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Independent telcos have long been a part of the fabric that makes up Supercomm. Perhaps it's because they've always been active in USTA. Or maybe it's just because independents tend to be significantly higher on the risk tolerance scale than larger incumbents, like the former Bell companies, when it comes to experimenting with new technology.

Telco video technology, for instance, is undoubtedly one of the most important elements of the show for the largest carriers this year. The same can be said for independent telcos — just with a slightly different twist. In many cases, independents are already months and even years ahead of their larger brethren.

“As you're rolling out the tier-one guys, it's going to take time,” said Ken Davidson, vice president of sales and marketing for Critical Telecom, which is focusing most of its effort this week on expanding its presence within the independent operating company (IOC) market. “The smaller guys, they've been playing around for 9 or 12 months putting IPTV architectures together.”

Independent telcos of course have a ton of concerns when rolling out video service-doing it an economic way, assuring customers that the service can be delivered reliably and deploying a platform that can offer a migration path to new applications. In short, they worry about the same things as any other telco.

On the show floor this week, Supercomm attendees are being treated to a host of new options that will give them not only an entry point into video but a place to go if the service lives up to even the wildest expectations. From a pure technology perspective, most of the demonstrations will try to build a case for pushing the upper limits of copper-based technology. Based on some recent data, there's plenty of headroom. According the annual broadband survey from the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, virtually all of its small-telco members offer 56 kb/s to customers for Internet access, but slightly less than 30% offer even 3 Mb/s service, which quickly is becoming the baseline from which triple play services are launched (see figure).

For most telcos, even that level won't be able to support much. Indeed, on the floor this week, vendors with a heavy focus on independent carriers will be looking well beyond 3 Mb/s or even 10 Mb/s.

Fiber-to-the-premises vendor Amedia is taking dip into the copper world this week with the launch of a new VDSL line card. The objective is to give carriers who may not be able to economically justify a large-scale rollout of FTTP a viable, high-speed option to support multiple video streams, at least 10 Mb/s of Internet access and voice.

“We'll be showing a fairly high bit rate, around 65 Mb/s over VDSL,” said Gary Feldman, vice president of marketing for Amedia. “The interesting thing about what we're demonstrating is not just the deployment but the evolution capability. We suspect that over time there's going to be a requirement to evolve to FTTP. As the customer buys an HDTV set, you can migrate them.”

Likewise, Tellabs, which has its AFC acquisition fully integrated, is offering up a demonstration on the theme of “Connect the Dots,” and emphasizing that carriers are under the gun to develop some kind of video strategy.

“What we want to emphasize is the need to implement a variety of solutions,” said Steve McCarthy, Tellabs' executive vice president of global customer sales and services. “We intend to give the 20 Mb/s to 100 Mb/s kind of solutions to the home when and where our customers want them. The business case is less relevant than it was in the past because there's this belief that cable MSOs are trying to be the first to offer the triple play. A business case is heavily influenced by the competitive awareness.”

In many instances, independent telcos have already worked out the business case but are finding that as they deploy video, they have to change the way they think of their networks. Reliability and quality of service, often thought of as the hallmarks of telcos, may be more difficult than anticipated for those offering video. Spirent, which also has a triple play demo running in its booth, is trying to give carriers a realistic insight into the topic, said Alan Newman, director of marketing for Spirent.

“A lot of carriers are looking to do video-quality measurements, but we have no objective standardization on which you grade video,” he said. “There are some ways that the old analog vendors used to do it, but it doesn't translate to the digital domain.”

Among the various demonstrations the company is serving up this week is an end-to-end system that will show carriers how they can translate their traditional voice reliability into the new triple play environment.

“With voice, you can interpolate any [test] results over a short period of time. It's very quick and speedy,” said Andy Huckridge, product marketing manager for Spirent. “With video, it's a little different because what gets sent is the information instead of the actual video. There's a little more intelligence involved. You're comparing this bit or byte with a bit or byte that might be 15 packets down the line.”

Lucent, not always the vendor associated with independent telco video deployments but one with some of the earliest experience in the large telco market, is hoping to get in on the action in part by emphasizing its newly converged wireline and wireless groups.

“We're anticipating that IP video is going to be one of the highest growth areas over the next three or four years,” said Rob Piconi, vice president and general manager of the Broadband Solutions Group within the Multimedia Networks Group for Lucent “We're talking a lot about the blending of services that are actually going to drive the end consumer to think of an alternative to cable.”

Based on recent research by Lucent, telcos of all types are in a unique position to take advantage of that willingness on the part of end users to consider cable and satellite substitutes.

“We've done a lot of primary research on the telecommunications wallet,” Piconi said. “You have to go to video because that's what really drives the [average revenue per user]. If you look at the increased spending in entertainment, that's where a lot of the willingness to consider alternatives rests.”

For independent telcos, which face the same declining access line issues as large carriers but are often not blessed with the same growth prospects, the willingness is there. It's implementation that is the focus for many this week.

“I think we've moved from a U.S. perspective from hype to ‘Oh my God, how do we actually implement this?’” Davidson said.

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