Complete Program

Submarine cables carry more than 90% of the world’s telecommunications traffic. As such the planning, design, construction and development of submarine cables is essential to sustain growth of the economy and business around the globe. Cable connectivity needs to be secure; the network needs to be resilient and expansive – both in terms of geographical coverage and capacity to meet demand; and the cable network needs to be dynamic and flexible to meet the changing needs of a burgeoning market.

Many new subsea systems are being constructed. Many of these integrate terrestrial connectivity with undersea networking capability, many are choosing to deploy innovative cable landing station techniques and concepts, and many ensuring that the services offered span at wavelength levels between major traffic centre locations.

Capacity upgrades to existing systems are ongoing, with subsea cables delivering huge capacity wavelength services and providing terabits of capacity to meet demand.

The PTC Subsea Cable sessions offer excellent opportunity for industry organisations and experts to share concepts, ideas and experience together.

Regional Roundup
Review and update submarine cable developments over the last twelve months around the globe. Consider what’s new on the legal and regulatory scene – and get an update on what’s happening in SubOptic!

North Atlantic:
Wayne Nielsen, Submarine Telecoms Forum, Inc.

Latam/Caribbean:
Erik Contag, Globenet

Pacific/Oceania:
Jonathan Kriegel, NTT DOCOMO Pacific

Europe ME/Asia:
Loïc Le Fur, Axiom

Regulatory Updates:
Kent Bressie, Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis LLP

SubOptic Updates:
Yves Ruggeri, SubOptic

Organized by:

Teleports are traditionally associated with fixed satellite communications, but they have always been connecting points for different transmission paths. That positions them well for a market in which satellite will increasingly be used only where its economics make the most sense. What does the optimal network look like for different customer applications? How do operations, staffing, processes and capital expenditure change in a fiber, wireless and HTS world? How does the teleport maintain its value proposition in competition with terrestrial carriers and data center operators?

Organized by:

The Emergency Communications Workshop (in PTC since 2007) theme for 2017 is: “The Changing Realities of the ‘Participant Revolution’ in Emergency Communications”.

This theme reflects both the overall PTC'17 theme and recent work by the UN's OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) and ETC (Emergency Telecommunications Cluster of The World Food Program) to refocus ICT (information & communications technology) efforts to "empower affected people and enable humanitarian organizations to listen to and learn from the population they serve".

This approach may be characterized as a "user-centered design" approach that brings the various ICT elements (from satellites to radio nets to handheld devices and drones) together to form real-world synergies (1+1=3) via TODAY's technologies. Expert panelists will discuss real-world examples of these “Changing Realities" and the ICT used.

Organized by:

(Please click here to register for this workshop. Registration is required to attend.)

Welcome & Introductions
L. Sean Kennedy, NANOG Program Committee Chair, and Director, Networks Engineering, XO Communications

Presenters:
9.10-10.00: DDoS Presentation
Merike Kaeo, Farsight Security, Inc.

10.00-10.30: Why We Need More Submarine Cables (and Why We Don't)
Alan Mauldin, TeleGeography

This roundtable discussion includes a panel of telehealth and distance learning researchers and advocates from Asia, Europe, and the United States where there are systemic similarities and differences in the deployment of telehealth programs, policies and, regulations. This session aims to create a forum to present the current telemedicine issues in the U.S., E.U., and Asia.

The modern medical and public health and education systems have been developing since the early 1900’s. It means that in each region, their unique systems have been well developed, and such traditional systems are not easy to reform. Yet, new telehealth opportunities are tremendous for increasing access to health care and reducing overall cost of care. In many countries, it has been reported that a large number of telemedicine programs have been started on a trial basis but discontinued for larger scale implementation due to lack of sustainable financial sources. This is due to many reasons including the lack of reimbursement frameworks for health care delivery via telehealth.

In addition, telehealth, similar to distance learning, programs have been introduced from the developed countries to the developing countries as a means to overcome barriers of isolation, lack of resources, and specialists. As such technical and financial assistances have been provided for starting telehealth and distance learning programs by countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the United States, and the emergent roles of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.

This session will explore operational models for telehealth including government vs. private funded programs and various modalities including mHealth, store-and-forward, interactive consultation, and the intersection among advancements in technology, infrastructure, applications/services, and need for policy developments. Information on respective program structure, including health care service delivery, policies and practices, will be shared. The panel will explore potential venues for collaboration in telehealth service delivery, infrastructure, and support.

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Security considerations touch every layer of today’s global communications and the imperative of securing undersea networks and the services they provide is more important than ever for network owners and operators. Ensuring secure undersea communications begins during cable planning and continues through construction and the operating life of a cable, touching nearly every element of integrated undersea-backhaul network infrastructure.

We’ve assembled a team of experts who will each share their insights into the keys to managing the many facets of undersea network security.

Organized by:

As a technology-based industry, the telecommunication service business lives in a constantly changing world. Compounded by the smallness of the Pacific Island economies, what will be some key changing realities for the ICT landscape that the service industry and policy makers in the Pacific may need to plan for and adapt to?

This session will highlight a range of state-of-the-art research focusing on ICT for development in the Asia-Pacific region. Participants will address mobile-based microfinancing in Pakistan among rural women, and  experiential learning focused on the design, development, and deployment of innovative technologies for schools in Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

Organized by:

(Please click here to register for this workshop. Registration is required to attend.)

Presenters:
11.00-11.15: Hawaii and Pacific IX Updates
Robert DeVita, AlohaNAP
Paul Emmons, Phoenix-IX

11.15-12.00: Automating Interactions with ARIN
Mark Kosters, ARIN

12.00– 12.30: Let’s Encrypt with DANE
Geoff Huston, APNIC

A series of short presentations by various speakers and organizations on diverse topics and technologies.

11.00–11.20: With Greater Frequency: National Initiatives to Find More Radio Spectrum for Broadband
Chip Yorkgitis, Kelley Drye & Warren LLP

11.20–11.40: Structure for Success: How Telco's Can Improve Revenue and Reduce Churn Through VAS
Jay Christensen, Hostway

11.40–12.00: Reach New Heights with the P3P Mindset
Volodymyr Chornodolsky, Mapcom Systems

12.00–12.20: Dynamic Third Network Services for the Digital Economy and Hyper-connected World
Pascal Menezes, MEF

Sponsored by:

Want to be entertained whilst having lunch? Ed McCormack, Ciena, will lead a skilled and distinguished panel to discuss – More Capacity? Do we Build or Buy?

The theme is intended to recognize the changing face of the market from the purchaser and supplier perspective, with the ever increasing demand for capacity and connectivity, the changing marketplace and purchasers needs, the increasing number of co-builds & fiber pair purchases, and finally the changing shape of an IRU and the terms and conditions being imposed by purchasers.

Researchers will present their latest findings and theories about how vulnerabilities of digital networks will affect private sector and governmental responses to cybercrime and privacy breaches. In particular, the "business model” propelling cyber-crime will be a prime focus, along with the strategies for avoiding pitfalls in combatting threats to the integrity of information infrastructures.

Organized by:

Pacific Regulators now exist in a turbulent sea of change, that presents new challenges not just about how to regulate and what to regulate but more fundamentally the extent of their authority to regulate and whether to “push the envelope” on the boundaries of that authority. Their very existence is challenged. The GSMA-A.T. Kearney report on The Internet Value Chain highlights the diminishing roles and profitable revenue opportunities classically organized carriers – both wireline and wireless – have in the rapidly evolving telecommunications market place. Open and shared access rules are upending the concepts of strategic capital investment, and non-traditional facilities players, such as Google, Facebook and Amazon are using their financial heft to disrupt the established investment cycles. Outsourcing of network management and operations has moved from a service offered by carriers to enterprises to a service offered by equipment vendors to carriers. What do these shifts in telco operating and business models mean for regulators? As communications operators become mere aggregators of services and equipment provided by others, is there anything left to effectively regulate? This begs the fundamental question, are regulators still relevant?

Pacific Regulators will present on the challenges faced by Small Island Developing States including the key issues of the changing roles of the traditional Telcos, new market definitions and models, increasing competition from global players and the impact of increasingly disruptive technologies.

Presentations from Charles Punaha, CEO of National Information and Communications Technology Authority (PNG) and Chair of the Steering Committee of PIRRC; Shivnesh Prasad Acting Chairman, Telecommunications Authority of Fiji and Steering Committee Member of PIRRC; Marc Lipton Director or Research of PIRRC , will be moderated by Donnie Defreitas, Projector Director PIRRC.

Organized by:

(Please click here to register for this workshop. Registration is required to attend.)

Presenter:
13.30 - 15.00: Optics Tutorial
Richard Steenbergen, PacketFabric

A series of short presentations by various speakers and organizations on diverse topics and technologies.

13.30–13.50: Business Opportunities and Barriers for Big Data in Vietnam
Vi Dzung Ngo, Vietnam National University

13.50–14.10: Connecting the New Communication Mosaic: The Pathway to IPX Innovation
Ashish Jain, GENBAND

14.10–14.30: PoP Virtualization: From Concept to Reality
Micaela Giuhat, Metaswitch

14.30–14.50: Open Source Hardware for the New Network: Lumen Networks Inc.
Karl May, Lumen Networks, Qognition, and Mirage

Organized by:

In one of PTC’s most popular sessions, senior analysts from TeleGeography will present their latest findings on trends in the international networks market.

The workshop will feature the following presentations:

Where Networks Collide — Colocation and data centers have been among the strongest sectors in the international networks market. This presentation will explore recent developments in regional data center markets, expansion plans of major providers, and trends in colocation service pricing.

New Boom = Future Gloom? — The submarine cable market is in the midst of a wave of cable construction and new project announcements. What is driving this construction boom, and how will it affect the market? Are we heading towards another bandwidth bust?

The Pricing Limbo — Wholesale circuit and IP transit prices have been falling for years, but the pace varies widely, and can determine the difference between profits and losses for carriers. How are recent network investments, emerging market players, and the deployment of 100 Gbps technology affecting international prices? What markets are experiencing the biggest shifts and what is the outlook for bandwidth buyers and sellers?

Organized by:

In view of the heightened demand for mobile applications, the proliferation of the Cloud, and the advent of the Internet of Things, there is an increasing need for content to be available at the edge of the network – closer to the end user. To date, much of the industry’s attention has been focused on edge network architectures from a technical standpoint.

As more content is distributed to the edge, however, players throughout the industry are building strategic relationships to enhance service quality and remain competitive. This complex and interwoven series of business and legal relationships can involve numerous players, including content providers, data center operators, telecommunications carriers, internet exchange operators, content delivery networks, equipment vendors, and channel partners.

Numerous factors must be considered in structuring these relationships, including the allocation of liability among the various parties, responsibility for the end user’s experience, and service level agreements, among many others.

This panel will focus on key issues to consider when entering into these strategic relationships, common pitfalls to avoid, and contracting best practices.

Organized by:

IPv6 now reaches 33% of Internet users in the USA, 60% in Belgium, 14% in Japan and 11% in Brazil. That means well over 100 million users worldwide, thanks to many large deployments by mobile and broadband providers. It also means we can gather a wealth of real-world data on the performance, benefits and realities of an IPv6 service offering.
 
There’s no doubt that IPv6 is ready for production 24x7 deployment, and that today’s early adopters are getting an edge in Internet service provision. Even so, for many operators, and industries at a national level, IPv6 isn’t on the corporate agenda yet, at least for the time being.
 
In this session we will look at successful IPv6 deployments around the world, on both the content and carriage sides. We’ll find out what decisions led to these IPv6 investments and how those have paid off. We’ll make the case that IPv6 deployment deserves more attention based on real world data that supports a business case and commitment to IPv6.

The workshop focuses models and empirical proof of broadband adoption and diffusion. Experts from research with profound practical experience present four central aspects in the field of:

-          Network Neutrality: Evaluation of “walled garden” content packages

-          Mobile payment: Introduction of payment services of social network operators.

-          Digital Divide: Development in least developed countries.

Organized by:

(Please click here to register for this workshop. Registration is required to attend.)


Presenters:
15.30-16.30: Traceroute Tutorial
Dani Roisman, NANOG and SoftLayer Technologies

16.30-17.30: BGP Made Easy
John Van Oppen, Wave Broadband

Closing Remarks
Betty Burke, Executive Director, NANOG

L. Sean Kennedy, Program Committee Chair, NANOG, and Director, Network Engineering, XO Communications, USA

Welcome Remarks
Sharon Nakama, CEO, Pacific Telecommunications Council

Convener
Anthony Rossabi, President & Chair, Board of Governors, Pacific Telecommunications Council, and Managing Director, Colocation and Connectivity, Digital Realty, USA

An accelerated convergence of information, communication, and digital technology promises to enable a fully mobilized and connected society. 5G networks are anticipated to meet the extremely challenging and diverse requirements of mobile traffic into the 2020’s in various deployment scenarios, characterized by super high data rates, low latency, high mobility, high energy efficiency, and high traffic density. Will 5G bring more sustainable development through green and software-centric innovation? How will the promise of much shorter times to market, much faster turnaround of new network capabilities, and more flexible and more efficient network operations be fulfilled? How can proposed enterprise 5G network architecture be configured for diversified access points and user-centric resource allocation? What are the technological, economic and social impacts that might be anticipated from the evolving dynamics of a 5G industry?

The UN adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) in 2015 and set out a global agenda for development based on economic prosperity, social inclusion and environmental sustainability. The goals extend to all countries and acknowledge the growing urgency of development efforts and putting environmental sustainability centre-stage. ICTs are seen to be essential to achieve these goals. Examples such as mobile banking, digital financial inclusion and smart cities, help explain how achieving the SDGs can be a win-win for everyone. What is the business case for contributing to the SDGs? How can the private and public sectors work together to achieve them in innovative ways?

A wave of change is arriving for the satellite industry which could impact not only users’ options but also those of other industry players. Specialized broadband services, often offered from orbits much closer to earth than conventional geostationary orbit, are being proposed by start-up companies for whom technology, financing and demand may have finally arrived. Hear from leading proponents of these services.

Although industry observers, pundits, players and policy makers have talked about “convergence” for nearly 40 years, the growth of apps, online video, social media, online games and high speed mobile broadband services using new connected devices driven in particular by wireless and mobile devices such as smartphones, are eroding traditional boundaries between different components of the new communications ecosystem. As new symbiotic relationships are developing, new business models are required that may conflict with old regulatory assumptions, rules and approaches. This keynote policy panel will address what policies are needed to permit and foster new business models while protecting consumers and competition.

What are the impacts on data centers of evolving IT architectures of content, digital media, cloud providers, and enterprises? What trends are emerging across regions that are re-shaping data centers? How are advanced network architectures and energy/environmental concerns re-shaping data center development? Is hyperscale cloud growth continuing to leverage third-party datacenters?

Must present lunch ticket to redeem lunch in the Pavilion. A ticket can be purchased at the cashier counter for US$18 each.

Sponsored by:

The PTC Educators' and Researchers' Lunch is a chance for anyone who is interested in research (both academic and applied) to mingle and join in the development of PTC’s research community. This is an informal gathering where you can learn about the work of other PTC attendees and explore possibilities for collaboration and knowledge sharing. All are welcome!

Sponsored by:

The changes underway in the satellite industry present special challenges and opportunities for the traditional satellite manufacturers and launch services providers. Should new satellite systems be based on shorter-lived technologies so that updates can be incorporated sooner? Does that make economic sense? Is there another way? How do the launch services providers, geared mostly to launching multi-ton payloads into various orbits, respond to the opportunity created by hundreds of smaller satellites looking for rides to orbit? Will smallsats upend the entire paradigm of the industry? Are the existing players dinosaurs or will they still be standing, but different, five years from now? These and other questions will be explored by our luncheon panelists.

Change is in the air and coming to space. New players are now or soon could be offering new space-based solutions to age-old problems and Internet Age issues like cybersecurity, bandwidth limitations, in mismatches between supply and demand. This panel will offer new perspectives and plans for addressing these issues via satellite, in some cases even in competition with terrestrial facilities and services and in other a complementary overlays and extensions.

Information Technology has been evolving: from the mainframe to the mini to the PC to the smartphone to things, and from enterprise data center to the cloud to the fog / edge: an emerging approach that complements the cloud through processing and data at the edge, either to collect data for aggregation and analytics or to enable distributed queries and processing. The implications are vast, and a distinguished set of global leaders will help drive a roundtable discussion from multiple vendor and service provider perspectives: cloud services, containers, network services, data center and colocation, cloud stack and orchestration, and network equipment.

Sponsored by:

The Submarine Cable session on Monday has a selection of topical presentations on issues challenging the industry at present. The topics cover a broad spectrum including funding arrangements for developing country, the challenges of creating reliable power supplies for cable landing stations, connectivity arrangements across the Caribbean and the trade-off between transmission limits and the options for lowering the costs of cables. Quite an exciting array of interesting topics for those interested in submarine cables.

Organized by:

While the growth of the Internet and mobile devices in new and novel ways continues to create new economic opportunities, these opportunities can be sources of friction between innovators and regulators. This panel will discuss the challenges presented by emerging technologies and evolving legal frameworks:

• Universal Access to Technology. How will regulators handle the costs and challenges of providing universal access to emerging technologies?
  
  
• International Spectrum Allocation. How will regulators respond to the exponential growth in demand for spectrum? Will the challenges of the United States’ Incentive Auction have global ramifications?
  
• The Internet of Things. What challenges do the growth of Internet of Things devices create for government regulators? Should regulators require ISPs to prioritize traffic from IoT devices with sensitive uses?
  
• Cyber Security. Will regulators require companies to create “backdoors” for national security purposes?
  
  
• The Ramifications of the US-EU Privacy Shield and the EU General Data Protection Regulation. Will the Privacy Shield withstand scrutiny from the European Court of Justice? Will the GDPR influence the scope of other nations’ data protection regimes?
  
  
• Trends in Global Internet Governance.  Will the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority’s transition to global governance lead to a renewed push for greater global control over ICANN?

The Internet of Things (IoT) continues to grow beyond all expectations, creating virtually endless opportunities to craft autonomous systems and solutions that are able to deliver previously unimagined benefits. Our IoT enabled future also comes with significant challenges. How will we address not only security and privacy concerns, but also on a broader scale, concerns of how IoT may impact overall social and economic structures? What questions weigh heavily on our brightest and most creative minds as technological developments of IoT accelerate? Our panel of industry experts and thought leaders will share their visions of how we might manage the coming waves of IoT opportunities and threats.

The marketplace for business data services has changed significantly over the past decade. This roundtable will discuss the state of the data services industry, the drivers behind changes in the marketplace, the evolving competitive landscape, and the opportunities/challenges facing traditional wholesale service providers as business data services continue to evolve.

Organized by:

While new technology is good, as are lower prices, are we actually meeting end user needs in the Pacific? Why/why not? What is being provisioned now and future? What gaps we must fill? Where does the satcom model fall short? The session, “What do End Users Actually Want?” will discuss end user needs across various applications and markets.

This research session focuses on international telecommunications markets and their ability to adopt and use telecommunications-related technologies. In particular, this session will look into Korea, China, and Canada – identifying the regulatory policy issues for global players. The authors will look into regulatory classification opportunities and challenges for market entry regulation in several segments, such as the media industry, the PC-based internet, and “mobile only.” The presenters will discuss how global markets are utilizing telecommunication technologies to get online and to aid in competition among businesses.

Comparisons will be made between local and global players, and discussions will be held to determine how these two markets can differ – offering challenges and opportunities for global players. The researchers will discuss broadband as a moving target and the need to constantly reassess connectivity requirements as applications and services become increasingly intensive. Based on the discussions on policy issues for telecommunication players, this segment will discuss future policy directions for the telecommunication industry.

Sponsored by:

Hybrid Cloud and Hybrid IT strategies are critical to IT leaders as they keep pace with the possibilities and demands of Digital Transformation. IoT and other trends are just part of the Changing Realities in front of us.

Key to determining the best strategy is matching the right connectivity and support model to cloud-based applications and services, leveraging existing infrastructure and optimizing performance, agility and security for the enterprise. Business models are changing to capture opportunities in tandem with growth in mobile and distributed workforces. Security and performance are paramount.

IT has a host of options regarding networking, technologies, SaaS, public/private datacenters, professional services and more, with many options to access the cloud and optimize networking. Panel participants will explore the Changing Realities of Digital Transformation and weigh the options enterprises have to support it, with the realization the worst thing they can do is nothing—and get left behind.

How will evolving requirements in applications such as distributed messaging, file sync and share, and live streaming affect content protocols, data transfer and replication? What are the roles of network providers, CDNs and network optimization technologies, and cloud platforms in meeting the evolving needs of big data? How are industry leaders meeting the challenges of new network demands with ever increasing volumes of video and the specialized needs of a vast array of data providers and users?

It seems nearly everything is changing thanks to cloud: new architectures, new economics, emerging access technologies, new services, new strategies. This keynote panel will not just discuss the changing realities of the cloud, but enable you to hear what some of the top global public, private, hybrid and network-enabling cloud strategy, technology, architecture,and innovation leaders are focused on, and what we can expect in the next few years in areas such as hybrid, containers, network services, artificial intelligence / deep learning / cognitive computing, the impact of 5G, IoT, and edge, and more.

The first 5G networks rollout is coming soon around 2020, while Cloud and IoT are enabling operational optimization in many industry segments which includes transportation, power generation, agriculture, and so on. In this talk, the definitions of those three keywords, Cloud, IoT and 5G are given in a strategic view of NTT DOCOMO’s related activities. DOCOMO is now conducting practical 5G wireless experiments together with large vendors, and operating petabyte-scale data analytics using Amazon public clouds, and launching IoT services in several public segments. Here, Cloud stands for not pay-for-use remote servers but for software-defined computational platforms. IoT is not limited to device connectivity, and it should be extended to cover data analytics in emerging digital industries. The concept of 5G must involve B2B applications in IoT era. Let us unify those three words to explore upcoming innovations.

What are the big strategic issues for the mobile business in Asia and globally? What are the next big drivers of the mobile business in Asia and globally? How do Wi-Fi and other wireless networks play a role in mobile operator strategy? What new developments in wireless need to be watched? How will 5G be different?

What will it take to build the global networks of the future? How do we expand capacity and increase speeds across oceans and international borders. What lessons can we learn from international partnerships, and how can they be improved?

Please join company leaders as we discuss the infrastructure challenges and investment opportunities for international network deployment.

The bad news: the telecoms sector as we know it is just about over. The good news: that’s not actually bad news – not if you’re prepared for the disruption and changes ahead and willing to transform your business to thrive in (and even help shape) the coming digital economy. This panel will examine the key questions carriers must address to navigate the storm:

• What will be their role in the digital ecosystem?
• How must their business models and culture change?
• What will customers of the future demand of them?
• What grand new opportunities will disruption create for telcos?
• Just how painful will digital transformation be?

Sponsored by:

Must present lunch ticket to redeem lunch in the pavilion. A ticket can be purchased at the cashier counter for US$18 each.

Last year the PTC's ICT4D special interest group held a panel discussion that looked at the development of ICT projects from the perspective of multilateral agencies and detailed the operational processes.

Building from an overview of how projects are proposed and implemented through the basic steps of funding & bidding, initiation and planning phases, in this session we further look at considerations for funding and project selection. Speakers representing select governmental and multilateral agencies will provide insight about ICT project and partner selection and evaluation.

In Part 2 of our session, PTC participants have the opportunity to present "fast pitches" of their innovations, applications and concepts to address the digital divide, sustainable economic and social development.

Sponsored by:

By invitation only.

With the massive growth in demand for submarine cable capacity and the emergence of Software Defined Optical Networking, it has become essential for the industry to create seamless interfaces between the submarine cables and terrestrial network. The increasing importance of subsea cable systems is being accelerated by new and evolving deployment models that expand their efficiency and reach. The era where convergence is essential to underpin network configurations, providing the flexibility and abundance of capacity to support customer needs has commenced. Come along and join Keith Shaw from EQUINIX who, together with an esteemed panel representing some of the leaders in their field within the industry, will explore some of the existing and planned global network developments and their potential impacts. Hibernia and AquaComms have both created and offer a converged service, Infinera and Ciena are both recognized as leaders in the convergence aspect of business and will speak from the product-capability perspective. In addition, the recent announcement of Ciena and SubCom will be explored. This session promises to be active and informative - enhancing the reasoning and technology required to provide innovative solutions - “Where the Land and Sea Unite”!

What will change as we move from a “command and control” method of spectrum assignment to dynamic methods? Spectrum historically has been quite scarce, but might in the future be quite abundant. How will new, shared, unlicensed spectrum play important new roles, and what does it mean for communications service provider business strategies? How might traditional fixed and mobile roles evolve? What new business models could arise?

This session will introduce or bolster understanding of how software and networking technologies combine to offer an expanding array of services and features. We will examine a number of developing options that customize transmission, switching, routing and storing content for networks of people and things, including sensors, devices and wearable monitors. The near term future promises greater flexibility to set up and reconfigure networks with unprecedented speed and flexibility.

Software innovations promise diversification in next generation networks that will include dynamic assignment of transmission capacity, increased transmission speeds and reduced switching delays, as well as the near immediate ability to create and change network configurations.

Our presenters will explain how a variety of new service acronyms, like SDN, NFV, OTT and ZLC, will become part of the next generation inventory of networking options.

Three papers by awardees to the PTC’s highly selective Young Scholars program. These thoughtful papers address important issues in on-line video marketing, device branding and the brokering of user data, addressing the following questions:

• What is the best approach to selling Video-on-Demand?
• Does user attachment to Apps Build hardware brand loyalty?
• Should brokers of user online behavioral data be regulated?

Collectively, they address key consumer/user issues in the digital marketplace. Stimulating insights for all in that field.

Strategies are relatively easy to develop in a static, predictable market that allows you to plan three years ahead. As we hurtle towards the hypercompetitive digital ecosystem of 2020 with technology evolution cycles accelerating ever faster and customers empowered to demand constant and seamless connectivity right now, even planning six months ahead is a hard target. Put another way, it’s hard to move forward when you don’t have a roadmap or you’re not really sure where the road is. But it’s still doable – with the right mindset. This roundtable will explore strategic options and issues for APAC carriers:

• What are the biggest challenges in developing a strategy?
• What technology trends can help make it work?
• What ultimately has to change (if anything) for carriers to develop a viable and flexible strategy that can handle whatever the future throws at it?

Pushing computing, control, data storage and processing into the Cloud has been a trend in the past decade. However, the Cloud alone is encountering limitations in meeting many new requirements of the Internet of Things (IoT), such as security, vast numbers and varieties of resource-constrained devices, smart processing of huge data quantities, and communications bandwidth and cost constraints. To fill business and technology gaps the Cloud is descending towards the network edge as the “Fog” to bridge the “Cloud-to-Thing” continuum. A global industry-academia consortium – the Open Fog Consortium – has been launched with major industry movers to accelerate market adoption of the Fog and to develop an open Fog architecture (openfogconsortium.org). In this roundtable, experts will discuss their visions for fog computing, communications, storage and control, and the challenges for making Fog practical as an enabling architecture for applications such as IoT, 5G and Big Data Analytics.

Organized by:

ITU-R has initiated studies to address the so-called “vertical industries” that use 5G systems to enable a wide array of applications. New and emerging applications are being developed by these vertical industries that will rely on high-performance and ubiquitous 5G system. The mobile industry, in turn, is developing 5G network and radio technologies to meet the vertical industries’ needs. 5G applications will cover a wide array of use cases, including massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC) such as connected IoT applications, healthcare, automotive, public safety, education, smart cities, wearables, etc.

This panel consists of representatives from several leading entities who will elaborate on how they are revolutionizing the way individuals, businesses, and governments will use 5G technology and emerging IoT applications to improve health care in the future connected world.

This session offers a remarkably diverse assessment of the political, economic, legal, regulatory, logistical and even meteorological factors affecting current and next generation network technologies.  The papers will address existing and prospective challenges to the smooth management of fiber optic submarine cables, ever growing constellations of satellites and the vast array of Internet-connected sensors, devices and monitors.  

Managers confront a large and growing collection of known challenges, but the presenters in this session offer new worries including the impact of solar energy bursts that can create geomagnetic storms capable of shutting down satellites, the power grid and even fiber optic submarine cables lying on the ocean floor. New low earth orbiting satellite constellations numbering in the hundreds and even thousands challenge a conflict avoidance and coordination system negotiated years ago by a few superpower nations first to launch large satellites in higher orbits. The vast collection of Internet-connected things present many known and unknown conflicts requiring global coordination, compromise and sanctions for bad actors.

This session will identify more challenges to the effective management and operation of network infrastructure.

This session covers one integrated area of topical interest from two of PTC's 2017 Young Scholars and a PTC Project. Both YSP papers address an international perspective, and coordination through International Telecommunication Union (ITU). First, the change of spectrum policies in both US and Europe (through CEPT) in regard to future mobile systems (IMT) is addressed, with arguments that national sovereignty is not sufficiently addressed, based on participant observation and primary data collection. Second, concerns of sustainable development and coordination through ITU to achieve United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through the implementation of ICT is also analyzed. For the PTC Project, this presentation details work on a proof of concept application of a speech-to-speech translation software product designed for use in emergency disaster relief.

As the Internet infrastructure build proliferates internationally, green and energy issues have moved from desirable corporate governance to center stage in operational terms. In most cases, fundamental investment viability in infrastructure projects is significantly impacted as a result.
 
This exceptionally topical session featuring industry experts will examine key aspects of conceptualizing, planning, building and implementing best practices in data center and related infrastructures, as well as working to current and emerging industry initiatives. It should be an ideal fast track for anyone who needs a rapid but comprehensive update on the current landscape.
 
Topics covered will include:
• Reporting/measurement of impact:  what do we measure?  what are our goals, what have we achieved?
• Looking to green design standards including LEED, ISO 14001, ISO 50001, energy solutions, and water solutions
• Evaluating renewable energy:  principles, goals, investments
• Identifying industry participation opportunities and initiatives including:  RE100, WWF/WRI Buyers Principles, BRC Gold Member, American Business Act on Climate Pledge, UK CCA
• Examining the biggest cost-saving opportunities with better thermal management
• Reducing CAPEX costs for edge deployments
• Identifying and avoiding the biggest (unrealized) risks with building out edge infrastructure

Ground systems are the vital link between telecommunications satellites orbiting above the earth in space and either terrestrial networks (fixed, mobile, fiber, microwave, etc.) or people for direct-to-user systems. While ground systems have been around for more than 50 years, they continue to have to evolve, just as the satellite systems above them proliferate and change. Learn how ground systems operators and equipment providers are adapting to an era in which the satellites they are trying to connect with may be in classical geostationary or flitting overhead in low earth orbit. Moreover, more and more of the newer non-GEO systems are communicating using either exotic radio-frequency bands or even with lasers, presenting even more challenges and opportunities for ground systems operators.

This research session on Approaches to Managing Broadband, Spectrum and User Perceptions features three of PTC’s Young Scholars and their research. Topics vary among net neutrality on the web to the effectiveness of the European Union’s performance on shaping international radio spectrum regulation to the public perception on artificial intelligence in cyberspace. These research studies will offer a global perspective to telecommunications adoption, as the research studies have been conducted in both Sweden and South Korea.

The new industry of cloud computing has already enabled successful new products and services such as Uber and Netflix that have taken advantage of the ever growing sophistication of the merger of communications and compute. But, we are still in the early stages of these new services. They will require massive amounts of investment to rebuild communications/IT networks and infrastructure causing yet more restructuring of the industry. Where does infrastructure need to be deployed? What are the most attractive sources for capital? What are capital providers looking for? How much will it cost? What mix of equity and debt financing will it take? With so much M&A activity, what will a successful industry structure look like?

Yahoo, the IRS, Sony, Target, Facebook, Tesco Bank...and the list goes on of organizations that have experienced massive security breaches in the last couple of years. No industry, geography, or size of organization is immune to these attacks that are typically carried out by a hacking community that has become more global, sophisticated, criminal, and profit-motivated. What can we do for our own IT and our customers to protect our data, applications and systems? This expert panel will discuss the questions we should all be asking ask ourselves including:

• How should I be thinking differently about security and compliance?
• How can I achieve consistent security across hybrid IT where I don’t even control all of my infrastructure and applications?
• Are there new ways I should think about protecting my customer’s data?
• What are the security implications of IoT and software-defined infrastructure?
• Are there security standards or organizations I should be leveraging?
• What if I am breached? Then what?

Security, storage, compute, access, and analytics are among the concerns of the rapidly growing arena of the Internet of Things (IoT). How do we manage the growing volume of compute? Are sectors such as health, energy, transportation and education different in treatment? How should this be supported? What will be the real impact of IoT on carriers and data centers over the next several years? What impacts will this have on economies and societies?