When migrating to the NGN of the future, many network providers are keen to provide platforms that will provide flexibility for future service innovation while maintaining their existing service sets to earn the revenues they need to ensure survival today. The ideal scenario is one where legacy services can be supported on the NGN platform such that operationally expensive legacy platforms can be retired in a manner that has little or ideally no impact on the end customer. For larger networks operators, migration to the NGN will also include OSS and support systems so operational cost can be reduced and customers are not impacted.

This session will consider some of the latest technology innovations and techniques, including the following, that will enable a mixture of legacy services and new packet-based services to be supported on a converging NGN of the future:

• Managing the transformation of an existing network to an NGN and its impacts on customers and their services.
• The ability to carry legacy and new services over the NGN, plus impacts on operations and support systems.
• The use of QoS in the network to differentiate services.
• The challenge of PSTN migration, including residential and business services.
• Impacts on operators, OSS, support systems, operations, etc.

Bob Cheetham Head of Portfolio Fujitsu Telecommunications Europe Limited

Mr. Cheetham is responsible for Fujitsu's Access Portfolio, including the latest 3G DSLAM platform. He joined Fujitsu in 1998 and has more than 30 years of telecom experience. He has an M.B.A. from Warwick University and an M.Sc. in telecoms from Aston University. Previous technical highlights from his career include product management responsibility for System X and work on burst-mode transmission on copper pairs-later to become the basis of the initial basic-rate ISDN service introduced in the United Kingdom in the early 1980s.

Pieter Duijves Managing Director, Europe Global Crossing

Mr. Duijves has been in his current role since December 2004. He joined Global Crossing in 1999. Before assuming leadership for operations in mainland Europe and Ireland, Mr. Duijves was vice president for Global Crossing's Northern Europe division. In this capacity, he served on the European management team and the regional management of the Germany, Scandinavian countries, and Benelux entities. Mr. Duijves was heavily involved in establishing Global Crossing's presence in Europe.

Charlie Ferreira Director, Business Development Symmetricom

Mr. Ferreira has 18 years of experience working in the timing and synchronization industry for such companies as Oscilloquartz Switzerland, Chronos Technology Limited, and SAAB Grintek. His experience ranges from positions in RF engineering to synchronization systems engineering, working closely with international telecom operators and manufacturers to develop solutions for virtually all applications requiring synchronization expertise. Mr. Ferreira has written numerous papers on the synchronization of wireline and wireless networks. He is a steering group member of the ITSF and a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (formerly the IEE).

John Mellis Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder Evolved Networks

Mr. Mellis has many years of experience of leading project teams and functional units at BT, principally in telecom access and optical network development. He led the project in the BT/DuPont (now Agilent) joint venture, which launched the world's first commercially available optical amplifiers, and was a special rapporteur for the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. Prior to joining BT, he advanced system developments for Nortel and British Aerospace.