ISDN: Ringing Up New Customers

AIthough it is an international standard for digital communications, ISDN (Integrated Systems Digital Network) may well be the most maligned acronym (Innovations Subscribers Don't Need, It Still Doesn't Network, I Smell Dollars Now) since IBM. Critics of ISDN find plenty to carp about. They point to the overhyping of ISDN services before they can be delivered, the high price of application equipment, slowness in getting the infrastructure in place and winning market acceptance, and--in some cases-incompatibility between ISDN services providers' equipment.

Japan enters the ISDN age

Here in Japan, at least, many of the hurdles are being overcome, and the number of subscriber lines is growing in leaps and bounds. When Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) introduced ISDN services under its Information Network System (INS) in 1988, there were only 114 subscriber lines in use for all Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, the first designated areas. Today, there are over 230,000 lines in service. By March of this year (1994), INS-Net service was available to 97 percent of the country's population, including all localities with a population of 30,000 or more.

So, it seems that the age of ISDN has finally arrived in Japan. But how is it actually being used?

NTT makes much ado over its showcase subscribers. Its most visible customer is the convenience chain store operation, 7Eleven, which started NTT's ISDN cash register ringing when it signed on in 1990. Within Japan, 7-Eleven uses ISDN for its point-of-sale data network that gathers sales information for analysis from its 4,700 nationwide stores. This setup is crucial in enabling the company to keep its regional and local inventories at optimum levels. In pre-ISDN days, 7-Eleven needed eight days to gather all the sales data, and longer still to respond to the stores. Now, 7-Eleven can analyze all the data in any given day up till 11 PM, and get back to store managers by noon the next day.

Other big users of ISDN include banks and insurance companies. These utilize ISDN for, among other things, monitoring ATM (automated teller machine) networks, creating image databases, and sending documents via high-speed G4 fax machines. (It is claimed that 60 high-quality pages can be fared in three minutes--for the cost of a 10-yen phone call.)

An innovative use of ISDN

It is not only the lucrative "national accounts" or "regional accounts" (as NTT designates its major corporate customers) that are making use of the service. Several smaller enterprises are finding that innovative use of ISDN can save both time and money.

TUV Rheinland Japan Ltd. is an equipment testing and certification company based in Cologne, Germany. TUV's Asian headquarters in Shin Yokohama has found ways to exploit ISDN for remote testing and teleconferencing at minimal cost.

For example, TUV has some 60 test engineers who frequently travel around Japan, visiting manufacturers that export goods to Germany and other European countries. These engineers test materials and prototype equipment for safety, then issue the various certificates required by the importing countries. "In some cases, follow-up visits may be required to test small changes and modifications," explains Kurt Heinz, company vice-president. "In such situations, it can take four or five hours to get to a customer site. Yet the testing may only take 30 minutes, making the time traveled far more expensive than the actual testing."

With ISDN, the company can eliminate the need to travel to the site. "Where we know the customer," says Heinz, "and where visual testing only is required, we can tailor a remote test session using ISDN." For this, TUV uses inexpensive video monitors, a simple video camera, and a VCR to record the test. The only expensive item is a codec (coding/decoding) box, which is needed to convert the video analog signals to digital(and vice versa) then compress it for transmission. Test sites are outfitted in a similar way, and also require an ISDN connection

A single INS-Net 64 line provides two 64K bps data channels (B-channels), plus one 16K bps signaling channel (D-channel) to control the B channels. This enables two parties to hold a conversation while observing each other on their respective monitor. The tester can thus ask questions and, by instr ucting the customer where to focus the camera or take measurements, observe the equipment. At 12 frames per second the video is not full-motion, but it is sufficient for the iob providing movement is not rapid. In fact, the resulting pictures are clearer than NTSC television.

Heinz estimates the total cost of the equipment came to M3 million, with most of that being spent on the codecs (which had to be imported from the US). The downside is that a test site must have the same make of codec to ensure compatibility. Also, remote testing is not suitable over long periods, because fatigue or frustration becomes a problem.

TUV has since expanded its use of ISDN to include teleconferencing with its German headquarters to get regular training sessions for its engineers. Here, a larger monitor is used, and KDD is the international ISDN provider. Otherwise, however, it's the same off-the-shelfequipment. Teleconferencing saves flying out specialist trainers for what are usually only half-day sessions.

TUV also uses ISDN to connect workstations at its Osaka office with the company's LAN system in Tokyo. "With ISDN there are no delays, and the highcapacity channel means we save a lot on phone callq" says Heinz.

No new cable installation was required to hook into ISDN. TUV simply contacted NTT, and a Digital Service Unit (DSU) that utilizes the existing phone line was installed within a couple of days. Up to eight ISDN applications can be connected to a single INS-Net 64 DSU, though only two can be used at any one time.

ISDN for retail sales

On a somewhat grander scale is the Distribution Economics Institute of Japan's use of ISDN. DEII is a non-profit research organization that works with the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MITI) to help modernize Japan's distribution industry.

About 3 O years ago, the institute set up a database on a mid-range IBM Japan mainframe to collect POS (point of sale) data from various retail stores. A couple of years later, data was added from a POS Scan Panel Data system used to monitor the buying habits of selected customers in some of the stores. The data was collected weekly on magnetic tapes, cleaned up and entered into the database, and then analyzed. Retailers and their suppliers would access the results by dumb terminals and 2400 baud modems.

As more users signed on, the system became excruciatingly slow. "Sometimes it took up to 15 or 20 minutes for users just to download the data," notes Katsuyoshi Hirano, a researcher at DEIJ. So in 1992, the institute committed itself to ditching the mainframe. It switched instead to a client/server system using Nihon Sun Microsystems workstations and servers, and ISDN for communications.

Today, many major chain stores--including Ito-Yokado, Daiei, Uni, and Jusco-as well as 28 consumer goods manufacturers and 10,000 monitor customers participate in the system. In addition to a beefedup response time, the system supports more sophisticated services. These include a graphical user interface; analysis for decision-support making in marketing; forecast modeling; and the use of image data of products, special sales promotions, shelf displays, and store layouts. "We couldn't even consider such kinds of services under the old system," says Hirano.

The center maintains forty-two INSNet 64 lines con nected to ISL)N Termi nal Adapter (TA) add-on boards mounted in three workstations. The Ths act as gateways, running on TCP/IP for transmission to UNIX-based workstations located at customer sites. The database has been expanded from 5 gigabytes, under the old IBM mainframe, to 52 gigabytes today, including some 20,000 stored images. OKACLE is used for the database engine.

But dependency on Big Iron hasn't been totally eliminated. Before the data is stored and analyzed, it is ~rst routed through a Hitachi mainframe via ISDN for collection. Hirano says that as new services are introduced, however, this step is being eliminated in favor of workstation-to-workstation hook up.

Upgraded services have encouraged users to make more use of the system. Customers are hooking up PC LANs (local area networks) to their workstations, allowing various departments-sales and marketing, for instance--as well as chief buyers at a company's headquarters to individually access the data. As a result, the 64 kilobit per second ISDN lines now appear "terribly slow," says Hirano. It takes as few as five users on a LAN to overload a workstation, sometimes causing it to hang.

The obvious solution is to upgrade to [NS-Net 1500, which transmits data at up to 1.5 megabits per second, and provides up to 23 B channels on a single subscriber line. DEIJ would need only two INS-Net 1500 lines to cover its current needs. Hirano estimates, however, that the cost of a single 1500 Terminal Adapter for DEIJ's system could be as high as Y10 million, in contrast to the Y800,000 invested in each of the INS-Net 64 TAs already installed. Nevertheless, given that the current system is already working to capacity, Hirano says they hope to upgrade to INS-Net 1500 lines either this year or next if the funds can be found.

For more information about ISDN ser vice, see the chart of INS-Net fees and charges on page 35, or call the numbers listed below.

NTT SE Center Mr. Seguchi
Tel: (03)-5472-9410
Fax: (03)-5472-9366
Telecom Plaza Hibiya (showroom)
Tel: (03) 3501-5000
Fax: (03) 3581-5779