Access aspects of voice/data convergence

As the cost of bit transport in backbone networks continues to drop, the access represents an increasing part of a carrier's overall investment. It is therefore of cardinal interest to carriers to maximise the return on this investment by turning today's access (e.g., the telephone line) into a single high-bandwidth line for voice, data and video services. This coincides with the interests of network users, who are best served by a single point of access to a converged set of services which use the full capabilities of the underlying networks. The paper explores the implications of these trends on wireline access and infrastructure, focusing in particular on the emerging xDSL and VoDSL technologies, as well as gateways for interworking between heterogeneous networks.