Worldwide service provider router and switch revenue reached $1.8 billion in the first half of 2005, up 10 percent from the first quarter, and up 24 percent year over year. This comes from Infonetics Research's just-released quarterly report, Service Provider Routers and Switches. The research firm predicts that worldwide annual revenue will reach $8.9 billion by 2008.

Cisco leads the pack in worldwide edge router revenue with 56%, followed by Juniper (21%) and Huawei (9%). Huawei’s sales reportedly more than doubled in the most recent quarter.

Interactive services are the key to IPTV success in the U.S. So says a recent study conducted by Parks Associates. The report tells us that consumers interested in interactive services such as voting on game shows, targeted advertising, and gaming, represent a lucrative early market for IPTV services and applications.

According to IP Video Services: Analysis and Forecast, that group of consumers totals nearly 27 percent of all U.S. households.

This segment, as identified in Parks Associates' multinational study Global Digital Living, is highly receptive to advanced TV services.

Service providers, particularly telecom operators, could boost current revenues on their quad-play service packages (voice, data, video, and wireless) by 33 percent by adding such services as video-on-demand as well as home monitoring, gaming, and wireless broadband, resulting in a potential increase of $1.81 billion in revenues over the basic quad-play package.

The Global Digital Living project is a study of worldwide consumer technology trends and surveyed Internet households in thirteen nations: France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Canada, Taiwan, Japan, India, China, South Korea, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The worst-kept secret in the industry — that Yahoo! will be diving head-first into VoIP — is the biggest non-news news I’ve heard in a while.

Of course Yahoo! will offer VoIP! (They already offer PC-to-PC.) So will Google. So will Microsoft. If Excite were still around, I bet they’d be on the bandwagon too!

Actually isn’t Excite now part of Ask Jeeves?

In fact, there you have it. That’s MY HUGE VoIP RUMOR OF THE DAY: Ask Jeeves will someday offer a VoIP service.

According to an item forwarded to me by Rich Tehrani, The New York State Unified Court System has apparently deployed a network of more than 350 IP video surveillance cameras. The cameras will monitor New York court facilities statewide and link to a multi-terabyte storage system.

According to TopTechNews.com, the Court’s MIS gurus see high-bandwidth video as just another stream on the IP network they built several years ago. Also supported is a 10,000-seat IP telephony network and more than 100 IP videoconferencing units. Overall, these systems save the courts about $1 million per year on various voice and video costs, and allow for advanced services such as comprehensive video surveillance.

The article goes on to describe the monitoring experience:

At the court's downtown Manhattan security command center, officers watch video on an array of flat panel displays, showing the court's most heavily trafficked sites.

I recently moved into a new home and with that move, I decided to take the plunge and switch to Cablevision's VoIP service Optimum Voice. No more Verizon. No more AT&T.  Of course, the first two weeks were plagued with quality issues. I couldn't believe my luck.  Here I am the editorial director of the longest running VoIP magazine and after hearing great things from my friends who actually use Cablevision's service, I get the lemon?

Oh, I'll be writing about this! The VoIP gods will not conspire against me! I'll get to the bototm of this!

Well, one very positive, polite, professional, helpful call to customer service, and a timely dispatch of a technician to my house took care of what was ailing our phone service.

This morning, TelCove, a Pittsburgh, PA facilities-based CLEC, announced the availability of a brand-new VoIP offering. TelCove's Network VoIP Service (TNVS) is available as of today across the entire TelCove network which encompasses over 70 markets, primarily on the East coast of the United States.

Applications include a suite of follow-me services, unified communications functionality, full integration for remote workers/road warriors, and multimedia collaboration apps such as Web conferencing and document sharing.

The new TelCove service is offered at two price points/service levels: Standard Enterprise VoIP Station service and Premium Enterprise VoIP Station service.

According to Craig Drinkhall, senior vice president of product development and engineering at TelCove, “With VoIP, we can offer customers across our 70-market network both productivity gains and cost savings for all their users. Today’s announcement of our Network VoIP Service continues our delivery of next generation transport and communication services for enterprises, assisting them in multiple aspects – from productivity improvements to business continuity to management simplification and capital preservation."

TNVS uses a network-based VoIP platform ( I believe it's Broadsoft) to provide the call control and features for their customers. The company is also working with NextiraOne to fulfill the CPE component of the VoIP service, which includes network assessment, upgrades, equipment installation and maintenance.

VoIP Developer Conference is still abuzz. There's an hour and a half left before the Exhibit Hall comes to a close, and the final plenary session Host Media Processing Roundtable begins, and the action at registration is still hopping. Attendees continue to arrive with the hope of seeing the exhibitors before they start packing up.

The final day of the 2005 VoIP Developer conference began with keynotes from Michael Stanford, Director, VoIP Strategy, Digital Enterprise Group at Intel and Mark Spencer, President of Digium, which at first glanced may seem an unlikely pair to share a single stage. However beyond the first assumption, it’s clear that both speakers represent equally innovative companies, and that both play an increasingly critical role in future development of VoIP.

Michael Stanford’s presentation, Trends in VoIP Development, was a detailed look into the current and future events shaping our industry.

Stanford began by saying that the VoIP revolution marches on. In 2005 VoIP phones crossed over in terms of new sales. This means that as many VoIP phones are being sold today as TDM phones into new deployments.

This morning’s keynotes began with a request from Mike Donoghue, Aculab’s vice president of sales (Americas business) for a moment of silence as a show of respect for recent world events.

Mike promptly put on his coach’s hat, and using sports – specifically elite-level track – as an analogy urged the assembled audience to “race to win.”

“We are in a race to be first,” said Donoghue. “To be the best. To satisfy customers. To build our companies around the incredible opportunity of VoIP.”

In his fast-paced speech, Donoghue strived to inspire the crowd of developers with his analogy that VoIP development is akin to an Olympic track race.

Last night’s first keynote address at the 2005 VoIP Developer’s Conference was delivered by Alan Percy — AudioCodes’ director of business development.

Percy began by asking the audience the simplest of questions, “Why are you here?”
Essentially, the majority agreed that they were here to learn. Percy went on to define learning as the act of gaining knowledge, and pointed out that there are many ways of acquiring that knowledge. In a classroom environment; reading; learning from your peers by sharing perspectives; or attending trade shows like this one.

OBSERVATIONS
The speaker from AudioCodes went on to explain that as an enabling technology vendor… “we have a unique perspective and viewpoint on the industry.” Percy proceeded to name a number of conclusions that he and his colleagues have come to accept as fact. Among these, was the simple declarative statement that: This is the year VoIP has gone mainstream.

It’s very exciting to be here in the South San Francisco Conference Center. Workers are buzzing about, laying the finishing touches on what is gearing up to be an incredible three days of education and information aimed at the VoIP development community.

Alan Percy of AudioCodes and Rick Ringel of Inter-Tel will deliver the keynote addresses this afternoon, and I’ll be moderating a discussion on IMS & Wireline to Wireless convergence. We’ll close out the day with a networking reception too. I look forward to seeing you there!

We’re expecting a large crowd here at the event, and in fact registrants are already arriving – and registration officially opens later today!

I’ll be posting news and notes from the conference over the next few days, so please keep coming back and checking my blog for updates.

For an overview of what the conference is all about, please check out this note from Rich Tehrani.