Convergence Seamlessly - A Look Inside Motorola's Seamless Mobility Initiative

Abstract

Broadband convergence networks (BCN) is focused on the convergence of not just voice, video and data, but also the convergence of heterogeneous wired and wireless networks and applications into a seamless user experience. This enables a new era of broadcasting, where IP-based telecommunication moves to support high quality, IP- based multimedia broadcasting. While a good amount of effort has been focused on the networking aspect of BCN, much less attention has been paid to its management. Specifically, no real advances on how wired and wireless networks will be operated and managed have been addressed. Instead, only small parts of the problem are being addressed (the IETF has working groups on some technologies; the ITU's FGNGNM (Focus Group on Next Generation Network Management) has not made near the progress that the FGNGN has made). Other standards bodies and fora have also made no significant progress on this issue. Motorola's Seamless Mobility Initiative is very much focused on BCN. This initiative focuses on the easy, uninterrupted access to information, entertainment, communication, monitoring and control, giving the user a sense of being connected anywhere, anytime, to anything, with any service. Indeed, the fundamental goal of seamless mobility is to provide new types of user experience that overcome the limitations of existing technologies, systems and services. Key to this initiative is the ability to make management invisible. That is, Seamless Mobility is about providing the end-user with a compelling, easy-to-use experience; management functions (or, for that matter, any function that detracts the user from that experience) should either be minimized or, preferably, hidden. With respect to BCN, many people define convergence as the ability to provide voice, video and data simultaneously over the same network. BCN is much more complex. In addition to providing new networked services and applications, this really means three different types of convergence: 1) Service convergence: end user accessing the same service using one or more devices through one or more access mechanisms, 2) Device convergence: end user accessing multiple services across multiple access mechanisms through a single device, 3) Network convergence: a unified network realizing multiple services using one or more devices through one or more access mechanisms. Clearly, there can be other types of convergence, including billing and security convergence. This presentation will focus on management convergence - a unified system in which management of the system can be done in a consistent way, independent of devices and protocols. Once management convergence is defined, this presentation will focus on delivering a continuity of experience across multiple spatial domains, devices, network protocols and access modes. It will explore the challenges of moving from a device-centric to a task-centric model, as illustrated by Motorola.