Deployment of rich quad-play services leads to increases in bandwidth demand for broadband access networks. Plus, extending the reach of broadband networks to millions of subscribers presents scalability challenges for subscriber access, service delivery, session and policy management, and billing and accounting. Service providers are re-architecting their broadband networks to accommodate these kinds of services and scale. Among the possible architectural choices are both distributed and centralized models.

There is much debate as to which functions of the network should be distributed and which should be centralized. The choice of architectural approach is complex and multi-dimensional, encompassing throughput, element size and scale, service delivery, subscriber management, policy management, element management, high availability, and CAPEX and OPEX factors. Should services be integrated into a single device, or should application-specific devices persist in the network long term? What factors are of primary importance in the decision?

Bart Van de Velde Head of Solution Business Development, NGN foundation Cisco

Mr. Van de Velde joined Cisco in 1999 and is now responsible for the NGN foundation team for Cisco’s Service Provider Wireline business in Europe. He manages the business development activities in the areas of NGN transformations covering core, edge, carrier Ethernet, broadband access, and network management solutions.

Murray Cooke Chief Business Services Strategist BT

Mr. Cooke is responsible for the evolution of BT's services for corporate and enterprise customers, including their migration to BT's 21st Century Network NGN platform. He leads BT's technology strategy for the introduction of processing chassis technologies onto the 21C platform to handle a portfolio of internal and customer-facing applications. Prior to joining BT Group's CTO, Mr. Cooke was the head of Operational Engineering in BT's Global Solutions division, running U.K. banking, retail, and governmental networks. He has also held a number of strategy and business development roles and is a fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Derek Harkness Consultant, EMEA Products and Technologies Juniper Networks

Mr. Harkness is responsible for introducing new products and ideas to Juniper's customers for residential and multi-play solutions. Prior to his current role, he worked as a system engineer at Juniper and Unisphere, rolling out DSL and edge routing solutions for customers all across Europe, with a particular focus on his home German market. In some of his previous lives he developed data networking solutions for Siemens in Germany and conducted distributed processing and network management research at Roke Manor Research in the United Kingdom.

Peder Jungck Founder and Chief Technology Officer CloudShield

Mr. Jungck is the creator and guiding architect behind the company's CS-2000TM network applications server and RAVETM, CloudShield's unique and powerful packet processing development language. His earlier positions included CTO of yesmail.com, CTO of SVIC, managing partner and CIO of Internet-technology consulting firm Remington Associates, Ltd., and vice president of production and engineering for TerraGlyph Interactive Studios. Mr. Jungck has degrees in electrical and computer engineering from Clarkson University and Bachelor of Arts degrees in mathematics and computer science from Beloit College.

Francois Lemarchand Director of Worldwide Consulting Engineering Redback Networks

Mr. Lemarchand's responsibilities include evangelizing new technologies and products, sharing his network design experience with operators, and driving product evolution requirements from a field perspective. Prior to this he worked as senior product manager at CoSine Communications. Mr. Lemarchand holds a master's degree in computer science from Paris XI University.

Simon Spraggs Distinguished Consulting Engineer Cisco

Mr. Spraggs is responsible for defining Cisco’s end-to-end architecture for wireline and wireless service providers. He has worked in the telecom industry for more than 20 years, has a wide-ranging perspective on service provider services and technologies, and is currently focused on core and carrier Ethernet solutions.