical fiber and optical networking in the network core; copper, coax, and radio in the access network; plus an overlay of routing/forwarding and allied services such as DNS. When it comes to end-user services, whether ISP services such as e-mail and hosting; session services such as interactive multimedia, instant messaging, file transfer; or E-business services such as Amazon, eBay, e-Banking, there is no special role allocated for carriers—the Internet model says anyone can play.

This thought is entirely alien to the carriers, who have long believed they were more in the services business than mere bit transporters. Carriers have always wanted to move “up the value chain” whether they were offering network-hosted value-added services or integrated solutions to their enterprise customers. As the carriers came to terms with the success of the Internet, and the collapse of Broadband ISDN, they attempted their own theorisation of the Internet. Not in the spirit of the libertarian open model of the IETF, but more akin to the vertically-integrated and closed models they were used to. They proposed to integrate

§  Data and media transport

§  Interactive multimedia session management

§  Computer application support

into one architecture where everything could be prespecified and would be guaranteed to work. And so arrived the successor to Broadband ISDN, the Next-Generation Network (NGN).

The advantages of the NGN, as the carriers see it, include a well-integrated set of services that their customers will find easy to use, and a billing model that keeps their businesses alive. The disadvantage, as their critics see it, is the reappropriation of the Internet by carriers, followed by the fixing-in-concrete of a ten-year roadmap for the global Internet. The predictable consequence, they believe, will be the stifling of creativity and innovation, especially if the carriers use their NGN architecture anti-competitively, squashing third-party Service Providers, which is technically all too possible.

We should be clear here: anyone offering an Internet service has to develop a service architecture. In the IETF’s view of the world, it is precisely the role of Service Providers to pick and choose from the IETF’s set of protocol components and to innovate architecturally. There is absolutely no reason why the carriers shouldn’t do their architecture on a grand scale through the NGN project if they wish. Critics may believe it’s overcomplicated, non-scalable, and ridiculously slow-to-market. If they are right, Service Providers with lighter-weight and nimbler service architectures will win in the marketplace, and the all-embracing NGN initiative will fail. “Let the market decide” is the right slogan, but the market must first of all exist, which means that the Internet’s open architecture must be preserved and not be closed down. Many carriers have significant market power and might be tempted to use it in order to preserve what they take to be their NGN lifeline against effective competition, so this is an issue for both customers and regulators. Thankfully, there are reasons to be hopeful as well as fearful.

Components of a Telephone Bill

Every local telephone company has a unique billing format and style, but they all share similar characteristics. The first page typically provides the following information:

• Bill payment or remittance address

• The customer billing address

• The account number, including the main telephone number

• A summary of charges that includes:

  • Local monthly service (recurring monthly service charge for telephone lines and circuits billed to the account)

  • Local calls (local toll charges billed directly by the local telephone company

  • Information charges (directory assistance charges)

  • Taxes (federal, state, and local taxes)

  • Long-distance carrier billing (usage charges for long-distance services billed by a long-distance carrier on the local bill; Exhibit 1 shows AT&T billing on this local bill)

    Exhibit 1: Example Local Telephone Company Bill

    
    

    
    
    
    
    

A closer look at the telephone bill in Exhibit 1 shows one problem common to all local telephone bills. Although Exhibit 1 directs the customer to Page 2 for details on the monthly service charge, the details behind the monthly service charge remain unclear (Exhibit 2). The "Monthly Service" charge of $240.84 is not clearly explained.

Exhibit 2: Page 2 of a Local Telephone Company Bill

In fact, it is not until you turn to Page 3 that lines included in the "Monthly Service" charge can be identified. Exhibit 3 shows Page 3 of this bill. In this case, two of the telephone lines, (517) 555-2225 and (517) 555-2445, which are included in the "Monthly Service" charge, had usage charges.

Exhibit 3: Page 3 of a Local Telephone Company Bill

If these lines did not have usage charges, they would not have appeared on the bill. The local telephone bill does not present the complete picture of what lines and services are billed to the company. It also does not tell you the service address where the lines terminate and services are delivered. The address on the front of the bill is the billing contact name and address where the service provider mails the bills. For example, if the billing contact is the Accounts Payable manager, the address on the front of the bill will be the A/P department address.

Because of these issues, companies should always request a Customer Service Record (CSR) for their local telephone accounts. A CSR describes in detail the following information:

• Billing address

• Service address

• List of individuals who are authorized to make changes to the account

• List of all telephone numbers and, under each number, a detailed list of services billed to that number

By comparing information on the CSRs to the company's line and circuit inventory, a company will be able to validate the services for which it is paying.

Sometimes long-distance carrier charges show up on a local telephone company bill in addition to the expected charges from the long-distance carrier. This occurs when the long-distance charges were not rated under the company's corporate discount plan. Sometimes, this situation occurs when a field office manager, unaware of a corporate plan, calls the local telephone company and signs a contract for services. Although the contract is with the same carrier, the rates will likely be at the "mom-and-pop" rates that are typical for smaller firms. The long-distance carrier has no easy way of identifying such "rogue" plans.

Companies contract with a long-distance carrier for long-distance services under a discount plan. The Telecom department provides working telephone numbers (WTNs) to the long-distance carrier when new lines are ordered and the local telephone company has assigned the line number. The WTNs are placed into a long-distance carrier's database, and calls are billed per the contract plan. If the phone numbers are not in the database, the correct discounts will not be applied to the call.