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"Moving Telecom Profitably Into the On Demand Era"? Tune in Now!
Changes in business strategies can produce dramatic impacts on business processes and operations support. How can these changes drive profitability? Which companies have succeeded in creating competitive advantage through business transformation? Learn from the experts.
Mack-inations
Boston uncommons
by Tim McElligott
September 25, 2003
If you're looking for a good buzz, or maybe just an excuse to go see The Herding Cats--the world's best three-man cover band--play "Whole Lotta Love," you might consider the VON, a.k.a. Voice on the Net, conference hosted by pulver.com. With luck, and a little investment, the buzz being generated there around IP communications will last until the next event in the spring of 2004.
At VON this week in Boston, I witnessed something not seen in this city since it regained its status as home to the most infamous archdioceses in the land: a capacity crowd of eager disciples gathered for the purpose of hearing the word, living the gospel and just getting some of that pure religion--how-dee-do.
As with many feel-good signs in this industry, there were no major breakthroughs this week, just incremental progress. But it added up to more signs than an M. Night Shyamalan movie: cheaper SIP phones, better interoperability, Tier 1 deployments, a 39-person contingent from NTT and an overall service provider contingent that appeared to exceed that at any other VON event, cautious but not altogether downbeat financial analysts, and fresh blood--lots of it.
It remains to be seen whether so much fresh blood and so much carrier participation are actually good for the growth of IP communications. My guess is that it is, but there are drawbacks, such as the carriers inviting even more unnecessary regulatory scrutiny and adding their test-everything-to-death practices as well as all the new players achieving the equivalent of a Martin Luther spin-off by following their own paths.
VON had the feel of a revival, but the rejuvenation from such events seldom lasts beyond the flaps of the tent. No, more hope can be found in the pragmatic view of Level 3's Jack Waters. "IP technology is market based and not a bunch of guys sitting around an ITU meeting deciding what technology people will want."
The market knows what it wants. We have but to listen.
E-mail me at tmcelligott@primediabusiness.com
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Top News
Agilent gets into P2T game
September 25, 2003
BOSTON -- Agilent Technologies leveraged both its analysis and OSS capabilities to bring a monitoring and management solution to the Push-to-Talk market this week at the Voice on the Net event here. The company introduced the Agilent OSS NgN analysis system for monitoring, troubleshooting and call-quality testing of SIP-based P2T services.
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VON: Conference finds signs of life on planet IP
BOSTON -- Jeff Pulver, CEO of pulver.com and host of this fall's Voice on the Net conference here, opened the show yesterday with the explication of a new scientific discipline: bio-telecommunications. In identifying the difference between heteromorphic and homomorphic transformation -- linking VoIP to the former -- Pulver likened the IP communications industry to an emerging butterfly that has taken on a completely different form and therefore should not be treated like the traditional telecom world it leaves behind.
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VON: VocalData wins in Delaware Valley
BOSTON--Wilmington, Del.-based DCANet will soon begin adding customers to its hosted PBX offering using VocalData's VOISS IP application server, it announced at the Voice-on the-Net show yesterday. VocalData also announced support for several new IP phones and enhancements to its overall platform.
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Telica launches second gen softswitch
BOSTON -- In a move aimed at the large carrier market, Telica this week launched what it is calling its second-generation softswitch, which builds on the company's existing Plexus 9000 box.
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VON: Nortel launches into multimedia
BOSTON -- Nortel Networks today announced the launch of its Media Application Server at the Voice on the Net show here. The server, which is designed to work with Nortel's Multimedia Communication Server 5100 and 5200, will allow carriers to converge multiple media into one service, the vendor said.
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VoIP spreads its wireless wings
by Vince Vittore
BOSTON -- The evolution of various access technologies based on 802.11 will have a profound effect on the way people communicate and have severe consequences for both telcos and cable operators in the next decade, according to Brough Turner, chief technology officer of NMS Communications.
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Vonage cracks 50,000-line milestone
by Kevin Fitchard
Voice-over-IP service provider Vonage today said it has provisioned 50,000 lines since launching its service in April 2002 and is adding new customers at a rate of 2000 lines per week.
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In Print
Bellcore 3.0: A profile of Telcordia Technologies
by Tim McElligott and Jason Meyers
No one could ever rightly accuse Telcordia Technologies or its predecessor, Bellcore, of not being innovative. On the contrary, the company that once manned all R&D efforts for the incumbent Bell companies boasts a legacy based almost entirely on technological innovation.
Instead, the challenges facing Telcordia relate to a heritage to which the company seems inextricably linked. It's a heritage implied by two words used in the above description of the company -- and, in fact, in virtually every description of the company. For as long as anyone can remember, critics have hung the terms "Bell" and "legacy" around Telcordia's neck like a medieval yoke.
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Milking it: commentary on VoIP regulation
by Tim McElligott
For those lucky enough to get it, it's hard to give up that few hours of overtime pay every week. You know you shouldn't, and you swear you won't, but before you know it, you've worked it into the household budget. You start living like you're a $70,000 per-year man, but you know you're really at "sixty-two five." Then the boss comes by three weeks before that golf trip your bride finally said you could go on and tells you that overtime has been cut for the summer. Suddenly, you're a man with empathy for the poor regulators in Wisconsin trying to decide how to manage VoIP.
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THE ROOT CAUSE OF ALL EVIL
Automatic fault correlation in action makes for quite an impressive demonstration. As if out of nowhere, a torrent of minor, major and critical network alarms flood the monitors of an operations center, freezing technicians and turning the heads of supervisors. Behind the scenes, directors are paged and top account managers excuse themselves from conference calls. Printers puke. Bells gong in remote offices as technicians look up from their overnight trunk reports (or their fantasy football results).
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