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Network security and reliability issues and the ability to provide unified services are major blips on the radar of the CEOs who summed up the state of global communications networks and services during Wednesday morning's keynote address.

"Who is going to provide the architecture for security of packetized networks?" asked William Owens, president and CEO of Nortel Networks. Last year, 80 of the U.S.'s largest company's lost 4% of their revenue as a result of network reliability or security failures, he said. Companies subject to a computer virus, or just the rumor of one, see their stock prices go down an average of 2%, he added.

Nortel has partnered with Symantec in an effort to incorporate deep packet inspection as a means of defining and protecting against network intruders. "If we think the problems caused by the massive power outage in the Northeast were great, wait until we experience a nationwide packet network blackout," Owens said.

The entire industry shares the responsibility of ensuring that next-generation networks and services are as secure as the traditional voice network, said Patricia Russo, chairman and CEO of Lucent.

"Only if we do this will we be able to continue enjoying end-user confidence," Russo said. Bell Labs' Service Enhancement Layer will help Lucent's iteration of IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) deliver "truly secure" services across converged networks, she added.

In addition to helping to boost security, IMS will do much to help carriers build and deploy new services, said Lothar Pauly, president and CEO of Siemens. Once IMS is in place, applications need only be plugged in, he said. "Carriers must do more than triple play. It's a great defensive play, but a grand slam puts runs on the scoreboard," said Pauly, who went on to discuss how Siemens' LifeWorks@com vision supports a unified domain and unified user experience.

Tellabs President and CEO Krish Prabhu said there were more triple plays on the show floor than on Chicago's baseball diamonds before he discussed Tellabs' effort to help carriers roll out fiber-to-the-Internet (FTTI) networks.

"If video moves to packet, the Internet offers, for the first time, a mechanism by which we don't have to broadcast everything to everyone. Hence the promise of IP TV," Prabhu said. "The things that make the case for fiber deployment are HDTV and DVR."

With several HDTVs, regular TVs and computers, the homes of Echo Boomers (children of Baby Boomers) will require at least 50 Mb/s of bandwidth, so only when FTTI is in place will the information Superhighway become a reality, he noted.