Level 3 Communications

Transcription

1 Level 3 Communications Don Gips GVP, Corporate Development and Strategy TeleSoft's 10th Anniversary 2006 Annual Venture Capital EcoSystem Meeting October 19,

2 Agenda Level 3: Built to meet the needs of the optic nerve The Blackhole of Cyberspace The implications of IP convergence in video and voice Key issues and opportunities for emerging firms 2

3 Level 3: Built to Serve the Optic Nerve Bandwidth is strongly price elastic While most other terrestrial networks were designed for speech, Level 3 spent $14 billion building an IP network with the potential to allow people to communicate with their eyes New applications will keep bandwidth demand growing rapidly We can t predict what new applications will emerge over time but we believe they will use a lot of bandwidth! E.g., a single 2-way uncompressed telepresence session (approximating the information gathering potential of our optical nerve) needs ~ 15 Tbps > ~ 5 times the total Internet traffic in the US!!! Assumptions 1 half sphere/per eye 2,400 dots per inch 24 bit color 30 frames per sec billion pixels 7.5 Tbps each way 3

4 What Did We Get for Our $14 Billion? Intercity Network in the US and Europe ~36,400 route miles, 16 countries More than 5.1 petabytes of traffic per day Deep Metro footprint in ~110 markets 23,300 metro fiber route miles 5,300 Traffic Aggregation Points Fully upgradable - can optimally deploy new generations of fiber and equipment E.g. Infinera DWDM PIC technology in intercity network E.g., Ethernet in Metro and Core networks 4

5 10000 Most Importantly, We Built a Fully Upgradeable Network Network Technology Platforms Network technologies that follow silicon economics are critical to make bandwidth growth economical for end users and network providers Unit Cost Gb Routing OC-48X8 SMF Fiber 10Gb Routing OC-192X32 NZDS Fiber Ethernet Routing From day 1 Level 3 bet on disruptive technologies (IP and DWDM) that had the best potential to bring unit costs down over time Going forward we need new generations of switches, routers, optical transport components etc. that keep improving unit costs Photonic Integrated Circuits E- LEAF Fiber 1 Time? The most improvement potential is in access networks they are the main bottleneck to deliver rich media to the home 5

6 Level 3 Offers All the Building Blocks Necessary to Compete in the Blackhole of Cyberspace Integrated set of optical and IP services Basic building blocks to featurerich IP and VoIP services Addresses full range of needs from service providers to enterprises VoIP provided over advanced softswitch network Proven business support systems Industry leading customer support Local Inbound Wholesale Switched Services Managed Modem Wavelengths Managed Services Storage Hosting Security Local Voice Services Internet Enhanced Local Service Voice Termination IP Services Transport Video Transport (Sports, Transport News, Ads) Infrastructure E911 Data Services Toll Free Private Line Inter City Fiber Metro Fiber Colocation 6

7 Level 3 s Customers Level 3 s Wholesale and Content Market Groups serve the world s most bandwidth intensive companies including: The largest Web properties and Media companies The 4 largest ISPs The 6 largest cable MSOs The top 4 cellular providers All 4 RBOCs Major IXCs Major PTTs Major satellite companies Level 3 Business Market Group serves ~13,500 enterprise customers 7

8 IP convergence Leads to Blackhole of Cyberspace IP disintermediates supply chains and allows mass customization Huge Existing Markets Consumer and business sales Physical software distribution Enterprise and consumer software applications Physical music and video media distribution Internet Based Substitutes Electronic commerce Network based software distribution Application service providers Network based content distribution Level 3 Wholesale IP Traffic Gigabits at July Broadcast and Cable TV Streaming audio and video Peer-to-peer video downloads are driven by only < 10% of Internet users but already represents half of all Internet traffic! 8

9 The Blackhole is Finally Coming to Video Online stores are already selling millions of videos for PCs and media players How Fast Did itunes Music Store Grow? 30M songs sold in first 8 months after launch M May 2003 July 2005 Source: Apple Press Releases, Level 3 Analysis 2 years later, 50M songs sold each month itunes Video has been growing just as fast since its launch 30M videos in first 8 months If this trend continues, itunes traffic could grow to over ~500TB / day by 2008 In addition Yahoo, MSN, AOL, the major sports leagues, etc. are all promoting Internet video content and user-generated video is also seeing rapid adoption Web 2.0 / Social Networking: in 18 months YouTube has grown to 70+ mil. visitors/month and 110 mil. streams per day, the true beginning of communication with the eyes Place shifting: Sling Media lets consumers stream video from home to anywhere on the Internet 9

10 Internet Video In The Living Room Would Accelerate This Growth Further Even with compression, video on a TV (esp. in High Def) drives much more traffic than itunes or YouTube Estimated file size for 1 hour of MPEG4 video MegaBytes 2,700 Economics of delivering movies online are already attractive Total Delivery Cost Of A 1GB Movie (~2 hours of full screen standard def.) $ 1.6 Store Rental 1.2 Mail Rental YouTube itunes Standard Definition High Definition Full TV screen Source: Level 3 estimates Assumes highly compressed video with data rates of 200 kbps (YouTube), 600 kbps (ITunes), 1 Mbps (Std Def) and 6 Mbps (High Def) IP Delivery Source: Level 3 estimates 10

11 Challenges For IP Video Service Providers And Opportunities For Emerging Companies Challenges: Need to contain costs as bandwidth demand growth Need easy way for content owners to make videos available online in various formats and on various platforms (TVs, computers, Portable Media Players, Cell Phones ) Need hassle-free DRM and seamless delivery of content to Living Room to help spur adoption Opportunities For: New generations of DWDM, routing etc. to reduce costs Enabling infrastructure that can perform on-the-fly content transcoding, manage metadata etc. in a scalable way with high quality and security Hardware and software for consumer electronics that bridge disparate standards and enable user-friendly, plugand-play experience 11

12 The Blackhole has already impacted the Voice Market but we are still early VoIP In early stages of mass adoption Enabled by IP softswitches that are ~50-80% less expensive than traditional circuit switches Relative Capital Cost Circuit Switch Softswitch $230 bil./year voice industry is undergoing major disruptions Cellular Wireless Very high adoption rate (70+%, 200+ mil. subs) Usage growing rapidly VoIP over Wireless Metro WiFi and WiMax deployments already underway VoIP cost per minute is significantly lower than circuit-switched voice on cellular networks 12

13 VoIP Is Growing Rapidly Analysts expect 46M total primary line VoIP users in the US by 2010 Millions more already use VoIP as secondary line 110+ mil. Skype users worldwide VoIP enables disruptive consumer and enterprise applications Geographic independence Arbitrage of Incumbent Provider prices Unified Communications Primary Line Subscribers (millions) 55% CAGR '04 '05 '06 '07 '08 '09 '10 Residential Source: IDC and Frost & Sullivan Business 13

14 VoIP Will Soon Be Ubiquitous Voice over IP is becoming a form of digital media embedded in various applications Search ecommerce Social networking websites Like , voice service pricing to end users will be increasingly hard to separate from other application costs Legacy phone service will come under increasing pressure as more subscribers can use IP to IP service VoIP will soon become mobile as WiFi and WiMax networks get deployed 14

15 VoIP is Also Putting Pressure on Incumbent Wireless Carriers to Reduce Costs Carriers are already under pressure as rising usage drives their network costs up while revenue per user remains flat Threat of VoIP over wireless may soon add to the incumbents cost problem Usage (minutes per sub per month) Revenue ($ per sub per month) $80 $70 $60 $50 $40 $30 $20 $10 $0 Sources: Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank WiFi/WiMax have low cost per bit at the edge 5x to 10x cheaper than 3G This advantage (and additional savings from using IP in the core network) should allow wireless VoIP providers to price well below incumbents E.g., Skype over mesh WiFi already allows for free wireless calls anywhere in Mountain View To overcome these threats, wireless carriers will need to: Bring more, cheaper bandwidth to cell sites with microwave links and fiber Embrace VoIP, WiFi, WiMax themselves? 15

16 Challenges For Service Providers And Opportunities For Emerging Companies Challenges: Need to drive cost out of traditional cellular networks Opportunities For: Cheaper backhaul technologies Point-to-point microwave equipment that is less expensive and easier to deploy and operate Inexpensive Fiber ADM s Cheaper voice transport and interconnections VoIP, TRFO etc. Continue to drive Moore s Law in mesh WiFi, WiMax Extract more revenue from mesh networks Technologies that increase bandwidth and range per $, e.g.: Cheaper multi-radio access points Smart antennas (MIMO) Location-aware services: ads, city guides, Web 2.0 (social networks, user-generated content), games, etc. Convergence - smart interconnections across networks (QoS, presence management etc.) Hardware and software that enable end-users to benefit from smart interconnections E.g. based on IMS 16

17 Q & A 17