December 2005 Archives

It’s hard to believe 2005 is almost a memory. Rather than come up with a list of predictions that will most likely come true (if I guess conservatively) or most likely will never come to fruition (if I take some genuine chances) I’d rather wish the readers of my blog a safe, healthy, and happy new year!

Next year will be a busy one here at TMC. As has already been well documented, we are in the process of launching two brand-new magazines (SIP magazine and IMS magazine) in addition to publishing our flagship Internet Telephony.

2006 will also find me on the road a lot more, starting with a trip to Ft. Lauderdale for the annual Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO East (January 24–27, 2006). This year, our show is the first VoIP industry event of the season and for that reason (and many other reasons too!) we’re expecting a really exciting show jammed with innovative product launches and industry news.

The upcoming year also promises to be a banner year for our online offerings as well. Without delving too much into the details, I expect our online content offering to expand as we devote ever more resources to serving our over 700,000 monthly visitors and continue to give them a reason to keep coming back. We’re working hard to be the industry’s number one resource, and I hope we’re succeeding.

While it looks to be a really busy year ahead, it also appears that it will be a period positively overflowing with opportunity. Here’s hoping that 2006 is shaping up to be a prosperous and joyful year for all of you.

I wish you peace.

In print, in person and online, I look forward to seeing you in 2006!

-Greg

According to research from Point Topic, the United Kingdom has now overtaken France as the biggest broadband country in Europe — although the gap is still narrow. However, this is according to estimates by Point Topic which suggest that the UK will have 9.8 million broadband lines by New Year's Day 2006, while France will have 9.7 million. As the chart below shows, in Q305, France still had a slim lead over the UK.

Nevertheless, the report notes that the British broadband market is facing huge changes in 2006, which should stimulate growth further by bringing increased competition and investment.

These changes include the development and proving of processes to support bulk migration of existing DSL customers to "unbundled" telephone lines, the creation of Openreach as a provider of broadband access to all service providers on equal terms, and the expected merger of the UK’s two big cable companies, NTL and Telewest, perhaps followed by the acquistion of Virgin Mobile.

Broadband Leaders in # of lines deployed (Q3 05)

• USA
• China
• Japan
• S. Korea
• France
• UK
• Germany
• Canada
• Italy
• Spain

IBM announced it will acquire San Francisco-based Micromuse in a cash transaction valued at about $865 million.

IBM continues to expand its telecom-related portfolio of products. Micromuse is a maker of voice-, VoIP- and video-traffic management software. Micromuse's Netcool suite is an engine for event collection, consolidation, and correlation. The solution provides real-time IT monitoring with business impact analysis, and is designed to assist organizations in proactively managing critical applications and services and also helps to control operational costs.

Taken together with last month's IMS announcement, IBM is clearly staking its territory as a player to be reckoned with as telcos continue to evolve to converged Next Generation Networks.

According to IBM, Micromuse will operate as a unit within IBM’s Tivoli software division.

Micromuse brings with it approximately 1,800 customers, including Time Warner/AOL, E*trade Financial, and Verizon.

Today, Verizon announced that it is testing an IMS solution from Nortel, as part of Verizon's ongoing plans to evaluate IMS technologies. Verizon is beginning its evaluation of IMS compliant solutions in order to converge voice, video, and multimedia service using globally standardized protocols and architecture.

"Verizon, which has been using Nortel's softswitch since 2001, is now beginning its evaluation of IMS compliant solutions. We are looking for open, standards-based solutions that will support rapid development of new innovative services to increase customer retention and attract new subscribers,” said Mark Wegleitner, senior vice president and chief technology officer, Verizon.

For more on this news, please check out this story published on TMCnet.

NexTone Communications has announced that four of the seven GPRS Roaming Exchange (GRX) carriers used the NexTone IP Multimedia Exchange (IMX) platform to power their successful trials in the European and Asian interoperability tests.

The tests were conducted by the GSM Association (GSMA), a global trade association that exists to promote, protect, and enhance the interests of GSM mobile operators throughout the world.

The trials, conducted over the last six months, brought together mobile network operators, GRX carriers, and equipment suppliers to ensure that the next generation of multimedia services, based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS), will work smoothly and have compatibility across networks once these services are launched for customers. The tests are crucial for the many operators around the world that are planning to use IMS to handle multimedia services such as instant messaging, push-to-talk-over-cellular, video-sharing, and multiplayer-games in the future.

The 2006 World Cup draw has been set. The US is in a rather tough Group E with Italy, Czech Republic and Ghana. Host Germany should have a relatively easy road to the next round. Costa Rica, Ecuador and Poland round out Group A.

Group B is no picnic with England playing Paraguay, Trinidad & Tobago and Sweden.

Group C should be exciting as Argentina will meet with the Netherlands, as well as Ivory Coast and Serbia & Montenegro. The  Dutch have to be considered among the top favorites to win the whole thing this summer.

Group D features Mexico, Iran, Angola and Portugal. I'd watch for Iran to make some noise here, and for Mexico to sneak out of the group into the next round as well. It's tough to bet against Portugal but....

Group F comprises Brazil, Croatia, Australia and Japan.

Group G seems like a walk in the park for the French squad. They will match up with Switzerland Korea and Togo.

The last group, Group H features Spain, Ukraine, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia.

As is to be expected the USA bashing has already begun on message boards across the globe. We'll see. There may be some upset Italy fans when all is said and done.

Here are my humble predictions for the first round:

A: Germany & Costa Rica

B: England and Sweden

C: Argie & Netherlands

D: Mexico & Iran

E: Czech Republic & USA

F: Brazil & Croatia

G: France & Korea

H: Spain & Ukraine

I've been wrong before, and I'm sure fans of Portugal and Italy think I'm wrong again.

I'm looking forward to 2006: first, the winter Olympics in Turin, The World Baseball Classic, the 2006 World Cup, the Tour de France sans Lance...  should be fun.

From the "If-you-can't-bill-for-it-how-will-you-ever-make-money" files, Telcordia announced a significant enhancement to Maestro, its IMS portfolio today.

The news involves an integrated Diameter interface to its Telcordia Converged Real Time Charging solution. With the integration of Diameter and the Credit Control Application (CCA), both industry standards specified by the 3GPP, Telcordia’s Real Time Charging solution gives operators an tool to introduce new services, flexible pricing offers, reduce revenue leakage, and minimize operating expenses. Just in time for the holidays, this would make the perfect gift for any service provider on your list. Really.

Check out the news as it appears on Telcordia's site.

Openera Technologies, Inc., a developer of IMS mobile client applications for fixed and mobile operators, announced today the commercial availability of its peer-to-peer video sharing application with integrated rich presence. The solution is designed to enable mobile phone users to talk with and view fellow callers simultaneously. Openera's Peer-to-Peer Video Sharing (PPVS) is the newest addition to Openera's suite of IMS Mobile Client applications, which partner Lucent Technologies is delivering to market as part of its end-to-end IMS offering.

For more information, take a look at the company's Web site.

As you have already heard, TMC is launching a brand-new magazine dedicated to IMS called (aptly enough) IMS Magazine. Keep a close eye on TMCnet.com for more information regarding this exciting new launch.

If you want to make sure you receive the premiere issue, go ahead and register for a subscription today.