For many Western European network operators, next generation telecommunications networks – NGNs – offer an opportunity to reduce operational costs and to stay or even become competitive. In young, fast growing environments such as those found in many parts of Asia and Africa, the situation is different. In these countries, mobile communications has grown disproportionately fast due to the lower investment costs and the shorter installation times involved. As a result, the penetration of fixed network broadband connections is underdeveloped. It is the task of the network operators, sometimes driven by the regulatory authority or other institutions, to increase this penetration. The demand for new services such as Triple Play may not be the highest priority for these operators, but it will play a significant role in the future if they do not want to fall behind developments in the rest of the world. Moreover, these operators often want to make use of a communications network based on the Internet protocol (IP) to harmonize their network opera­tion. 

The migration of existing services is a complex matter 

But the old networks which are not IP-based are still in operation and will remain so for some time to come. The migration of customers from non-NGN to NGN networks is inevitable in the long term, but it is time-consuming and very complex. New connections and services must be provided.  

Network operators are thus faced with a number of challenges. How are customers to be connected when no universal NGN structure is available, but the number of customers must still grow, and quickly? Which interim solution can be found to ­avoid the need to connect them to non-NGN based networks, only to have to migrate them to NGN later?  

Experience with NGN migration on saturated markets shows that the preparation of the migration in terms of strategy, network architecture, design, planning, tendering, and producer selection as well as the implementation of the new network and the rollout present the network operator with a major challenge – particularly in terms of time. The full advantages of the newly installed NGN, however, can be enjoyed only when it is completely operational – i.e. when, on the one hand, the services are available, the customers supplied, and the processes adapted, and, on the other, all services provided on the old network, e.g. telephony or frame relay data services, have been migrated to the new all-IP network. Only when this has been achieved can the old network structures be phased out.