Industry Forums
Chair: Chi-Ming Chen, AT&T, USA
Vice Chair: Dhadesugoor R. Vaman, Prairie View A&M University, USA
Dates: 6-8 December 2011
The IEEE GLOBECOM 2011 Industry Forums are designed to deliver broad interest in telecommunication industry’s current practiced technology, major technology implementations, complex IT business systems, regulatory impact assessments, economic models, and engineering methods used by industry practitioners. The target audiences are both technical and industrial members of the communications community.
There are 17 Forum sessions planned (a Forum may extend over multiple sessions). Each session is 120 minutes long with a moderator and 3-5 speakers of technical and/or Industry expertise in the featured topical area, followed by a Q&A discussion among the speakers and the audiences at the end.
Tuesday, 6 December 2011 • 10:00 – 12:00 • Room: GRB 310 A/B/D/E
Executive Forum on Cloud Computing
Organizer: Johan Krebbers, Shell International, B.V., Netherlands
Executive Forum on Cloud Computing presents forward looking and innovative ideas and practices, industry challenges, industry direction, industry needs to the Global Communications community. The Global Community is challenged for action as a whole to address identified opportunities. Cloud computing represents a new frontier in the confluence of computing, networking, and software systems. The underlying global deployment of Cloud computing resources and services and the un-bounded global service demand represent grand opportunities for Cloud Computing customers and new challenges to service providers.
Cloud Computing Forum speakers are industry leaders who can paint/ integrate a futuristic vision of technology, industry/ market solutions, and business systems and application to solve business, society, or governmental needs.
Moderator: Johan Krebbers, Shell International, B.V., Netherlands
Panelists:
Kazuhiro Gomi, CEO & President, NTT America
Hossein Eslambolchi, Chairman & CEO, 2020 Venture Partners LLC
Tuesday, 6 December 2011 • 13:30 – 15:30 • Room: GRB 310 A/B
Undersea Cable Infrastructure (UCI) Forum
The Key for Global Infrastructure Resiliency
Organizers: Spilios E. Makris, Nick Lordi, and Arun Handa, Telcordia Technologies, USA
In December 2006, a series of undersea cable outages after an earthquake near Taiwan led to significant disruptions to international communications. These disruptions were widespread and large enough to cause a substantial shortage of international bandwidth and significant network congestion as traffic was rerouted to the remaining operating undersea cable systems.
This industry forum will:
· Explore the major issues facing service providers and large enterprise networks, such as global financial institutions, as they seek ways to ensure a diverse, resilient end-to-end global infrastructure, as well as how their suppliers are helping them face these challenges.
· Identify and understand potential geographic vulnerabilities as a precursor to a comprehensive vulnerability assessment of the ones undersea cable infrastructure, consisting of cable landing stations, cable segments and supporting infrastructure.
· Discuss diversity, which is often limited at cable landing stations and deep sea cable paths. Specifically,
o How can a service provider or financial institution ensure global diversity for their physical and logical paths?
o How can other assets, such as telecommunications “hotels” be used to enhance undersea cable infrastructure diversity?
o How do you mitigate risk, with diverse physical routes, logical routes, data backup sites, and in what combination?
· Identify potential undersea cable infrastructure mitigation strategies in conjunction with industry and the challenges associated with the implementation of such strategies is a crucial first step in mitigating risk. In particular,
o How does one “build in” resiliency to your network assets?
o What assets could one use, from a service provider and equipment vendor, to facilitate resiliency?
· Discuss recent efforts at the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) Performance, Reliability, and Quality Committee (PRQC) to standardize metrics in an effort to ensure robust UCI and the end-to-end integrity of the global telecommunications network infrastructure and explore how we could leverage that PRQC work to promote international adoption of UCI-related ATIS Standard?
Moderator: Nick Lordi, Chief Scientist, Telcordia Technologies, USA
Panelists:
Ronald J. Rapp, Director, Cable Engineering and Technology, TE SubCom
Peter Cornell, Vice President, Global Network Field Operations, AT&T
Alasdair Wilkie, Director, Marine & Projects, Hibernia Atlantic
Andy Yates, Global Head of Network Architecture, Internal Technology, NYSE Euronext
Tuesday, 6 December 2011 • 13:30 – 15:30 • Room: GRB 310 D/E
Broadband Forum II
PON Solutions - Platform for Multi-service Excellence
Organizer: George Dobrowski, Senior Analyst, Huawei, USA; Board of Directors, Broadband Forum
Fiber based access solutions have increased the broadband reach into uncharted territories. As today’s fasting growing broadband access technology, fiber demands new standards, tools and creative solutions to help contain the costs and headaches of deployments. Rarely simple, fiber deployments frequently are a mix of hybrid xDSL/PON solutions. Service Providers look to the industry to define a common architecture and management platform to ensure cost effective rollouts, equipment options and capable service management. This Forum will focus on:
· Latest in GPON/EPON standards, conformance/certification and interoperability
· Network management tools and architecture options
· Hybrid Network solutions
· TR-069 PON device management
Moderator: George Dobrowski, Senior Analyst, Huawei, USA; Board of Directors, Broadband Forum
Panelists:
Christophe Alter, Orange France Telecom, Broadband Forum Technical Committee Chair
Greg Bathrick, Director Business Development, PMC-Sierra; Co-Chair Broadband Home
Tuesday, 6 December 2011 • 13:30 – 15:30 • Room: GRB 320 A/B
Cloud Security Forum
Is Cloud Computing a Trusted Computing?
Organizer: David Wei, Fordham University, USA
Cloud computing is an innovative Internet-based computing paradigm that enables application software to be delivered as services over the Internet. Cloud users are thus able to move out their data and software to a remote Cloud to deploy scalable and elastic service on demand with no need of provisioning a data center. This cost-effective computing paradigm removes the need for service providers to plan ahead for provisioning and allows companies to start small and then increase computing or storage resources only when there is a need. However, as the users' data and software are outsourced to centralized massive data centers, IT security specialists warn that Cloud is becoming particularly attractive to cyber crooks. As a matter of fact, cloud security has been cited as the top concern by the cloud users. Service availability and data confidentiality have been the top concerns among those cloud computing security issues. However, on the other hand, due to the needed extra computing, security controls often incur a certain amount of performance degradation in cloud computing where performance is crucial and its computation and communication complexities are already high. This poses challenges to the system developers to preventing privacy leaks, performing data auditing, and guaranteeing high availability in the face of different security attacks. In fact security issues may drive how we define and develop cloud computing solutions.
There have been a few studies investigating the fundamental properties of the cloud security issues, but a great deal of work still remains to be done. We thus provide this forum for the discussion of recent research results on a broad range of topics relevant to cloud security, including data auditing, searchable data encryption, hypervisor protection, cloud forensics, disaster recovery, just to name a few.
Moderator: David Wei, Fordham University, USA
Panelists:
Roxana Geambasu, Columbia University, USA
Patrick Pak-Ching Lee, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
James Hughes, Huawei Technologies
Mooi Choo Chuah, Lehigh University, USA
Vinod Vaikuntanathan, University of Toronto, Canada
Tuesday, 6 December 2011 • 16:00 – 18:00 • Room: GRB 310 D/E
Broadband Forum I
Obtaining the Full Potential of xDSL
Organizer: George Dobrowski, Senior Analyst, Huawei, USA; Board of Directors, Broadband Forum
xDSL is an access technology that empowers broadband to reach more people worldwide than any other technology. With good stability, proactive management tools, multiple speed and configuration options, today’s xDSL based network continues to evolve with the ever-changing needs of the user. In this session, we will explore the latest techniques to achieve the rate, reach and QoS goals of today’s progressive providers.
Topics covered will include:
· VDSL2 and ADSL2plus testing and interoperability
· Bonding and Vectoring
· Hybrid xDSL/fiber solutions including the new G.hn technology using reverse power feed and the need for addressing electrical safety requirements
· DSL Quality Suite –ensuring more than speed
· TR-069management capabilities reaching beyond the gateway – may drop this pending potential speakers
Moderator: George Dobrowski, Senior Analyst, Huawei, USA; Board of Directors, Broadband Forum
Panelists:
Russ Gundrum, Project Manager, AT&T
Ernie Gallo, Project Manager for Product Development, Telcordia Technologies
Amir Fazlollahi, Principal Engineer, Futurewei Technologies, USA
Tuesday, 6 December 2011 • 16:00 – 18:00 • Room: GRB 320 A/B
SDR Forum I
Software Defined Radio/Cognitive Radio Technology for Public Safety/Homeland Security
Organizer: Fred Frantz, Director, National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Communications Center of Excellence (COE)
There are a number of challenges faced by developers and users of public safety/homeland security communications systems today. There are interoperability challenges caused by incompatible radio systems; limited spectrum available to accommodate rapidly growing communications requirements (such as real-time video to/from police cars and mobile command centers), rapidly evolving technologies, typically within a fiscally challenging environment. Software defined radio and cognitive radio technology (SDR/CR) has the potential to significantly address these challenges. Already SDR-based multiband radios are changing and enhancing approaches to achieving interoperability, and cognitive, reconfigurable radios can provide significant flexibility that is critical for communications needed to manage a rapidly evolving incident.
The objective of this forum is to highlight public safety/homeland security communications requirements, identify opportunities for application of SDR/CR technology in addressing those requirements, leverage SDR/CR research and development that originated to address other requirements (such as defense and commercial requirements), and identify areas where additional research is needed.
Moderator: Fred Frantz, Director, National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Communications COE
Panelists:
P. Allan Sadowski, IT Manager, North Carolina State Highway Patrol
Tom Sorley, Deputy Director for Radio Communications Services, City of Houston
Allen B. MacKenzie, Associate Professor, Wireless at Virginia Tech
Wednesday, 7 December 2011 • 8:00 – 10:00 • Room: GRB 310 A/B
Smart Grid Forum
Standards, Technologies, and Platforms for Emerging Smart Grid Deployments
Organizer: Stan McClellan, Texas State University, USA
This panel will explore issues related to deployment of industry-standard platforms, control and system management technologies, and the status of communication standards & cyber-security in the emerging Smart Grid. The emphasis on speedy deployment of Smart Grid infrastructure has resulted in competing standards, interoperability issues, and complex architectural paradigms. As a result, modern usage of the grid is exposing difficulties that conventional Smart Grid technologies may be ill-equipped to handle. The panelists will present viewpoints which stem from real-world deployment of mission-critical infrastructure including Smart Grid systems, telecommunications networks, and data centers. Each of these panelists provides a unique perspective on grid stability and/or security, particularly pertaining to mobile systems, platform or technology implementation, and standardization issues.
Sample Key Questions/Issues to be explored:
· How do conventional network & system management technologies intersect with Smart Grid systems?
· What is the role of industry-standard platform and networking technologies in the Smart Grid?
· What issues do Smart Grid systems face in terms of national, regional, or international standardization?
· What are the dominant perspectives in various competing standards influences?
· How do user-driven or demand-control systems affect the stability and operation of the Smart Grid, and which technologies are most prevalent in that arena?
· What are the requirements of end-to-end, integrated management for the provision of secure Smart Grid systems?
· Do conventional network security paradigms fall short in the unique case of Smart Grid systems?
Moderator: Stan McClellan, Texas State University, USA
Panelists:
Don Shaver, Fellow, Texas Instruments, on “Status & Evolution of Smart Grid Standards”
Jim Lansford, Architect, CSR Technology, on “A Pragmatic View of Wireless Standards for “Smart Stuff””
Ken Laberteaux, Senior Principal Scientist, Toyota Research Institute – North America, on “Vehicle-Grid interactions: Opportunities and Challenges”
Phil Powell, Director, Conservation & Load Management Research, Dominion Virginia Power, on “The Engineering App: Making the Grid do Something Smart now that you have a Smart Grid”
Robert Peterson, Engineering Manager, Pedernales Electric Cooperative, on “Requirements for Effective Smart Grid Implementation”
Wednesday, 7 December 2011 • 8:00 – 10:00 • Room: GRB 310 D/E
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Forum
Advanced Communications Technologies and Applications for ITS
Organizers:
David Wei, Fordham University, USA
Kshirasagar Naik, University of Waterloo, Canada
Teruo Higashino, Osaka University, Japan
Road transportation is playing an important role in the rapid development of economy and society. The three basic costs of a transportation system can be succinctly represented as delay, money, and loss of lives. In order to reduce the costs in a transportation system, it is important to provide drivers useful information so that they can make the best decisions in terms of their route, their speed, and so on. There have been fragmented efforts at providing assistance to motorists in the form of automatic toll collection and GPS (global positioning system) assisted driving. However, such systems are largely static, in the sense that actual road conditions have no impact on the quality of routes they produce. A novel concept in the form of an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), based on wireless communications, the Internet, the GPS, and sensor networks, is gradually emerging to take a shape. The central idea in an ITS system is to deliver useful information to all kinds of motorists, such as ordinary car drivers, drivers of emergency vehicles, drivers of transit vehicles, drivers of service vehicles, and the police. Useful information to motorists involve physical conditions of road segments, traffic conditions along road segments, roadblocks including accidents and repair works, and availability of services along their paths, to name a few. An ITS system is expected to shorten driving time, make driving safe, make availability of medical assistance and other helps quicker, assist law enforcement, and contribute to a better environment.
Given the vast expanse of an ITS system and the seemingly large cost of deploying such a system, it is important that different parties cooperate in such an endeavor. Several governments or organizations around the world, including the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Vehicle, Road and Traffic Intelligence Society of Japan, and ERTICO of ITS Europe have defined their own ITS architecture. Those initial thrusts on ITS have motivated researchers and engineers to identify key problems that must be addressed for an ITS system to be successful. There have been ongoing research on different aspects of ITS systems, but a great deal of work still remains to be done. The goal of this forum is to provide an open discussion for the recent research results on a broad range of topics relevant to ITS architecture, network support, communication-based information technologies, and application development.
The proposed speakers will be experts from academic institutions, automobile makers, electronics and telecommunications firms, and government agencies involved in the research, development and design of ITS technologies.
Moderators:
David Wei, Fordham University, USA
Teruo Higashino, Osaka University, Japan
Panelists:
Hiroshi Shigeno, Keio University, Japan
Fredrik Tufvesson, Lund University, Sweden
Russell Hsing, Telcordia Technologies, USA
Shinichi Takeda, Visiting Researcher of Telcordia Technologies, USA
Javier Gozalvez, UWICORE Laboratory, University Miguel Hernandez of Elche, Spain
Wednesday, 7 December 2011 • 13:30 – 15:30 (Session I); 16:00 – 18:00 (Session II) • Room: GRB 310 A/B
IPv6 Forum
The BIG SHIFT to the IPv6 INTERNET
Organizer: Latif Ladid, President IPv6 Forum
On February 3, 2011, the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority- www.iana.org ) has allocated the last IP address blocks from the global IPv4 central address pool, ending all debates over when this would happen. Several months remain before Regional Registries consume all their remaining regional IPv4 address pools, with recent trends suggesting that Asia, Europe, and North America will exhaust in that order within a month or two on either side of July 1, 2011.
”The Internet has become the global communication network, now is the time to sustain its growth and stability by integrating IPv6. IPv6 adds great value to IPv4" states Dr. Vint Cerf, Honorary Chair, IPv6 Forum.
The eventuality of this day was foreseen by the IETF almost 20 years ago, and a replacement was developed. In 1999 the IPv6 Forum was established by the IETF IPv6 Task Force with the mission to educate and promote the new protocol, and now that we have reached the end of the IPv4 free pool, that mission is more urgent than ever. The IPv4 based Internet will not stop working, but it will stop growing, while the IPv6 based Internet is designed to grow for generations to come.
In our daily lives, failure of the Internet infrastructure or restrictions on its capabilities to add new users or support the worldwide economy are no longer acceptable. Therefore, the IPv6 Forum recommends to all people involved in ICT, that now is the time to leverage 2011 and 2012 for planning and rolling out the new version of the Internet Protocol. Enabling IPv6 in all ICT environment is not the end game but is now a critical requirement for continuity in all Internet business and services going forward. Production quality deployments will take time, starting late and accelerating the process will compromise quality and significantly raise the costs. The last thing that everyone should avoid is to have to rapidly deploy an unnecessarily costly IPv6 infrastructure to sustain growth and communicate with customers, suppliers, and partners.
Transition planning and adoption of IPv6 is now critical to the on-going stability and growth of Internet Protocol based ICT, not only in the public Internet but in every facet of your office, home and mobile electronic existence where TCP/IP and other IP protocols are used. Training, management, support, billing, security and applications development need to be engaged to allow you to be IPv6 ready.
This call is more critical to developing nations that strive to modernize their critical Internet infrastructure making it future proof and protecting their investments.
Session I: The IPv6 Transition Models & Benefits
Moderator: Latif Ladid, President IPv6 Forum
Panelists:
Ron Broersma, Chief Engineer, Defense Research and Engineering Network (DREN), on “Experiences with Deployment of IPv6 into Production Networks”
Scott Hogg, Director, Global Technology Resources, Inc. Chair, Rocky Mountains IPv6 Task Force, on “IPv6 Security for Broadband Access, Wireless and ISPs”
Stan Barber, Chair, Texas IPv6 Task Force, on “IPv6 in the Real World: Running an IPv6-enable Web Site”
Yanick Pouffary, IPv6 Forum Fellow; Chair, IPv6 Ready & Enable Programs, on “The IPv6 Benefits - Explained by one the original IETFers”
Session II: The IPv6 Drivers & Applications
Moderator: Latif Ladid, President IPv6 Forum
Panelists:
Yurie Rich, CTO, Nephos6, on “Scalability - Why the Smart Grid needs IPv6”
Stephan Lagerholm, Co-Chair, Texas IPv6 Task Force, on “IPv6 in LAN Environments”
John Loughney, Principle Engineer, Nokia Research Center, San Jose, on “IPv6 in 3GPP & 4G”
Wolfgang Fritsche, Head of Internet Competence Center at IABG, on “IPv6 in the Safety Sector”
Wednesday, 7 December 2011 • 13:30 – 15:30 • Room: GRB 310 D/E
Access Networks Forum I
Fiber to the Distribution Point and G.fast - The Next Generation of Broadband Access
Organizer: Kevin Schneider, CTO, ADTRAN, Inc, USA
Communications Service Providers around the world are seeking to deploy ultra high bandwidth solutions throughout their networks to achieve national objectives, global broadband competitiveness and to enable new and exciting applications and services. At the same time, they are also trying to go “green” by selecting products that consume less power. To achieve their goals, operators urgently need new ultra high performance solutions they can deploy quickly and cost effectively.
Fiber to the Home (FTTH) is a successful solution to meet these demands for a subset of residences (estimated at 30% to 50% in the most favorable environments) but the economics and cost of deployment have become an insurmountable challenge in many high cost areas. Fiber to the Node (FTTN) and Fiber to the Cabinet (FTTC) solutions are being deployed in areas where the economics and deployment challenges limit FTTH deployment. FTTH /FTTC leverages fiber deployment in the existing feeder plant, and with the nodes providing services to several hundred subscribers, the cost of fiber deployment can be spread over that number, keeping cost per subscriber fairly low. However, with copper loop lengths reaching 1 km or more, even with the latest advances in technology, the data rate that can be offered is often less than 100 Mbps per twisted pair, well below what is projected to be needed in the future.
As each deployment topology is different, operators need a full toolbox of solutions that goes beyond FTTH and FTTN/FTTC to achieve national broadband targets on a wide scale basis. A new product category is required that can deliver data rates of 100 Mbps and up quickly and cost-effectively, utilizing the existing copper where it is cost prohibitive to replace it with the fiber required for FTTH. This deployment model, which brings fiber to the distribution point nearest to the home has been referred to as Fiber to the Distribution Point or FTT-DP.
While initial solutions have already reached the market, standards bodies have recently recognized the need and have started developing requirements and technology for these ultra high performance solutions. The Broadband Forum (BBF) has been developing requirements for such a solution and recently requested that the ITU-T start a standards development program when the requirements are completed. Requirements mentioned to date are for maximum loop lengths of 200m with typical loop lengths of 30-50m, providing 500 Mbps on 30 m loops. In response, the ITU-T started a project to study/define a very high data rate solution for very short copper access loops, which has been named G.fast.
This forum will engage senior representatives of companies that are involved in various phases of the FTT-DP/G.fast development process: Service Providers, Equipment Providers, Chipset Providers, and the theoretical work that underlies the technology.
Moderator: Don Clarke, Network Innovation Strategy Manager, BT Research and Technology
Panelists:
Vernon Reed, Lead Member of Technical Staff, AT&T Labs
Chano Gomez, Director, Business Development, Lantiq
Kevin Schneider, Chief Technology Officer, ADTRAN, Inc, USA
Wednesday, 7 December 2011 • 13:30 – 15:30 • Room: GRB 320 A/B
Medical Communications Forum
Medical Communications - Technologies and Challenges
Organizer: Charles Willis, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA
Like many other industries, the 21st century healthcare industry is highly dependent on information technology. Healthcare somewhat differs from other industries in special requirements for privacy, unique regulations by federal, state, and local authorities, and in the possibility of particularly dire consequences in the event of failures of the technology. The healthcare industry is not a large enough market force to drive technological changes, but rather leverages technological advancements from industries, such as the consumer electronics industry, the telecommunications industry, and the banking industry. This forum will discuss the medical informatics, imaging informatics, the concept of the electronic medical record, and the central role that informatics plays in the synthesis of imaging information and in the development and monitoring of treatment.
Moderator: Charles E. Willis, Associate Professor, Department of Imaging Physics, UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Houston
Topic 1: “Medical Informatics: a 40,000 foot view.” Jiajie Zhang, PhD, Dr. Doris L. Ross Professor and Associate Dean for Research, Director, National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision Making in Healthcare, School of Biomedical Informatics, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Topic 2: “Imaging Informatics”. Charles E. Willis, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Imaging Physics, UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Houston
Topic 3: “The Electronic Medical Record”. Charles Suitor, MS, Director, Electronic Medical Records, EMR Development & Support, UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Houston
Topic 4: “How informatics enables the modern practice of Radiology”. Kevin W. McEnery, MD, Professor, Department of Diagnostic Imaging, UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Houston
Panel Discussion: All
Wednesday, 7 December 2011 • 16:00 – 18:00 • Room: GRB 310 D/E
Access Networks Forum II
The Convergence of Wireline and Wireless Access Networks -
Recent Advance and Challenges of Fiber Penetration into Carrier Ethernet, MSOs, Smart Grid and Mobile Backhaul.
Organizer: Frank Chang, Vitesse, USA
In recent years, the fiber penetration into broadband end users has opened the discussion about seamless integration of wireline and wireless access networks to provide both increased mobility and bandwidth for broadband services in the broadband access arena. This panel will provide exposure to those individuals interested in key insights and challenges of wireless/wireline access convergence and learning about the latest in networking technologies, particularly for the service provider and carrier Ethernet technologies. A wide range of industry leaders representing many different perspectives will be hand to present and entertain questions.
Potential topics will focus on broadband access and service delivery architecture, technologies, solutions and applications. The discussion will cover, but is not limited to:
· Market Analysis and drivers for wireline and wireless access.
· Recent PON std developments, testing, and deployment status
· Next-gen PON access development
· DPoE or DOCSIS-PON, or RFoG for MSOs
· Time transport with 1588v2
· Synchronization in Wireless Backhaul
· CPRI Architecture and PON into wireless backhaul
· Cost-effective optical transceivers
· Carrier Ethernet access technologies
· Application of UniPON for mobile internet
· Triple network convergence requirements
Moderator: Frank Chang, Vitesse, USA
Panelists:
Julie Kunstler, Principal Analyst at Ovum Research
Dong Liu, Director, Strategic Mktg and Bus Development of Access business, Qualcomm
Yuanqiu Luo, Huawei Technologies
Pat Diamond, Independent Consultant
Bernd Hesse, Sr Director, Strategic Bus Development of LG-Ericsson
Chris Pfistner, Director, Global Access Business Division of NeoPhotonics
Naoto Yoshimoto, R&D Sr. Manager, NTT Access Network Service Systems Laboratories
Wednesday, 7 December 2011 • 16:00 – 18:00 • Room: GRB 320 A/B
KM Forum
Knowledge Management in Customer Care
Organizer: Jon Wright, James Fan, Jennifer Lam, Steve Polston, AT&T
Three decades of explosive growth in networking technologies, devices, and services over the past three decades has turned customer care into a highly knowledge-intensive exercise for service providers. Supporting human agents in this environment is challenging in its own right, but the development of self-support channels has added an additional level of complexity. In addition, the value of understanding the data generated from the various forms of customer care is now recognized and accepted.
This forum will discuss emerging technologies with the potential to significantly improve the customer experience, and, just as importantly, help managers understand the complex events and that are happening in customer care.
Topics covered will include:
-- Text Analytics in the Contact Center
-- Cross channel analysis in Customer Care
-- Content Modeling for deeper contextual understanding
-- Deep question and answering systems
-- Building and Maintaining complex knowledge structures
-- Increasing relevance for self-service support with a knowledge-based approach
Moderator: Jon Wright, Principal Member of Technical Staff, AT&T Labs – Research, AT&T
Panelists:
Peggy Zagelow, IBM Content Analytics Development, USA
Ian Hersey, CTO, Attensity, USA
Lars Hard, CTO & Founder, ExpertMaker, Sweden
Thursday, 8 December 2011 • 8:00 – 10:00 • Room: GRB 310 A/B
Social Networking Forum
Social Computing Applications and Mobile Networks: A Convergence Scenario
Organizers: Seshadri Mohan and Nitin Agarwal, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, USA
The forum will focus on the phenomenal growth of social computing applications and the need to incorporate awareness of social networks within wireless networks. The recent advancements in socio-technical systems have induced behavioral changes among the users. It is imperative to adapt the networks to cater to such behavioral changes. By becoming aware of the capabilities of wireless networks and devices, user experience in their interaction with social networks can be enhanced. The forum will focus on the trends, the standardization efforts in wireless and social computing applications arena that could facilitate the convergence of social and mobile networks.
This forum aims to invite industry speakers that will provide the participants an in-depth understanding of the following aspects of the convergence scenario:
· The varied nuances taking place in the rapidly growing field of social computing applications,
· A taxonomy of social computing applications,
· Induced behavioral changes due to advances in socio-technical systems and its effects on network infrastructure
· Network-aware social computing applications – the challenges and opportunities,
· A framework architecture for convergence of wireless networks and social applications,
· Standardization in the wireless networking arena that facilitates the development of network-aware social applications, thereby facilitating the convergence of social applications and mobile networks; The part of the forum on standardization efforts will include
o 3GPP standardization of IP Multimedia Subsystems
o IETF QoS Standards
o 3GPP QoS Classifications
o GSMA IP Packet Exchange Solution
o I3 Forum activities
o ETSI TISPAN NGN
· End-to-end QoS solutions as a means of creating network-aware social applications
· Performance parameters for social networking applications
· Future trends
Moderator: Seshadri Mohan, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, USA
Thursday, 8 December 2011 • 13:30 – 15:30 • Room: GRB 310 A/B
Next Generation Services Overlay Networks (NGSON) Forum
Organizer: Mehmet Ulema, Manhattan College, NY, USA
Next generation service overlay network (NGSON) provides a framework and necessary functions to support context-aware, dynamically adaptive, and self-organizing networks over Internet Protocol (IP)-based networks. NGSON is envisioned to include advanced service and transport level routing and forwarding schemes that are independent of the underlying networks such as IMS, NGN, P2P overlay or WEB to transmit NGSON signaling messages and/or media among its users and services. Recognizing he importance of this issue, many standards organizations have been addressing various aspects of the issue under different frameworks and terminology. NGSON is the IEEE’s official name for this effort under IEEE Project 1903. A number of equipment vendors, telecom operators, and research organizations have been working on this project to standardize various aspects under P 1903. As of this writing, the Working Group is about to wrap up the functional architecture for NGSON.
The panelists will discuss various aspects of NGSON, as well as the status of NGSON standardization effort. Panelists will be invited to address any of, but not limited to, the following or related topic areas:
NGSON architecture for wire line and wireless networks
Status of NGSON standards
Status of, and experiences with, NGSON implementation and testbed
NGSON applications and services for both wire line and wireless IP-based networks
Security issues with NGSON
NGSON Service Routing
NGSON Service Composition
Dynamic Adaptation in NGSON
Context Awareness in NGSON
Self-Organization in NGSON
QoS and Performance Issues in NGSON
NGSON Network and Service Management
NGSON interactions with IMS, P2P, etc
Moderator: Mehmet Ulema, Manhattan College, NY, USA
Panelists:
Rick Townsend, Huawei Technologies, USA
F. Joe Lin, Telcordia Technologies, USA
Li Yan, Huawei Technologies, China
Jong Hwa Yi, ETRI, South Korea
Wu Bin, ChinaMobile, China
Thursday, 8 December 2011 • 16:00 – 18:00 • Room: GRB 320 A/B
SDR Forum II
Cognitive Radio in Software Defined Radio (CR/SDR)
Organizers:
R. Muralidharan, General Manager, Tata Power SED India
D R Vaman, PV A&M University, USA
This Forum will discuss the critical issues that need to be addressed in order to commercialize the Cognitive Radio in Software Defined Radio (CR/SDR). These issues include:
· Trust verification
· Synchronization of dynamically variable components at each layer using cross layer controls
· Frequency synchronization in a broad spectrum where CR function is deployed
· Optimal consideration for CR design that minimizes the spectrum conflicts with power efficiency and bandwidth efficiency
· Finally, can an industry which owns a spectrum through government auction allow CR to be implemented that has some issues with malicious radios entering the system?
The panel members are well versed in both military environment and commercial environment with active participation in SDR forum and Future Warrior radio deployments. They have been involved one way or another in the design of CR/SDR much ahead of many organizations due to their dual association in industry and DoD. The members of IEEE who attend this panel will get significant and thriving discussions on different positions taken by the panel members.
Moderators:
R. Muralidharan, General Manager, Tata Power SED India
D R Vaman, PV A&M University, USA
Panelists:
Lawrence B Milstein, Professor, Univ of California at San Diego
Vincent J Kovarik Jr., PrismTech, USA
John Glossner, General chair, SDR'11 WInncomm & CTO at Optimum Semiconductor
