Carriers

A visit with MetaSwitch

Doug Mohney — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:34:52 -0400

During a recent trip to the West Coast that included visits to Streaming Media West and AstriCon, FierceVoIP Editor Doug Mohney stopped by MetaSwitch's offices in Alameda, Calif., for a chat.

"MetaSwitch is not a niche product company," said Andy Randall, vice president of marketing. "We have a broad set of solutions now. In a survey of our customers, they see us as central to where their business is going. They rely on us, trust us, these are relationships that go beyond buying a piece of equipment. We have a broad solution emphasis across a range of different products."

"The other key thing I'd like to emphasize is quality and reliability. We want our customers to say ‘I can sleep at night. MetaSwitch just works.'"

As of March 2008, MetaSwitch had 240 publicly listed carrier customers, with the total number of customers approaching 400. The company has its products installed at carriers in all 50 states, plus all U.S. territories.

Infonetics puts MetaSwitch at number two in market share in North America, between Nortel (1) and Siemens (3). But it's a market that has plenty of growth left, Randall said, as carriers move to replace their legacy hardware - such as Ericsson and Siemens - with softswitches.

With economic conditions tightening up, the era of just shipping equipment, "is gone," said Randall. Customers must see an immediate impact of purchases upon their businesses, so they are buying to see a tangible reduction in operational expenses (OPEX) and/or to get value-added services through new applications.

MetaSwitch is investing its energies in new applications around the MetaSphere applications suite. "The key benefit of MetaSphere is it can deliver features to legacy systems," Randall stated. "It's important to talk to Tier 1s. Even if they are starting to do switch migration, most subscribers will be on legacy switches for a long time... the market is still thinking about VoIP or IMS or session control, but a lot of [new applications] can take place on top of legacy switches."

In 2009, MetaSphere applications will likely appear on more devices, including TVs and mobile phones; a fixed-mobile convergence solution may also debut.

MetaSwitch lands EMBARQ

Doug Mohney — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:09:06 -0400

MetaSwitch has announced that its softswitch and MetaSphere application suite forms the core of EMBARQ's Smart IP Enterprise solution. The integrated solution is hosted in the core of EMBARQ's network.

"This is another data point, abetted with a nice name, of what we've been doing for some time and continue to do," said MetaSwitch CEO Graeme MacArthur. "We're becoming more and more of a trusted vendor in the industry and that, in a nut shell, is what it is all about."

In addition to EMBARQ, MetaSwitch counts AT&T, BT, Qwest and Sprint among its Tier 1 customers.

EMBARQ's Smart IP Enterprise service will provide business customers with a bundled package of dedicated internet access, local and long distance voice services and IP-enabled call features. MetaSphere enables click-to-dial with Microsoft Outlook integration and advanced voicemail features. MetaSwitch is also providing IP-enabled features, including rules-based call forwarding, auto attendant, music on hold, sequential ring and remote click-to-dial.

While vendors may be scaling back their purchases due to slowing economic conditions, MacArthur doesn't seem to be fazed by the current business climate. "We're comfortable with our growth and sales situation," he said. "The industry in general is more cautious in how they spend their money. It can actually be a good thing, they look for value, quality, longevity... there's more scrutiny, they'll spend with who they trust."

For more:
- MetaSwitch EMBARQ announcement

Related articles
MetaSwitch Makes Mashups

Good, Tough and Timely. Revising Intercarrier Compensation

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:55:15 -0400

By Carl Ford

Examining the political landscape, it's good that the FCC is focusing on the issue of Intercarrier compensation. It's also the focus via the topic of phantom traffic, a form of arbitrage based on the ambiguities in the rules about termination based on interconnection--not the call's origination.

The existing system of Intercarrier compensation came about after the divestiture of AT&T, and it operated on assumptions about the cost of transport which were accurate for the time, but have lost relevance today.

A call placed today, as Executive Director of the VON Coalition Jim Kohlenberger points out, costs as much to go across the office as it does to go around the world. State tariffs now have lower rates for services, thanks to competition between fiber and IP. Locally, however, the price may not reflect the market.

To be clear, we are talking about rate anomalies between the jurisdictions of interstate, interlata and local. Hank Hultquist of AT&T did a great job talking about these issues in a recent podcast (Saunderslog 7/16/2008); this is not a VoIP discussion specifically. But Verizon and others have been working in hopes that the Federal Communications Commission reaffirms that VoIP is within the federal jurisdiction.

It would be inaccurate to say that this standardization has complete consensus among phone carriers. Embarq and NECA look to redefine the concept of a carrier and claim that VoIP and POTS are comparable services. However, these claims look to isolate the functions of communication. It is limiting when a service like an audioblog becomes subject to the same rules as home phone services. The funny thing is that many NECA members have benefited from the use of VoIP technology in their delivery of POTS. The adoption of IP technology by many rural carriers also has expanded the portfolio of services they offer.

From a free market perspective, the time is right to change the rules. When the cost of a phone call is approaching zero, the expense of tracking Intercarrier compensation is burdensome. It is even worse to track origination and termination based on jurisdiction in an increasingly nomadic mobile environment, particularly if the interconnected carriers dispute the data.

According to the VON Coalition, "With the right policies, VoIP enabled competition can save consumers an astounding $110 billion over the next 5 years - putting real money back into consumers' pockets through the power of competition."

The opportunity exists to ride the technology bandwagon and harness VoIP as a broadband driver; just a 7 percent increase in broadband adoption could create nearly 2.4 million more jobs per year. Enabling work at home and mobile connectivity should be part of the overall mission to provide broadband services throughout the United States.

Chairman Martin and the commissioners have the desire to lead us into a new era of access models -- an era that recognizes that POTS is a service and VoIP is a technology. The chairman has my support in his efforts, and I hope you will join me by giving him yours.

Carl Ford is Strategic Adviser and Community Developer for FierceMarkets. His words of wisdom can be found at www.carlford.net

Will BT Roll a Strike?

Doug Mohney — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:15:10 -0400

By Thomas Howe

In the book Inside the Tornado, Geoffrey Moore describes technology adoption in large markets by way of a bowling analogy: If you want to get a strike and knock all the pins down, you must first knock over the lead pin, and at least a few pins next to it. These pins take out the ones behind it, resulting in a strike.

In order for a technology to dominate a large market, it must first dominate several sub-markets, powering complete products, channels and ecosystems that make entries into other sub-markets nearly trivial. The combined effect is market domination, and once the first few pins are down, the rest almost always follow. This effect shows in every technology market, and can not only be seen in modern technologies like personal computers and spreadsheets, but in ancient technologies like calculus, basic technologies like irrigation and even footwear. It is truly a universal and a time and market invariant phenomenon.

As our market grapples with the implications of BT's recent acquisition of Ribbit, this understanding of market maturation is a critical tool for understanding the larger market. In the Telco 2.0 space, there are number of different pins to be knocked over, and there is no doubt that the first pin for BT's consideration are CEBP deployments for large enterprises. Like every large carrier, BT has long standing, strategic and lucrative relationships with domestic enterprise customers. These maturely managed companies make deep investments into enterprise software to manage their business processes, resulting in large economic savings and increased service delivery quality.

When faced with the mounting evidence of the success of CEBP deployments, they will all demand the ability to integrate their business process with their communications infrastructure. This turns out to be more than a churn avoider for BT, as CEBP deployments also represent lucrative new service offerings and professional services opportunities. For BT, providing this access into their core switching is not an "if", but a "when." Without regard to what happens outside of BT's existing customer base, they must address this need before somebody else does. As large carriers look down the alley, enterprise CEBP is the head pin.

How does Ribbit help? For all the solid business cases that surround CEBP, the fact remains that communications technology is hard technology, and the number of qualified CEBP engineers in the world would surely fit in a jumbo jet. It's not even clear there's enough talent to truly satisfy BT's potential market, never mind the customers of the other 500 world-wide operators of any size.

Ribbit's service creation environment providing Flash and Flex interfaces radically increases the amount of developers available for CEBP deployments and substantially lowers the barrier to entry to creating communications enabled applications. Even though Flash and Flex are essentially web centered technologies, and are relatively uncommon choices for the typical enterprise developer, they are easy to learn and deploy, and nothing's stopping Ribbit from providing SOAP, REST or JavaBeans on their current platform. Ribbit brings the ability to scale the implementation of CEBP deployments for BT.

Does this set BT up to attack the customers of SwissComm, Orange and Verizon?

Yes and no. It is very clear that, in relation to the enterprise, BT is not unique. Every incumbent carrier has similar domestic relationships; old, important, strategic and entangled ones. These relationships will hardly dissolve overnight, without regard to how compelling and lucrative the applications enabled by Ribbit's technology are. However, this certainly becomes a situation where the clock is now ticking, and if TelMex refuses to provide an API to El Banco de México, they have an alternative. This also represents the first, clearly identified bowling pin.

If BT is able to dominate the enterprise CEBP sub-market, it sets them up for the second pin: two sided communication service offerings. That said, I expect that BT will be have a fight on their hands to dominate this market in the medium term, as they aren't the only operator with smart guys in the strategy department ... they are the only ones with Ribbit. Ribbit's a hop ahead; BT needs to work to maintain that lead. If an operator fails to hold on to their current enterprise customers, the best they can expect is a 7-10 split.

Thomas Howe is a long-time telecom consultant, writer, and speaker who is the CEO of the Thomas Howe Company, providing expertise in improving the business process with real-time communications. His website is at http://www.thomashowe.com

VoIP expected to be good despite global downturn

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:59:55 -0400

Grant Thornton says VoIP growth will continue over the next few years despite a downturn in the global economy. G-T says there should be around $21.5 billion dollars in global VoIP revenues by 2010, with telecom and IT companies fighting over who get it and over 250 million worldwide VoIP subscribers.

Migration from fixed line to mobile and VoIP services is anticipated to increase "exponentially" over the coming years and will result in a "raft" of consolidation in the sector throughout 2008, signaling the death of traditional telephony. G-T cites the doubling of the VoIP subscriber base in 2006 and four fold in the last two years as just one reason for the change.

Large telcos are expected to make strategic acquisitions of independent software developers looking to consolidate their VoIP offerings. Incumbent operators are expected to offset declines in traditional voice revenues and retain customers by grabbing up VoIP software developers. Others snapped up in consolidation may be independent residential and enterprise ISPs and resellers.

Not everything is sunshine. Security remains a major concern, with issues including include quality of service issues, reliability, scalability and the development of industry regulation also potential bumps in the road.

For more:
- Grant Thornton release predicting VoIP Growth in 2008
- ComputerWeekly piece on VoIP Making It Through Downturn

Related articles:
Enterprise VoIP in 2008 an uphill battle
Has the time come for mobile enterprise VoIP?

Asterisk--Threatening or Boring?

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:59:58 -0400

Digium CTO and founder Mark Spencer has people talking about Asterisk again. But you wonder if everyone heard the same speech.

Giving a keynote at the IT 360 conference in Toronto last week, Spencer said he wants people to see the open source software as a telephony engineering platform rather than just a vanilla VoIP IP PBX. He plugged SwitchVox, acquired by Digium last year, as an example of how people have taken the core Asterisk software and built innovative applications around it. Other apps cited include a phone-based interface to access eBay auctions to the "Popularity Dialer," a mechanism for placing pre-scheduled callers to users--just the sort of thing to get out of a bad date.

Chris von Neida of Axcess News declared that Avaya, Cisco, and Nortel "better watch out" and says the software is poised to disrupt a $7 billion dollar telecommunications market the way Linux put a beatdown on Sun and Microsoft. This despite the fact Spencer noted they only have 130 employees and it's hard to get carriers to respect you when you're that small.

On the other side of the spectrum, Sean Michael Kerner was bored; he's still waiting for an Asterisk appliance he saw at NXTcomm last year. He more rationally notes both Asterisk (the software) and Digium (the company) have a lot to do before they actually reach full potential.

None of these folks caught some of the more real world politics about who feels threatened by Digium. A number of companies in the Asterisk ecosystem got bent out of shape when Digium bought SwitchVox, seeing acquisition of the SMB turnkey solution as a threat to their own livelihoods.

And Digium is not really worried about the Avaya and Cisco and Nortels of the world as much as they worry about Microsoft and are irritated by the hybrid-hosted model of Fonality. Spencer has compared Microsoft to the Death Star and tends to use adjectives such as "evil" when it comes to hybrid-hosting.

For More:
- DevX News Asterisk more than IP PBX feature.
- Von Nieda's Asterisk Love piece
- Kerner's Asterisk is Boring blog posting

Global Crossing Grows Latin America

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:59:57 -0400

Global Crossing has made two announcements in the past 30 days touting their upgrades in Latin America. (If that isn't enough of a clue the IP business is hot in the Southern hemisphere, there's also translations of GC's website in Portuguese and Spanish). In its latest announcement, the self-styled "IP solutions provider" said it has put "Supercore" routing platforms into Buenos Aries, San Tiago, and San Paulo. The company had previously installed Supercore routers in St. Croix, USVI and Fort Amador, Panama.

The announced upgrades effectively triple the company's previous core capacity in the region and enables OC-192/10 Gbps SONET connections on its 12,000 route miles South American Crossing (SAC) undersea fiber-optic cable system; last month, Global Crossing announced it expanded SAC by 100 Gbps of transport capacity. The company cites the need to handle rising demand for 10 Gbps Ethernet services and the need to future-proof for services faster than 10 GBps without the delays caused by forklift upgrades.

IDC is projecting the Latin American market for enterprise IP services to grow from $2.94 billion in 2008 to $4.3 billion in 2011, at an annualized rate of 10.1 percent.

For more:
- Global Crossing's Extension to Latin America press release.
- Last month's announcement of Global Crossing's 100 Gbps Latin America Upgrade.

Related articles:
Global Crossing Expands VoIP Local Service to 16 Mexico Markets
Global Crossing in Hong Kong, Rome, Milan

EMBARQ 's Casabi-flavored Home Phone--Hot!

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:59:58 -0400

Traditional VoIP phones have been nothing but glorified dumb handsets, with about as much functionality and sexuality. EMBARQ has introduced some spice to the marketplace by announced the eGo phone, a spiffy SIP-phone with a built-in light web browser. EMBARQ is laying claim to being the first telco to deliver a cordless home phone with visual voicemail, news and information, personal phone books and phone directories.

The special seasoning that makes eGo hot is Casabi, a technology that brings IP client/server capabilities to the humble cordless handset, in this case provided to EMBARQ by VTECH. A simple web client talks to servers to pull up a variety of services, ranging from (now almost necessary) visual voicemail, to the latest sports scores and weather reports. On-line local business listings allow keyword lookups, so you can do a search on your phone rather than pull out the yellow pages and let your fingers do the walking. Users also get an online address book where they can centrally store numbers.

Casabi technology also offers excitement to incumbent phone carriers trying to increase their stickiness with their established customer base by offering additional features above and beyond vanilla voice service. Cable companies have sweeping up business by offering lower prices; Casabi enables operators to offer value-added services over DSL and generic VoIP offerings. AT&T demonstrated (i.e. at least toyed with) Casabi in their booth at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show, so it is plausible other carriers may turn up similar services in the future.

Finally, it should be noted implementing eGo was most likely put into motion during Dan Hesse's watch at EMBARQ. Is this a clue for general technology innovation we might see from Sprint in the future?

For more:
- EMBARQ's eGo release
- Behind-the-scenes Casabi service

Related articles:
EMBARQ loses Hesse to Sprint top job
Engadget's piece on VTech Internet-connected cordless phones

Telcos Have Google Envy

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:59:54 -0400

A new report by Heavy Reading asserts that when it comes to delivering differentiating next-generation services, Internet companies like Google have the edge, while major carriers aren't sure what to do. Surveyed firms--France Telecom, NTT, TelaSonera, and Verizon Communications--know what they don't know and realize they will have to partner with third-party application companies to deliver the advanced services consumers will ultimately want.

Telcos are looking at third-party applications and trying to find ways they can add value to them. Most of the carriers feel they bring value to the table with billing, security, and QoS; policy control is also an area which carriers are looking at, but it's very controversial and kicks up the net neutrality crowd.

The bottom line--traditional telephony--is a dying asset and if they want to keep growing revenues in the future they will have to partner up and open up their networks to third parties. Sprint and Verizon Wireless have already taken the first steps in opening up their network and movement is expected on the wireline side as well. When it comes to advanced services, carriers see Google as their biggest threat, but Google doesn't make money as a service provider. Instead, Google relies almost exclusively on online advertising for revenues.

For more:
- Light Reading's GoogleEnvy writeup
- Reinventing the Telcos Report

Related articles:
Verizon Wireless embraces open access
Sprint outlines Xohm WiMAX plans
Sprint: 'We're creating a platform for innovation'

Mavenir Systems and GENBAND Collaborate for Convergence

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 06:59:55 -0400

Mavenir Systems and GENBAND are going to collaborate on joint convergence solutions for operators, specifically to assist in the rapid deployment of new multimedia services across all types of devices, as well as offering next-generation services on legacy (i.e. non-IP) infrastructure. Trials and acceptance by tier one operators in North America and EMEA are "in various stages," according to Mavenir.

A variety of applications are being delivered over the joint solution, including VoIP services provided directly from an existing 2G/3G core for primary and secondary line service and intelligent inter-working for femtocell gateways and multiple domains. GENBAND has gone big on femto of late, rolling out a Packet Access Gateway for its G9 Mobile Gateway; the PAG provides transcoder-free operations, packet-to-packet inter-working, a signaling gateway and mobile access side capabilities.

Mavenir incorporates the G9 into their mOne Intelligent Convergence Engine, providing a solution to bridge IP-based service delivery with traditional mobile infrastructure; the net result allows operators to deliver IMS services directly to 2G and 3G-CS mobile devices.

Interestingly, Mavenir is based in Richardson, Texas, right next door to GENBAND in Plano. And GENBAND hasn't been shy about buying other companies. Is this a trial courtship before acquisition?

For more:
- Mavenir's website is here.

Related Article:
Genband/Tekelec a done deal

Comverse Converges Connexion, Opens Bahamas

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 06:59:54 -0400

Comverse has announced two Northern Hemisphere customer wins with FTTH operator Connexion and Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC).

Cary, North Carolina-based Connexion provides one-stop shopping for real estate developers and communities looking for a FTTH network with design, installation, and operational services. Connexion Technologies will be using Comverse's My Call Converged Communications system to help carriers serve residential customers with IP-based phone services, complementing the company's other fiber broadband services such as high-speed Internet, television, and home security monitoring.

Operating on Comverse's Class 5 Application Server, MyCall Converged Communications is a pre-integrated solution based on an IMS architecture, providing messaging services across fixed and mobile phones as well as PCs. Two of the applications of MyCall, the PC Communicator and Mobile Communicator, allow users to access all of their communication and messaging services - including telephony, voicemail, SMS, MMS, IM and Presence - via PC and mobile phone respectively using a single ID/telephone number.

BTC, in operation for more than 100 years, is installing Comverse's InSight Open Service Environment along with voice mail and other services for its wireline subscribers. InSight, installed at more than 100 operators around the world, provides an open and modular environment for the delivery of a wide variety of communications, messaging, and content services over IP, circuit-switched, hybrid and IMS networks. An IP-based architecture and standard interfaces enable core components to be shared by multiple services.

For more:
- Comverse's Connexion Release is here.
- BCT and Comverse is here.

Related articles:
The real deal arrives Editorial
Comverse names Dahan president Report

Alameda may pull plug on municipal telecom

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:59:55 -0400

Nearly a decade ago, Alameda, Calif., decided it needed to provide cable TV and Internet service to its residents, believing that jumping early into the telecom industry's boom would both provide a needed service to a populace it believed underserved, and give the island city a stable revenue stream.

Alamedians are discovering all that glitters isn't necessarily gold. After spending nearly $85 million to launch and operate the service, the city-owned Alameda Power & Telecom wants to sell what has become an expensive albatross.

The telecom portion of the business has never turned a profit and the city is facing a $33 million balloon payment on the original construction bond. AT&T's general manager told the San Francisco Chronicle the telecom could break even this year-excluding its debt.

For more:
- Read the San Francisco Chronicle's story

Are Telcos getting to a VoIP tipping point?

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:59:56 -0400

Is SureWest's announcement it is moving into residential VoIP the tipping point for telco's to finally seriously embrace VoIP? SureWest is an independent Californian telco with about 115,000 access lines and has been losing access business at a rate of about seven per cent. This is consistent with industry metrics, but at the same time SureWest has been aggressively building its double and triple-play broadband business. SureWest offers 50 HD channels down its fiber network and according to Gary Kim SureWest has about 100,000 broadband revenue generating subscribers or units and that business is growing at 13 percent. On current trends that probably means its broadband business will exceed its telephone business in terms of number of units some time this year.

However, as Kim notes in an article for TMC, the actual switch-over point will be driven by revenue issues, rather than customer base. Also relevant will be at what point it will make economic sense to simply turn off the legacy system and rely on its IP network. All the network pieces for that to happen are not here yet, but the day is coming.

As the margins for voice telephony continue to collapse and as cable VoIP and the Vonages and Skypes of the world eat away at the fringe, SureWest and all the other carriers have to make a big call about migrating their base before that base disappears on them. And once the move is on by one carrier will that prompt a stampede as telco's rush to grab market share?

For more:
- SureWest launches residential VoIP Release
- When Will Telcos Deploy VoIP? Article

Related articles:
SureWest launches VoIP Article
Comcast takes aim at business Article

Qwest upgrades Enterprise VoIP service

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 07:59:56 -0400

Carriers are not standing still as the Comcasts of the world push into their enterprise space, with Qwest the latest telco to upgrade its enterprise VoIP offering. The upgrade to its OneFlex product includes significant improvements to bandwidth management to enable more data and voice calls into existing bandwidth. Qwest is also introducing sub-office portals to enable businesses to delegate the management of the phone system among work groups, rather than having a central person having to manage the whole service. Coupled with the sub-portal is an escape to operator service which allows callers to dial "0" for assistance.

The enhancements however still look rudimentary against the feature sets now being rolled out by specialist operators such as Fonality and the big vendor offerings. Siemens Communications last week released its fully integrated unified communications server platform in the biggest UC announcement of the year. It has certainly set a high bar for all other players. The software-based platform known as OpenScape integrates voice, video and data and is being offered as both an installed and hosted service.

For more:
- Qwest makes VoIP upgrade Release
- Siemens challenge Microsoft OCS Podcast

Related articles:
Siemens releases new UC platform Article
Cisco vs. Microsoft in unified comms Article
Fonality launches Boomerang follow-me service Article

FEATURE: Contact Center Corner

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:59:48 -0500

Vonage beefs up customer service management
Vonage has snared an experienced customer service manager from DHL to oversee its troubled customer service centers. Mike Sears has been appointed senior Vice President of Global Service Delivery Operations. Vonage boss Jeffrey Citron has vowed to improve customer support--to reduce the VoIP carriers very high churn rates and to lower support costs. Vonage's customer base has grown rapidly to 2.5 million over three years, and Citron has admitted the high cost of multiple support calls has hurt Vonage.

Sears managed a turnaround in DHL's customer performance, with customer satisfaction scores up by 15 percent and customer complaints down by more than 10 percent. Sears has 18 years experience with customer-support functions and previously worked at Wachovia bank as its VP of customer service strategic planning.

Vonage recently introduced a new connection device hoping it will lower the number of calls to customer care, especially for new subscribers. Users have long complained of difficulty setting up their Vonage adapters. The new device is color coded to enable easier use and support. Vonage announces its Q4 result Wednesday. For more: Vonage release

Voice 2.0 to open up new wholesale markets

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 06:59:58 -0500

Voice will be the catalyst for a group of new wholesale services for applications with all "postage and packing" charges included, for all the networks and places users wish to use that application or content, according to a paper by London research firm STL.

Writing in Gigaom, STL's Martin Geddes predicts a rapid rise of non-traditional voice services as voice is embedded into the general online experience. "You'll be able to call your date from your mobile dating application, without knowing your date's mobile number, and the whole cost of the call will be borne through your dating application subscription," writes Geddes.

Carriers will see a strong lift in the wholesale side of their business as media companies, employers, merchants and government will pay providers to deliver content and applications on their behalf. Geddes says carriers will be delivering to a series of different platforms, locations and applications as communications unify around present technologies.

The key to success will be to control the end users' set-top box with Geddes predicting "whoever gets to deploy and manage these boxes will emerge as the winner in the space."

For more:
Ten things you should know about the future of broadband Article
STL's telco 2.0 research

Related articles:
Unified communications coming to SMB Report
How does unified communications help? Report

Corrected: VoIP's worst of 2007

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:59:54 -0500

All was not sunny and bright in the land of VoIP in 2007, with serious problems facing Vonage, SunRocket, and Skype among other VoIP carriers. The lessons learned in the just-past year will serve VoIP carriers and customers well as they move into the future.

Much of the trouble involved relatively small VoIP carriers and their encounters with much larger firms. Vonage spent the year with the specter of legal doom hanging over its corporate head -- only at the end of the year did word come that Vonage and Nortel had settled the legal case in which they'd been involved. Skype's encounter was of a different sort, but left the company no less changed after Ebay purchased the European VoIP firm, then spent the year trying to figure out precisely how to profitably integrate the carrier into its larger business.

Neither of these encounters was as dramatic as that of SunRocket with its larger corporate competitors. In July, faced with unexpected competition and burdened with a business plan that seemed unequal to the task, SunRocket suddenly went out of business, leaving thousands of customers scrambling for a dial-tone. The lesson? For customers, at least, the lesson has to be keeping an alternative carrier available as part of a disaster recovery plan.

For more:
NewTelephony has the complete story here

Related articles:
Vonage settles with AT&T; expects positive cash flow in '08 Report
Vonage settles with Sprint Report

iBasis ups its business application

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 06:59:54 -0500

VoIP wholesaler, iBasis has added more features to its business VoIP product Pingo, including an interactive voice response system that lets users know when their account balance is low. The account can be topped up simply by pushing the star key. Enhanced speed-dialing capabilities have also been introduced for both consumers and business users.

Massachusetts based iBasis was acquired by Dutch carrier KPN last year, with KPN rolling its international carriage business into the VoIP provider and wholesaler. IBasis claims the combination makes iBasis one of the three largest carriers of international voice traffic in the world and the first IP-based carrier to break into Telecom's Top Three.

Pingo is targeted at SMBs and enables international calls on an on-demand basis. The service allows account limits to be set for individual employees, with balances and usage managed through a centralized account.

Billed as the "the last calling card you'll ever need", Pingo provides prepaid long distance calling services through a secure web interface for purchase and account management.

For More:
- KPN acquired iBasis last year Release
- Pingo feature additions Release
- iBasis CEO recently named Business leader of the year by Capacity Release

Related articles:
- iBasis becomes Voice juggernaut Report
- iBasis takes unit, KPN takes iBasis Report

Now Showing: French VoIP revolution

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 06:59:55 -0500

Anyone doubting the triple play revolution transforming global telecoms should look to France. Dutch-based Telecompaper reports VoIP line usage in France leaped 77.5 percent over the last year to reach nearly 22 percent of fixed-phone lines or 8.7 million lines in the second quarter of 2007, according to figures from the national regulator, Arcep.

VoIP call volumes also surged to account for 30.3 percent of overall telephony in the second quarter, up from 17.1 percent in the second quarter of last year. Incumbent France Telecom is leading the charge for change with its successful re-branding to Orange for its mobile, internet and television offerings.

The growth in VoIP is being driven by the French love of broadband and the related success of broadband-based triple-play services. Telecompaper reports the number of traditional phone lines fell by 7.3 percent in one year to 38.9 million at June 30 with a staggering 87.6 percent of the country's 16.1 million internet accesses now using broadband. Nearly 3 million new broadband customers came on board over the year.

For More:
- VoIP used by 22% of French fixed phone lines in Q2 Report

Related Articles:
Donald Duck a la Orange Report
Apple to release unlocked iPhone in France Report

VoIP customers miss evacuation warnings

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 06:59:56 -0400

The emergency phone warning system used to notify residents about this weeks California fires was not able to reach VoIP phone users and houses with only cell phones. E-week reports residents with cell phones and VoIP phones reported not getting the calls to evacuate because the system can only reach fixed address numbers but not so called "nomadic" services such as cell phones and VoIP numbers. Nearly half a million residents were asked to evacuate as fires destroyed over 1000 homes. Vonage is the largest VoIP provider in California and a number of Vonage customers wrote complaints about not getting an emergency warning on the independent Vonage-forum.com.

Vonage spokesman Charles Sahner said Vonage was aware of the problem VOIP carriers have with "traditional emergency notification systems, which are designed to work with the traditional analog landlines -- namely, the old AT&T system. These systems [including Reverse 911] are not designed for 'nomadic' systems like cell phones or VOIP," Sahner said. "They use the old database of land line numbers. We've been working with state and local officials for a long time in an effort to get everybody on the same page. The emergency-system people need to realize that the world is moving to other services like cells and VOIP, and that these lists of numbers should be included with all the older land line numbers."

For More:
- Read this eWeek Article

Related Articles:
911 from the public safety angle Report
House gives nod to VoIP E911 Article