Benhamou: RBOCs are slow and plodding

Washington, D.C. - 3Com Chairman Eric Benhamou today slammed RBOCs as slow dinosaurs that could hold up the next generation of networking.

In a keynote at ComNet, Benhamou generally painted a rosy future in which today's data networks become the sole conduits for all networked traffic, including voice and video.

However, he acknowledged the network industry first has to do a better job making today's existing data networks perform better. He said his customers don't really want to hear about the future yet. They want to know what he's going to do about the fact that their existing networks are already too complex.

Benhamou said one answer is policy-based networks, in which network devices make decisions on how to route or switch packets based on policies defined in advance by users. He predicted that within two years, 25% of enterprise networks will consist solely of these "converged" systems.

But he said RBOCs, which still play a critical role in the WAN, are holding up progress. In part, this is because they are still subject to complex, cumbersome and often conflicting state and federal regulations.

He pointed to the slow pace of competition in the local loop. Expecting RBOCs to invest heavily in next-generation hardware while giving away access at cost to competitors is an "unnatural process," he said. But RBOCs, sheltered from competion for decades, wouldn't know how to compete, anyway, he said, predicting they will eventually end up "withering away around their legacy businesses."

Benhamou said this is why consumers may not get high-speed Internet access such as asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) service to the home as fast as they might. He pointed specifically to .

3Com is a member of a consortium, announced yesterday, to draft specifications for 1.5M bit/sec home ADSL. While modem and computer vendors will deliver their gear quickly, consumers will have to wait for the RBOCs to install the required central-office equipment, he said. "I'm not holding my breath" waiting for quick RBOC adoption of the technology," he said. Even though it will be easier to impliment than ISDN, he said the telcos would still experience considerable implementation difficulties.

Benhamou also discussed the role of applications on the new smart networks. Today, most applications cannot interface with network intelligence - they are limited to such simple requests as "send data" and "receive data." In the future, he said, applications will have to tap into the policies running the network, so that a user could request that a large file be compressed before being downloaded or that an incoming video feed be giving priority over e-mail.