Network Interoperability Consultative Committee

NICC News

The Board of the Network Interoperability Consultative Committee (NICC) met in April for the 39th time.

Following its establishment at the last NICC Board, the consolidated manufacturers' Interest Group, ESS-IG (Equipment and Systems Suppliers) announced the results of its elections for officers, namely Mark Ashworth (Nortel) as Chairman, Keith Favell (Nortel) as Vice-Chairman and Mike Everard (IBM) as Secretary. ESS-IG is intending to revitalise its activities and the group would welcome more manufacturers in the telecoms field to membership.

There are no direct costs of membership of a NICC Interest Group but considerable potential benefit. Small, medium and large companies not only gain insight into regulatory developments but also have the opportunity to influence the development of standards and technical matters that bear directly on the industry through voluntary participation in the Task Groups (TG) addressing different studies. Membership is available to operators, service providers and manufacturers at TG and IG level separately if desired.

NICC Chairman Professor John O'Reilly, welcomed Ian Tavendale (Omne Communications) to his first meeting of the NICC Board as a representative of the PNO-IG (Public Network Operators). John hopes this was a sign that we might see more participation from the wider community of public network operators in future.

PNO-IG has also held elections and Simon Sporton (Vodafone) has become Chairman after several years as Vice-Chairman, now supported by John Bussey (BT Group) as Vice-Chairman and Ian Laidlaw-Dickson (BT Group) who continues as Secretary. John O'Reilly recorded the Board's thanks to the outgoing PNO-IG Chairman, Huw Saunders (KCL) for his involvement in the NICC since its foundation and support as Chairman of the operators' group.

A report was received from the UK ISUP Administrative Working Group (AWG), which is working to ensure an orderly migration of the UK networks to the use of the UK version of ETSI Signalling System No.7 Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) User Part (UK ISUP) for interconnection. Milestones have been achieved on schedule and operators are able to request UK-ISUP interconnection from BT on a 'business as usual' basis. The next milestone allows operators to refuse new interconnection using the old standard, IUP, from 31 December 2003. The Board discussed the question of notice periods by operators who wished to invoke the milestone. The conclusion reached was that interconnect contracts required six months notice, but good practice would suggest nine, or preferably 12, months' notice be given. In any event operators' needs and rollout plans would commercially drive this issue.

The E2E QoS TG submitted its findings about the impact on end to end Quality of Service of increasing packetisation in networks and the effects of more transit networks being involved in end to end connection. This resulted in the NICC Board authorising a new study to revise the National Transmission Plan (NPDS) for public networks and the National Code of Practice (NCOP) for private networks. The PNO-IG and ESS-IG will jointly run this study group.

The Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) TG has completed another phase of its work, with the release of Guidelines concerning external and inter-network interference issues. Further revision to the access network frequency plans for VDSL is under consideration, but completion is dependent on the outcome of work in the ITU and not therefore expected until December.

The report on the review of Number Portability Service Descriptions was accepted by the Board and a new Study authorised to consider the issues of number portability with alternative bearer technologies such as IP and ATM.

Information about NICC output is available on Oftel's website at www.oftel.gov.uk/ind_groups/nicc/public. Some documents are freely available for download, others (indicated in the index as 'Published Documents') may be purchased from the British Standards Institute.

NICC Open Forum

This year's NICC Open Forum will be held on Thursday 14 November and returns to Simmons and Simmons who have kindly offered the use of their facilities at City Point, Ropemaker Street, London EC2Y 9SS. BT and Spitfire have offered to sponsor the event, which will discuss an interesting range of topics under the broad theme Survivability in a Post-dotcom Era.

The NICC Secretary welcomes suggestions from manufacturers, operators, service providers and other interested parties for thought-provoking presentations and subjects for discussion. Application may be made to the NICC Secretary for an invitation to this complimentary event. Places are restricted and we again expect a sell-out, so early application is recommended, although invitations will not be sent out until nearer the time.

Joining NICC

Interested parties from industry are invited to join the NICC Task and Interest Groups by initially contacting the NICC Technical Secretary to discuss their interests.

For general information about the structure and activities of NICC, please visit the NICC section of the Oftel website. Otherwise please contact the NICC Technical Secretary, Roy Davies (tel: 020 7634 8906 / e-mail roy.davies@oftel.gov.uk or Network Interoperability Programme Manager, Bill Hawkins (tel: 020 7634 8807 / e-mail bill.hawkins@oftel.gov.uk).