FASTWEB: One of the Largest VOIP Networks in the World
FASTWEB is the leading broadband service provider in Italy, with 600,000 customers and over 10 million VoIP calls per day (as of June 2005). FASTWEB has one of the largest VoIP networks in the world and is considered a leading player on the VoIP market.
FastWeb was created in 1999 as a fully-owned operating company of e.Biscom to provide broadband telecommunication services in Italy. In December 2004, the two companies merged under the name FASTWEB.
Since its creation, the company has been dedicated to providing Triple Play services and has developed a new generation of telecommunication networks and services, providing a complete alternative to traditional telephony services in the main metropolitan areas of Italy.
FASTWEB’s success is mainly due to its visionary approach to the market. Before FASTWEB, “Triple Play” was only a buzzword; but FASTWEB proved that it could be a successful business model by carefully analyzing the value chain and defining appropriate service bundles.
Today, FASTWEB can be considered the second wireline operator in Italy with geographic coverage of 7.2 million households, covering a third of the population (as of 31st August 2005). FASTWEB revenues increased 25% in the first half of 2005 to 421.9 million Euros.
FASTWEB 's Need: To Transcend the Niche by Adding Primary Line Voice Traffic to Data
“We never believed that data alone could be a viable business model and we realized that, given Italy’s low rate of PC penetration and Internet usage, any service based only on data would represent a niche,” said Guido Garrone, CTO of FASTWEB. “So we decided from day one that our IP network would also carry primary line voice traffic and that the basic service would come with data and voice as well as several additional options like TV-based videoconferencing and video streaming.”
An additional FASTWEB insight was to make its video offering TV-centric, promoting IPTV and videoconferencing using set-top-boxes connected to the television, instead of a PC platform.
FASTWEB has proven that video is a good short-term marketing investment and a long-term cash cow: today FASTWEB enjoys an exceptionally high penetration rate for video.
The Challenge: To Become the First VoIP Network Used for Primary Line Services, and to Provide the Triple Play
It’s always a challenge to be first. FASTWEB sought to become the first VoIP network to be used for primary line services.
The voice/ Internet access/ TV/ video bundle was vital to FASTWEB’s success — yet the services offered to the end-user are only part of the challenge. Much of the real complexity of the residential network takes place behind the scenes.
Specific challenges to be solved included regulatory compliance for primary line telephony. Residential telephony is highly regulated and telephony networks, VoIP or not, must provide:
- Legal Intercept: Allowing police authorities with the proper mandate to listen to and record any call
- Local Number Portability: Enabling FASTWEB to manage numbers ported out from the incumbent carrier or other carriers
- Special: Identification of malicious calls, CLIR, emergency services, etc.
- Free Call Announcements: An Italy-specific requirement for messages to be played before all calls to free phone numbers
A further challenge was the need for robust voice service. “Customers are pleased with multimedia services, but traditional telephony services are also expected to be delivered with 100% availability and toll quality”, said Garrone. “So we needed a telephony solution able to meet customer growth without any service outage.”
“Another important factor of our business model’s success relies on our ability to provide innovative, future-proof technologies that enable cost-effective and fast integration of new multimedia services over IP,” adds Garrone.
The Solution: Comverse Netcentrex
The challenges were solved with the implementation of the Comverse Netcentrex MyCall Residential Services Suite solution, based on the CCS softswitch.
Why Selected
“Netcentrex worked hard with us to solve all the complex issues of a large scale deployment of Voice over IP. The success of the service today proves the maturity of the solution,” said Garrone.
Technically, the business model is based on two elements. First, the deployment of the world’s first IP-based network offering voice, data, Internet and video simultaneously over a single connection to both residential and business clients. Second, guaranteed high-speed connectivity thanks to an extensive fiber network and DSL technology.
Clear-Cut Results: Strong Business Performance
The Comverse Netcentrex solution was a clear-cut success that delivered impressive results.
Increased ARPU
By adding a fraction of the primary line telephone subscription fee previously charged by the incumbent carrier to its own monthly service charge, FASTWEB raised its yearly average revenue per user (ARPU) to 900 Euros (June 2005).
Successful Business Model
Since the deployment, FASTWEB has demonstrated strong financial performance, with double-digit growth in revenues and commercial success in all of the cities where services have been introduced.
Consolidated revenues were over 421 million Euros during the first half of 2005 — an increase of approximately 25% compared to the first half 2004.
Thanks to its integrated voice, Internet, video and value-added services package, FASTWEB’s customer base extends to 600,000 clients and its ARPU is almost double the average of other European operators.
Telephony Services as a Key Success Factor
Advanced telephony services and centralized accounting records were essential to the business success of FASTWEB. The Netcentrex solution enables FASTWEB to offer (and charge for) a range of supplementary services such as call forward, call waiting, call blocking, CLIP and CLIR.
Thanks to the regulatory compliance of the Netcentrex solution (legal intercept, number portability, etc.), FASTWEB is able to offer primary line services. This translates into easier customer acquisition and higher subscription fees.
The CCS softswitch greatly facilitates the rapid provisioning of voice services during FASTWEB’s commercial expansion with an average installation rate of 1,000 new subscribers each day.
Future-Proof Solution
Netcentrex solutions all run on a multiprotocol architecture. This enabled FASTWEB to make an initial deployment of H.323 customer premise equipment (CPEs) in 2002, and more recently to deploy SIP CPEs on the same Netcentrex infrastructure.
The Netcentrex architecture is compliant with IMS and TISPAN. This means that the solution is future-proof and will allow rapid and cost-effective deployment of new multimedia services.
In the meantime, Netcentrex allows FASTWEB to immediately profit from IMS and TISPAN benefits such as lower OPEX and CAPEX, rapid service creation, and rapid service deployment.
Satisfied End-Users
FASTWEB’s business success in residential Triple Play is based on the company’s ability to fulfill the needs of families for all multimedia communication and entertainment.
Consumers value the simplicity of dealing with a single supplier, providing a single bill with attractive pricing.
With user-friendly interfaces to all services via the TV and the Internet, they can easily enjoy advanced telephony features and take full advantage of multimedia messaging.
All of this translates into low customer churn and high ARPU for FASTWEB.
“The solution addresses both scalability issues and regulatory constraints, such as local number portability and legal interception of calls, with 100% Voice over IP technology, in an environment with more than four different vendors,” comments Guido Garrone, CTO of FASTWEB.
Ease of Application Development
In a record time of four months, FASTWEB deployed an initial solution with the Netcentrex CCS softswitch. This infrastructure has evolved over time and now it includes several softswitches, each managing a zone of 200,000 users.
Before working with Netcentrex, FASTWEB used an infrastructure gatekeeper in direct mode, as well as several access gatekeepers to ensure the registration of endpoints, also working in direct mode. Due to this, no supplementary services (e.g. call forward or no answer) could be provided, and billing of IP-to IP-calls was impossible.
Reliability and Easy Provisioning
Each CCS deployed by FASTWEB is a cluster with N+1 redundancy, ensuring continuous operation in the event of a hardware or software failure, as well as non-disruptive software upgrades.
The CCS softswitch greatly facilitates the provisioning of voice services, as all subscriber profiles are stored in a centralized LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) directory, and the CCS manages the routing of calls between residential subscribers, corporate IP-PBXs and FASTWEB PSTN gateways in a centralized manner.
The CCS also ensures improved call completion rates, as it dynamically reroutes calls when congestion occurs, a feature that wasn’t possible in the previous architecture.
Full Range of Triple Play Services
The residential voice service enables the use of two POTS lines at home. No IP phone is required; most end-users simply connect a wireless DECT base station or an analogue phone to the CPE supplied by FASTWEB.
FASTWEB provides an attractive price plan where all on-net calls between FASTWEB subscribers are free, and unlimited national calls are charged at a fixed monthly rate. New customers can keep their existing telephone numbers (number portability).
Beyond the basic call capabilities, FASTWEB also offers a range of supplementary services such as call forwarding, call waiting, call hold, call blocking, CLIP and CLIR, for which FASTWEB can earn additional charges.
FASTWEB’s Triple Play services include:
- Carrier-grade telephony
- High-speed Internet access
- Premium television: Pay TV, Video-on-Demand, gaming
- Video communication via the TV set
A Single Infrastructure for Residential and Corporate Telephony Services
Netcentrex platforms can be used simultaneously to provide consumer telephony and enterprise communications services. The first business telephony service offered by FASTWEB was IP trunking, allowing business customers to save on communication costs by connecting their PBXs or IP-PBXs directly to FASTWEB’s IP backbone.
FASTWEB also provides more sophisticated corporate services, such as 800 number routing and IVR. The latest initiative is the introduction of IP Centrex to provide fully-featured, hosted enterprise telephony.
Future-Proof Infrastructure
New standards such as IMS and TISPAN are natural evolutions of Netcentrex’s SIP-based, distributed and directory-based architecture. Netcentrex can therefore ensure a smooth migration of FASTWEB’s current solution to a full IMS and TISPAN architecture.