So, here I am, back in the office after a full week away at Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO. And what a full week it was. So full, I was unable to blog with any consistency, and thus ended up not blogging at all.

 

I flew in to Miami late on Sunday, and after quickly checking in to my room, I hustled off to catch up with my colleagues who had flown in earlier that day for some dinner. Little did I know that was the last time I would have to relax for the rest of the week.

There will be many news announcements made this week at the Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO here in sunny south Florida. One of the first releases to cross my transom is the news that Pingtel is expanding their global reach by launching a worldwide channel program.

Already over 20 vendors have signed on to promote Open Source SIP solutions to the global marketplace. The news release appears below.

Pingtel aggressively Expands market reach with launch of worldwide channel Program for Solution Providers

More than 20 traditional IT and VoIP resellers, system integrators and distributors join Pingtel to deliver leading open source, enterprise SIP IP communications products to market.

MIAMI (INTERNET TELEPHONY CONFERENCE). February 22, 2005

"Pingtel’s SIPxchange and SIP softphone give us an immediate cost and technology advantage as we target enterprise customers that want to leverage the benefits of VoIP but don’t want to pay TDM-market prices," said Don Witt, CEO of California-base VoIP distributor Cylogistics.

Well, after months of planning and hard work, it's almost time to tidy my desk and set off for Miami. I'm looking forward to next week's Internet Telephony Conference and EXPO, which is shaping up to be one of the biggest and most exciting VoIP events ever.

I'm especially looking forward to several of the conference sessions, most notably the P2P VoIP discussion being moderated by our own Tom Keating. That's what I like most about this conference: we're always breaking new ground and presenting the top minds in the industry. For example, the P2P session will feature:

Niklas Zennström, CEO & Co-Founder, Skype Technologies
Dmitry Goroshevsky, President and CEO, Popular Telephony
Mahshad Koohgoli, CEO, Nimcat Networks
Peter Sisson, President & CEO, Teleo
and
Gary Hermansen, President and Chief Executive Officer, Global IP Sound

That's quite a powerful lineup.

The Finns are coming! The Finns are coming!

Well, they’re coming to test your VoIP networks at the very least.

According to the news release on Nethawk’s site, the Finnish provider of mobile network testing and measurement tools, has signed a Letter of Intent with ipNetfusion, a network simulation and load testing systems, concerning the purchase of the shares of the latter.

According to the letter of intent, NetHawk will acquire the shares of ipNetfusion by the end of April.

Peter Eisenhut is Principal, Eisenhut & Associates, and a member of the Society of Telecommunications Consultants. Here's his take on the subject of Verizon/MCI...

What will be the impact of the purchase of MCI by Verizon, and the purchase of AT&T by SBC ??  Anyone who has the answers could either become very rich or locked up for lunacy. Neither is likely in my case, but I do have some questions:

If the deals go through, SBC and Verizon will have bought up most of the competition they had for local exchange service.  At the same time, the requirement for SBC and Verizon to provided unbundled network elements (UNE-P) at discounted prices to competitors (CLECs) is also evaporating. Can we expect higher prices for traditional phone service as a result? Will consumers look elsewhere for service? Who will large enterprises go to if they want national service?  Won't Verizon and SBC try to lock each other out of the other's territories?  If you are a Verizon-MCI customer in the East, will it take forever for you to provision local loop connections for your offices in the West? And vice versa? Will Verizon and SBC focus too much on beating each other, thereby ignoring the real competition? Without UNE-P, competitors will begin to provide service in ways that are cost effective for them.  This may mean more competitors that provide voice over Internet protocol (VOIP), especially where they can use existing data facilities such as DSL, T1, or cable, independently of the underlying local facility provider.

Sony Ericsson is dusting off the Walkman, adding dial tone, and setting its sights on the mobile music market. I was but a young lad when I got my first Walkman. It was awesome. I should have bought stock in Duracell at the time too.

Well, I guess it’s official. Verizon has acquired MCI for $4.8 billion in equity and $488 million in cash (total: $5.3 billion). The transaction also encompasses a special dividend payable to MCI shareholders, bringing the total to $6.7 billion for the number 2 long-distance carrier.

The main play here is Verizon expanding into the enterprise market and keeping pace with sibling SBC, who recently purchased AT&T. MCI brings with it a host of government contracts and such large customers as HP.

Throw in MCI’s UUNet assets and Verizon is in great shape to offer services to a truly global audience.

I’ve just returned from the Voicecon trade show, where I met with a number of vendors serving the enterprise VoIP space. Among the many themes discussed this week, two seem to bubble up to the top: mobility and security.

In an earlier post, I wrote about the formation of the VOIPSA, or VoIP Security Alliance. In the first week of its existence, the total number of member companies has doubled to 50 and over 1,500 people have signed on to the mailing list.

Without sounding like Chicken Little and claiming that the sky is falling, I think it’s fair to say that VoIP security is an important issue, and the founding of an alliance such as this one to address it is welcome to say the least.

As for mobility, Research in Motion made some news this week in regards to partnering with 3Com and Nortel for extending those vendors’ enhanced IP PBX features to RIM’s Blackberry 7270 devices. These Blackberries operate on 802.11b networks and incorporate both voice and data capabilities.

TippingPoint announced today that it has established the VoIP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) in conjunction with a group of VoIP vendors, providers, security researchers, and thought leaders. The goal of the alliance is to discover and reduce VoIP security risks. Some of the charter members include 3Com , Alcatel , Avaya, Codenomicon, Columbia University, Enterasys, Ernst and Young’s Guiliani Advanced Security Center, Insightix , NetCentrex, Qualys, Sourcefire, Southern Methodist University, SecureLogix, Spirent, Symantec , the SANS Institute and Tenable Network Security.

A complete list of members can be accessed at the VOIPSA Web site.

According to the release publicizing the alliance, “The growing convergence of voice and data networks only serves to exacerbate and magnify the security risks of today’s traditional prevalent cyber attacks. Successful attacks against a combined voice and data network can cripple an enterprise, halt communications required for productivity, and result in irate customers and lost revenue.

The Wall St. Journal is reporting that Qwest is in talks to buy MCI for about $6.3 billion, which would make the second major telecom deal in less than a week, hot on the heels of the AT&T/SBC deal, which I’ve touched on "a little bit" in the past few days.

 Everyone in the world is reporting this news, so take your pick whose version you want to read.

MCI has some obvious assets that make it an attractive target. It has an impressive roster of clients, as well as a huge global network that is the envy of many. 

So attractive are these assets that Verizon is in line to talk with MCI as well. I wonder how Verizon's VoiceWing would fare as the VoIP service with the "home field advantage" on MCI's global network? 

Stay tuned, I’ll keep an eye on this story and try to get some industry insiders to weigh in once things become clearer.

I received a few more comments on the AT&T/SBC situation.

Robert Lee Harris is president of Communications Advantage, Inc., a telecommunications consulting firm. He specializes in strategic technology acquisition and implementation. He is a member of the Society of Telecommunications Consultants and here's what he had to say:

The potential purchase of AT&T by SBC will create challenges for customers evaluating the two companies’ network infrastructures.

Martha Buyer is currently Principal, Law Offices of Martha Buyer as well as an officer (vice president) of the Society of Telecommunications Consultants.

She has written numerous articles addressing a variety of legal and regulatory issues affecting telecommunications professionals and decision makers industry wide. Topics included cable, wireless, common carrier and copyright issues, among others. Here is her take on the SBC/AT&T acquisition:

With the added market force of VoIP looking traditional voice providers straight in the eye, the writing is on the wall for those traditional long distance providers. The world, as we've all known it, is going away.

When local telephone competition was considered and incorporated into the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it was assumed that the surviving local exchange carriers would compete with each other by moving into areas where they had traditionally been unable to offer service.

Infonetics, an international market research and consulting firm covering the data networking and telecommunications industries, is set to release a research report tomorrow covering the cable VoIP market.

According to the report, Cable VoIP Equipment Market Outlook, the number of cable VoIP subscribers in North America jumped 900% between 2003 and 2004, from less than 50,000 to close to half a million, while cable broadband subscribers grew 26%, from 17.7 million to 22.4 million.

The latest Infonetics report posits that North American cable companies increased their investments in VoIP equipment to keep up with surging subscriber growth, nearly doubling their spending between 2003 and 2004, from $63 million to $123 million. The company’s forecasts indicate continuing strong growth.

Said Kevin Mitchell, directing analyst for Infonetics and author of the report, "Although the number of cable VoIP subscribers is still fairly small and two MSOs made up over 90% of that subscriber total in 2004, we expect the penetration of VoIP service delivered directly from MSOs among cable broadband subscribers to increase from 2% in 2004 to 15% in 2007."

The Cable VoIP Equipment report tracks cable broadband and cable VoIP subscribers, media gateways, media servers, session border controllers, softswitches, voice application servers, and EMTAs, providing annual equipment revenue and subscriber forecasts through 2007.

In my never-ending quest to keep my readers informed on the important issues of the day, I have issued a call for commentary in the hopes of adding some much-needed flavor to the SBC/AT&T hullabaloo.

David Grill is Principal over at Telecom Management Services, LLC
Montclair, NJ, and is also Senior Vice President at the Society of Telecommunications Consultants.

Here's what he had to say:

Stanley Kubrick got it wrong. The technology in '2001, A Space Odyssey' still looks current, but the corporate icons in the film are toast. Pan Am....gone. The monolithic Bell System...gone.

I received a comment on my post yesterday regarding the Competitive Enterprise Institue and their position vis a vis the SBC/AT&T situation. My goal was not to promote any particular agenda or groups. I was just sharing something I found interesting. I'm a sharer.

Anyway, regarding the following comment, I only have one rebuttal before I share it with you: I did not insert the words "non-partisan" -- that's the way the CEI media alert came to me.