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IP-PBX Growth

Here is an excerpt of a release on how fast IP-PBX sales are growing. This segment of the market is doing better than ever.

PBX Market Jumps 11% in 2004, Fueled by Hot IP PBX Segment

BOSTON, Massachusetts, March 2, 2005--Boosted by blazing hot sales of IP PBXs, the worldwide PBX/KTS market grew 8% to $1.7 billion between 3Q04 and 4Q04, and jumped 16% between 4Q03 to 4Q04, according to Infonetics Research's Enterprise Telephony quarterly worldwide market share and forecast report.

Annual PBX/KTS system revenue broke the $6 billion barrier this year, growing 11% between 2003 and 2004, from $5.5 to $6.1 billion, and is expected to grow to $9.1 billion by 2008, representing a five-year CAGR of 10%. The number of PBX/KTS lines shipped worldwide grew to 26.6 million in 2004, 19% higher than in 2003.

"2004 was a great year for the PBX market," said Infonetics Research's Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise voice and data. "Not only is the overall market growing at larger than expected rates, but the IP PBX segment is growing ferociously, with 50%-plus growth between 2003 and 2004. Successful vendors are recognizing the shifts in the market and have moved their products from TDM into the IP realm. The TDM segment, which one year ago still accounted for half the market, is now less than a third."

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Skype Interview

I was recently fortunate enough to interview Niklas Zennström, Skype CEO and co-founder. There are lots of amazing comments in this interview such a staggeringly large number of daily downloads as well as the low cost of adding new Skype users. Perhaps most interesting is Mr. Zennström's dismissal of service providers interfering with Skype's call quality. While he has a point… VoIP is driving broadband adoption, many service providers will be happy to sell their own VoIP service and cripple those of others.

Skype recently had 50 million downloads. This is quite a milestone. What does this mean to the VoIP community?

Skype is the leading VOIP-category product worldwide, with more than 24 million registered users, and more than 130,000 new users per day. We believe that Skype's success and continuing growth proves the market is ready for major communications advancements. We will continue to develop Skype so that it operates on a large variety of platforms with seamless cross-platform function.

Metcalfe's Law states the value of a network grows as approximately the square of the number of users on the network. I understand you have 23 million active users now. Have you seen a larger ratio of users to downloaded copies? Do you see usage to download ratios growing according to this law?

Skype's download figure will always be larger than the number of registered users as we continue to innovate and delight with new functions and free upgrades. As for the network effect, we're certainly seeing that growth. We're recording more than 130,000 downloads per day today, compared to 90,000 per day in October last year and 30,000 in March.

The cost and quality gains consumers reap with Skype builds a natural incentive for users to tell their friends and continue our viral growth.

Will the purchase of AT&T by SBC impact your business model at all?

No. Skype's P2P architecture for Internet telephony is more efficient than a traditional telecom provider's network or other VoIP providers because it doesn't need central servers or central resources to scale. Our marginal cost is zero for each call and the cost of adding new users to Skype is less than $0.01. We will keep Skype-to-Skype calling free and maintain the efficiencies of a technology business.

At our last Internet Telephony Conference & Expo (ITEXPO) in Los Angeles, you mentioned that workgroups in companies were a growing part of your business. Is this still the case?

Yes and we will be releasing Skype for Business this year, targeting groups not enterprises.

What else in your business has changed since then.

We've been busy expanding our carrier relationships and regional partnerships, most notably in Asia. We've published an API and made it freely available for non-commercial use.

How have your paid services been doing? Do they grow as a steady proportion of the free users?

SkypeOut, our first premium, pre-pay service has more than 735,000 users around the world. We continue to expand payment options and will unveil additional premium offerings throughout 2005.

Do you have any fear that broadband providers will limit the quality of Skype traffic or the ability to transmit on their networks at all?

No. Skype is driving broadband proliferation and use worldwide which helps broadband providers' businesses.

Do you have plans of providing an IP Centrex like hosting model in the future for corporations?

We've not detailed the Skype for Business offerings, but in general we've not looked to old models for developing solutions for customers.

At our recent ITEXPO you mentioned you had more users on your network than there are SIP users and subsequently SIP support wasn't that important to Skype. Have you changed your mind on this topic at all?

No – we believe that interoperability will be important but we are not receiving much demand for SIP support

Is it true Skype calls cannot be tapped? What implications does this have for governments trying to monitor the security of their homelands?

Skype is end-to-end encrypted for superior privacy. Your question re government monitoring applies generically to all global communication.

Where does Skype stand on emergency notification services (911 in the states)? Can you fully support such services? How?

Historically telecom companies have been required to provide emergency services as the telephone was the only means of communication. These issues are larger than a single company but we're aware that it's a massive challenge to reliably provide E911 services due to the nomadic and global nature of modern communications. Numerous parties will need to work together to look at the bigger picture and allow any modern communications application to provide emergency service, including email, IM, SMS and voice.

Where will Skype be in five years? Ten?

We'll continue to grow as The Global Internet Telephony Company in defining a new market and a new opportunity using technology much like global Internet brands such as Google, EBay or Amazon.

What is the biggest competitor you have now? Your biggest challenge?

Our biggest challenge is managing our priorities and staying focused on developing Skype to continue to delight the users. We don't look at what other companies are doing, our core DNA is listening to our user base and innovating according to their demands.

What do you personally want to be remembered for if you could choose one thing only?

As I said the last time we were together "It's not the big that beats the small - it's the fast that beats the slow." Like all other entrepreneurs, I am an optimist.

You have started two incredibly viral software companies (previously Kazaa) and affected the lives of tens of millions of people. What's next?

I'm devoted to developing Skype and expanding its promise.

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Thank You Irwin

Thanks for the nice comments about ITEXPO Irwin. Sorry I missed speaking with you at the event.

Sincerely,
Rich

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Workforce Management News

InVision Software, workforce management software specialists, sign Compeer -- Sweden's leading call centre provider

InVision Software has won a major contract with Compeer, one of Sweden's leading call centre provider. InVision has been selected to implement their Staff Planning System (SPS) for a workforce of five hundred Compeer agents. The InVision system will optimise staffing schedules across various departments within the company, including customer service, technical support and telemarketing. The Compeer call centres operate a demanding schedule, running a 24-hour service, 365 days a year.

Compeer has over 20 customers in different industries, including names such as ICA Bank, Boxer and Statoil. With high profile, demanding clients, Compeer required a system that was reliable, effective and cost-efficient.

"We chose InVision, following an extensive period of research. It was crucial that our core specifications were fulfilled - the software needed to be web-based, available in Swedish and tailored to the requirements of a busy call centre." explained Jurgen Larsson, Vice President from Compeer.

InVision's powerful Staff Planning System platform is a web-based solution allowing businesses to forecast, control and schedule their workforce in real-time to match requirements with capacity.

Jurgen Larson, Vice President from Compeer commented "As a workforce management solution, InVision's software was easily integrated into existing IT systems. The staff planning system has enabled Compeer to forecast with better accuracy, ensuring the right number of staff to cover changing shift patterns/personnel requirements. In addition, the software incorporates employee working preferences, whilst providing more flexible shift patterns, consequently increasing staff morale and retention."

As a leading supplier of workforce management software, the Swedish call centre market is a key focus for InVision.

"We are absolutely thrilled to be working with such a successful and respected company. Our software will enable Compeer to work more efficiently, with greater profitability and we are looking forward to developing a long-term relationship. The InVision system is ideal within a call centre environment and we hope to make a significant difference to their business." said Christian Kossendey, InVision's managing director.

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VoIP Funding

General Bandwidth raises $18 Million in funding

General Bandwidth, a VoIP equipment manufacturer recently announced it has raised $18 million in new funding round. The funding according to the company will further accelerate research, development and broaden General Bandwidth's coverage in both domestic and international markets.

Oak Investment Partners led the new round with participation from Sevin Rosen, Venrock Associates, Invesco, Thomas Weisel Capital Partners, Trellis Partners, Star Ventures, Wheatley Partners, HLM, Protostar, Granite Global, Siemens Venture Capital and Texas Instruments.

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Cisco Leads in VoIP

Cisco rules Q4 Enterprise VoIP

A quarterly research report Enterprise VoIP Equipment: Q4 2004 Update published by iLocus today reveals that Cisco dominates the IP Phones, IP PBX, and Enterprise VoIP gateway segments.

In Q4 2004, Cisco had market shares of 37%, 27%, and 57% respectively in IP Phones, IP PBX, and Enterprise VoIP gateway segments. 

According to the report, an estimated 1.29 million desktop IP phones were shipped in Q4 of the year 2004, thereby generating a revenue of about $193.66 million worldwide.

In Q4, migration of enterprise voice networks towards IP systems had a major boost accounting for a high volume of IP PBX shipments. Vendors shipped a total of about 2.03 million IP PBX end user licenses in the quarter, thereby generating revenue of $205.59 million.

The report also estimates market size and market shares in segments including Enterprise VoIP Gateways, Voice-enabled 802.11 Chipsets, VoIP-over-WiFi Handsets, and ATAs.

For further details on the report please visit http://www.ilocus.com/enterpriseq404.htm

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WiFi GPS

I spend so much time talking about VoIP killer apps, I figured I would share some info on a WiFi killer app with you. Large enterprises need to track all sorts of things and this is a way for them to inexpensively (relatively anyway) achieve this goal.

Ekahau Announces New Wi-Fi Tag and Positioning Engine Versions

Ekahau Positioning Engine 3.1 calculates more locations per second and supports Ekahau's new T201 Wi-Fi location tag.

Dallas, TX - March 2nd, 2005 - Ekahau, Inc., the leading provider of accurate Wi-Fi positioning solutions and site survey tools, today announced the general availability of the Ekahau Positioning Engine version 3.1, and the second generation Wi-Fi Location-tracking Tag T201.

With these new enhancements, Ekahau can now provide large enterprises a turnkey Wi-Fi RTLS (Real Time Location System) solution, with industry leading accuracy, performance and reliability. The Ekahau RTLS system can be deployed over any standard Wi-Fi network and provides real-time location information of mobile enterprise resources, assets and people.

Large enterprises adopting Wi-Fi for data and voice purposes are creating a natural enabling infrastructure for Ekahau's RTLS solution.

Unlike competing location-tracking systems, Ekahau technology can be easily deployed wherever there is Wi-Fi coverage, without disrupting the facility's daily operation. Especially in the healthcare environment, users are finding that people and asset tracking systems increase productivity and reduce bottlenecks while improving the overall quality of patient care.

"Our customers are looking for ways to deploy asset and people tracking solutions in the fastest and the most cost-efficient manner. These new releases of the Ekahau Positioning Engine and Wi-Fi Tag have substantially improved performance characteristics allowing Ekahau to continue increasing it's market leader role. The solution is easy to deploy and operate. It can begin generating an ROI within weeks of the deployment decision," said Mr. Arttu Huhtiniemi, Director of Product Management, Ekahau, Inc.  "The underlying core benefit allows companies to incorporate location information into their existing Wi-Fi infrastructure, seamlessly integrating data, voice and location tracking over one standard infrastructure"

The Ekahau Positioning Engine version 3.1 has been upgraded to support Ekahau's next generation T201 Wi-Fi Tag along with a host of other Wi-Fi enabled devices. It also includes several new improvements, such as multiprocessor support for increased performance for tracking thousands of mobile devices per server, improved algorithms for multi-story and campus wide deployments, as well as a series of new features that improve system deployment and operations.

The new T201 tag has a new smaller design, longer battery life and is smaller in size than its predecessor. It supports Over-The-Air (OTA) configuration over the Wi-Fi network, has a buzzer, LED signaling and a call button for commissioning and decommissioning as well as location-based alarming, for personnel and security use. Ekahau will be showcasing both new products at the RFID World Conference and Exhibition in Dallas on March 2nd and 3rd.

About Ekahau, Inc.

Ekahau, Inc. is the industry leader in location-enabling Wi-Fi networks.
Ekahau's customers include leading corporations around the world that are realizing the benefits of Wi-Fi-based location services and innovative network planning and optimization tools. Ekahau partners include wireless software developers, leading system integrators, and international OEM partners, who develop and market next generation location-based applications. For more information about Ekahau, please visit www.ekahau.com

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Speech and the W3C

Big news in speech and standards. Loquendo is working with the W3C or the Worldwide Web Consortium to bring a higher level of standardization to speech technology.

Loquendo TTS Powers W3C Standardization Activities

Loquendo, the global speech technology company, today announced that as part of ongoing commitment to W3C standardization activities, it has donated its world-class speech technologies, including the Loquendo TTS text-to-speech engine, Loquendo ASR automatic speech recognition and the VoxNauta(tm) speech platform to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for creating speech-enabled demos, especially in the Multimodal Interaction field.

The W3C Multimodal Interaction Activity seeks to extend the Web to allow users to dynamically select the most appropriate mode of interaction for their current needs, whilst enabling developers to provide an effective user interface for whichever modes the user selects. Depending on the device, users will be able to provide input via speech, handwriting, and keystrokes, with output presented through displays, pre-recorded and synthetic speech, audio, and tactile mechanisms.

The first Multimodal Interaction Group demo powered by Loquendo Technology will be presented today during the W3C Technical Plenary in Boston. The demo illustrates Multimodal Interaction and styling, concentrating on the visual and aural rendering of News expressed in RSS (Rich Site Summary). RSS is an XML document used to share news headlines and other types of Web content. The formalism has been adopted by news syndication services, weblogs, and other online information services. Its widespread use and success are due to its effectiveness and simplicity. Besides being used to create news summary Web pages, RSS can also be fed into stand-alone news browsers or headline viewers, PDAs, cell phones, email ticklers and even voice updates.

In this initial demo, the RSS data are rendered into an XHTML document for a visual browser, and concurrently into an SSML document which is fed into the Loquendo TTS speech synthesis engine for reading the news out loud. Future demos will also exploit Loquendo's ASR and VoiceXML technologies.

Loquendo offers a full range of technological components to rapidly and easily create best-of-breed solutions in 16 languages. Currently available languages include U.S. and U.K. English, Castilian, Catalan, Mexican, Chilean and Argentinean Spanish, Italian, German, French, Dutch, Greek, Mandarin Chinese, Brazilian, Portuguese and Swedish in both male and female voices.

About Loquendo - Vocal Technology and Services With over 30 years of R&D expertise, Loquendo is at the forefront of the global speech technologies market. Its high-quality, high-performance technologies (Loquendo TTS - text to speech, Loquendo ASR - automatic speech recognition, Loquendo Speech Server, Loquendo Speaker Verification) and platforms guarantee systems integrators the best solutions in 16 languages and 36 voices - with more coming soon.
From its headquarters in Turin, Italy, Loquendo deploys technologies that power millions of calls every day in the telecommunications and enterprise markets throughout the world.

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Spirit Conferencing

Conferencing is something that VoIP does with ease. CoIP or conferencing over IP will be a killer app, one of many in the VoIP world. The cost of doing conferencing using VoIP is so low that it makes no sense to conference any other way. We are already seeing conferencing proliferate in video games and soon we will see widespread use of conferencing in a myriad of apps aimed at teens as well as business people.

I have often said that "Ambient Telephony," is a part of VoIP 2.0 and is how families will communicate in the future. It is the concept of conferencing for predetermined amounts of time. People will stay connected for a while as there is no reason to hang up. It will be like visiting with your parents without having to live close by. Like a conference call at work. We can expect ambient telephony lunches in offices where informal teams communicate across geographic boundaries. Enough about the high level stuff, Spirit has some software that makes it easier to embed conferencing software into your applications:

SPIRIT offers free trial version of TeamSpirit™ - Voice Engine for Multi-Point IP Conferencing

Receive your own TeamSpirit™ evaluation copy and experience the difference between P2P and Multi-Point Conferencing

SPIRIT (www.spiritdsp.com/voip), the leading provider of embedded software products for the telecom industry, invites everybody to experience real Multi-Point Conferencing via the TeamSpirit™ Voice Engine. Just contact SPIRIT, ask for free trial copy and enjoy true Multi-Point IP Conferencing.

Conventional IP conferencing systems provide P2P communication only. Many people can take part in the conference passively but only one person can talk at any given moment. The others have to listen and wait for a pause to be able say something. These solutions do not measure up to real business needs as very often during business conferences and discussions several people start talking at the same time interrupting each other. As poorly heard words can result in expensive mistakes it's extremely important to hear and understand every piece of information. That's why Multi-Point mode is the only way to make conferencing reliable and a convenient way of VoIP communication.

In the end of 2004 TeamSpirit™ - the industry's first software for true multi-point conferencing - appeared on the market. This innovative software enables dozens of users to participate in a conference simultaneously. It doesn't matter how many participants take part in the conference, their speech still remains clear and easy to understand even during simultaneous talk.

The good news is that now everybody can experience true Multi-Point Conferencing. A trial version of TeamSpirit™ is available upon request. It's fully functional and allows to setup real conferences with unlimited number of participants. All speakers can talk at the same time and all of them will be clearly heard by all others. There are no nasty clippings or breaks thus making conferencing more comfortable and natural. TeamSpirit™ allows all parties perfectly follow the conversation with no misheard dialogues leading to expensive mistakes.

About SPIRIT
SPIRIT (www.spiritDSP.com) is a prominent supplier of high-quality software products for audio and telecom industry. SPIRIT's flexible licensing model includes cost efficient product customization to specific clients' needs. SPIRIT communication software works within hardware solutions from clients including Agere, Atmel, Ericsson, Furuno, JRC, NEC, Nortel Networks, Panasonic, Philips, Polycom, Samsung, Siemens, Tadiran, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba among 150+ other OEMs.
SPIRIT offers free trial version of TeamSpirit™ - Voice Engine for Multi-Point IP Conferencing
Receive your own TeamSpirit™ evaluation copy and experience the difference between P2P and Multi-Point Conferencing

SPIRIT (www.spiritdsp.com/voip), the leading provider of embedded software products for the telecom industry, invites everybody to experience real Multi-Point Conferencing via the TeamSpirit™ Voice Engine. Just contact SPIRIT, ask for free trial copy and enjoy true Multi-Point

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Costa Rica VoIp

You want to go to jail? Try using VoIP in Costa Rica. At least that is what the future could hold. Here is a great article from TMCnet's David Sims titled Is VoIP Illegal in Latin America? And another from The Register titled Costa Rican telco lobbies to criminalise VoIP (In the UK they use an "s" in criminalize meaning it isn't a typo. Someone try and tell my spell-checker).

One wonders how long this sort of ridiculous government action can continue. After all every country needs broadband to compete effectively in the world and as broadband proliferates so does VoIP. The genie is out of the bottle my friends. They can try to ban it, kill it, blow it up but VoIP keeps coming back and growing.

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Yahoo! Free Ice Cream

If you are addicted to blogs like I am there is a chance you leave a somewhat sedentary life and like me the last thing need is a free scoop of Baskin-Robbins. Still, I am trying to serve the public interest here and as such I feel compelled to let you know that Yahoo! Is celebrating its ten year anniversary, which is pretty amazing if you stop and think about all the controversy this company helped create.

Ten years ago, Yahoo was THE dotcom. We all talked about them They really helped shape the direction of the Internet over the years and showed that an Internet company with an advertising based revenue model could be very successful. These guys were trailblazers when there was no road map.

Hats off to Yahoo! for helping the Internet get to where it is today and you may enjoy a free ice cream on the company to help celebrate the first ten years of the commercial Internet. While I appreciate the gesture, most of Yahoo!'s customers (myself included) would be better off with an Atkins low-carb bar… But hey, it's a gift. Give up your diet for day and enjoy.

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Video on Demand

There is still investment money to be had in the video market. Look closely at the investors below. Two of them are cable companies, which should tell you something about how cable companies view the success of the VOD market. The companies are Time Warner Investments and Comcast Interactive Capital.

Arroyo Closes $12 Million to Accelerate its Growth in Advanced Video Services

Funding Led by Matrix Partners, with all Prior Investors Participating Kim Kelly Steps Down as CEO, Remains on Board of Directors; Paul Sherer Named Interim CEO

PLEASANTON, Calif. - March 2, 2005 - Arroyo Video Solutions, Inc., developer of a unique video platform that enables operators to deliver advanced video applications, today announced the completion of a $12 million Series B round of expansion financing, bringing total venture capital investment in Arroyo to more than $25 million.  The round was led by Matrix Partners, a top venture capital firm, with participation by all existing investors including: DCM - Doll Capital Management, Foundation Capital, Time Warner Investments and Comcast Interactive Capital. The new financing will be used to accelerate Arroyo's growth in advanced video services by addressing new strategic opportunities and markets. 

The company also announced that Andrew Verhalen, a partner at Matrix Partners, has been appointed to its board of directors. 

In addition, Arroyo's board of directors announced that Kim Kelly has stepped down as CEO, and Arroyo's Co-Founder and CTO Paul Sherer has been named CEO on an interim basis.  Kelly said, "Arroyo has tremendous traction due to its superior technology and commitment to customer service and partnerships.  I've been blessed to have been part of Arroyo's growth and look forward to continue supporting Arroyo as an active director."  The board has begun the search for a new CEO immediately.

"We have great respect for Kim, and her contribution to Arroyo over the past seven months. We are looking forward to her continuing to contribute to the company as a board member," Sherer said.

Commenting on the funding, Sherer said, "I am thrilled to welcome Andy Verhalen, one of the most respected and successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, to our board. This round, led by Matrix with all of our existing investors participating, is a tremendous vote of confidence in the company. It underscores that these financial and industry leaders understand the strength of the Arroyo team, the tremendous value our solution brings and how very well positioned Arroyo is."
 
"Matrix has invested in Arroyo because it has a world-class team, market changing technology and strong traction with key customers.  Extensive due-diligence with leading operators confirmed the confidence they have in Paul Sherer and the Arroyo team, and their enthusiasm for the company's unique open architecture products," said Matrix Partners' Andrew Verhalen.  "This funding will help Arroyo to realize its vision of enabling video operators to drive advanced services into every home faster."

"Over the 15 months since our last investment, Arroyo has proven the team's ability to conceive, engineer and sell a bold new vision and an exciting product set," said DCM's Carl Amdahl. "Having successfully transitioned from development stage to a company with revenues and several major customers, Arroyo is positioned for tremendous growth."

Arroyo has tremendous market momentum, having just unveiled its first product, Arroyo OnDemand, which started shipping in October 2004 and is already in trials or deployed with three top North American operators.  Leading the market with first-to-market solutions, Arroyo also recently announced the industry's first 10 Gigabit Ethernet solution for VOD, and a 65 percent boost in its server performance, bringing the number of 3.75Mbps streams per 3RU servers to a best in class 5,000.  Arroyo's open platform solutions deliver unprecedented levels of scalability and performance for VOD delivery.

About Arroyo Video Solutions
Headquartered in Pleasanton, California, Arroyo Video Solutions offers video operators a unique, network-centric, on-demand architecture that uses 100 percent open-standard hardware platforms. The company's flagship product, Arroyo OnDemand, separates storage and streaming into different industry-standard servers and employs Arroyo Video Accelerator™ technology, which improves performance ten-fold.

Arroyo is a privately held company funded by leading Silicon Valley venture firms Matrix Partners, DCM- Doll Capital Management and Foundation Capital; and by Time Warner Investments and Comcast Interactive Capital, the investment arms of two of the nation's largest media companies. For more information, please visit www.arroyo.tv.

About Matrix Partners
Since its inception in 1977, Matrix Partners has been dedicated to helping outstanding entrepreneurs build industry-leading technology companies. With offices in the two major technology centers-Boston and Silicon Valley-Matrix has developed an exceptionally strong network of contacts and entrepreneurial know-how. Companies that have gone public out of the Matrix portfolio, where Matrix played a founding role, have generated well over $100 billion of market value. These include Veritas (Nasdaq:VRTS), Tivoli (acquired by IBM), ArrowPoint Communications (acquired by Cisco), Alteon Web Systems (acquired by Nortel), Openwave (Nasdaq: OPWV), SilverStream Software (acquired by Novell), Sonus Networks (Nasdaq: SONS) and Sycamore Networks (Nasdaq:SCMR). Matrix has enjoyed one of the highest rates of return in the industry over the past 20 years. Matrix Partners is online at www.matrixpartners.com.

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Leaving UNE-P

Dealing with UNE-P. This is how one CLEC is doing it:

Verizon and New Rochelle Telephone Sign Long-Term, Multi-State Commercial Agreement for Wholesale Services

Agreement Will Replace New Rochelle's Current UNE-P Leasing Arrangement With Verizon's Wholesale Advantage Program

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - March 2, 2005 - New Rochelle Telephone Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of eLEC Communications Corp. (OTCBB:ELEC), a CLEC and integrated packet communications service provider, today announced the signing of a long-term, multi-state wholesale service agreement with Verizon that will replace New Rochelle's existing wholesale network leasing arrangement known as the Unbundled Network Elements Platform (UNE-P). 

New Rochelle Telephone's wholesale advantage agreement with Verizon, which includes restructured pricing and a number of high-value services not offered under the previous government-mandated UNE-P plan, provides New Rochelle Telephone with the continued availability of wholesale services through at least December 2009. New Rochelle Telephone has been a purchaser of Verizon's wholesale services under the UNE-P service offering for more than three years.  New Rochelle Telephone has always served all of its customers under the UNE-P service offering and will now be able to continue to service its customers under the Wholesale Advantage Program with Verizon.

"We are extremely pleased with our new wholesale service agreement with Verizon," said Paul Riss, New Rochelle Telephone's CEO.  "This agreement removes the regulatory uncertainty of our core business and gives us the ability to continue our rapid growth in providing local access services.  We can now move forward without the distraction of UNE-P regulatory developments because our new agreement with Verizon provides us full access to the same features and functionalities that we have always relied on to provide service to our customers. With our new advantage wholesale agreement and the additional working capital we raised in February, we have the tools to move forward with the provisioning of new customers in the Verizon territory, and to continue to gain market share and profitable lines in the coming months."


About New Rochelle Telephone
New Rochelle Telephone Corp. is a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) that provides small businesses and residential customers with local and long distance landline services and a rich feature offering that includes products such as call waiting, caller ID, three way calling and voice mail. 

About eLEC Communications
eLEC Communications Corp., headquartered in White Plains, NY, is a publicly traded local telecommunications company that is taking advantage of the convergence of the technological and regulatory developments in the Internet and telecommunications markets.  eLEC provides an integrated suite of communications services to business and residential customers, including local, long distance, dedicated access, and VoIP.  For more information, visit www.elec.net.

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Back From Miami

I got to spend a few days in Miami after ITEXPO and got some much needed rest. Miami is becoming more like LA every time I visit. For example there is lots of money in Miami and the desire to showcase it seems to grow every time I head south. Driving through the streets at night, Aston Martins and Lamborghinis dot the street like spots on a Dalmatian. Ferraris aren't even interesting anymore. I saw more of theses hot-blooded Italian sports cars than I saw new Mustangs. Most amazing was a Porsche Carrera GT I spotted on Ocean Driveone night. The car hits 60 mph in under four seconds, has over 600 horsepower and costs about as much as a decked out softswitch or approximately $450,000.

Now that we have some content for my male readers, the women out there will be happy to know there is a new trend in purses. Fur. I am not kidding there were lots of mink purses everywhere you looked and especially in the Bal Harbor Shops. Prices are north of $2k for a designer model (which is all you find in these shops).

The trip back was uneventful for a while -- we got to the gate a few minutes early. The pilot even made some time in the air. Whenever I land in an airport, especially, a New York airport, I pray that we will get to a gate instead of having to wait forever on the tarmac. I always know that once we are at the gate, there can be no more delays.

American Airlines changed my perspective on this belief rather quickly. In fact, once at the gate, the pilot told us we shared an exit area with an international flight and had to wait on the flight for about 20 minutes to avoid, what was the word he used? Co-mingling? I guess the concept is that an international traveler could give something to one of us domestic travelers and customs wouldn't be able to catch it. The wait seemed like an hour, but whose counting amongst close friends which is what we more less became as passengers stood shoulder-to-shoulder with looks of disbelief on their face. It is a cliché to say we were like sardines in a can so I won't use it. What I will say is that a sardine can may have smelled better than the flight as the heat was unbearable. Apparently, once parked at the gate FAA regulations prohibit ventilation of any sort. I was hoping the oxygen mask would drop down.

Once getting off the flight, it got better (the story, anyway -- the trip continued to deteriorate). Strollers are the last things you check as you need strollers for babies and they need to be close by at all times. When we got off the plane, only one stroller came out to the amazement of the other 5 families with children. 45 minutes later (this process should take about five minutes on normal occasions) we were told there are no strollers, we need to claim them at baggage claim.

If you are following my story closely you probably guessed it right -- no strollers at baggage claim. Seriously, they weren't there. They were put (are you ready?) on a different flight! No, I am not kidding here. We waited another 45 minutes to learn about this new concept in stroller mismanagement and another 10 minutes to fill out the paperwork and deal with the most incompetent airport employees I have ever seen.

While I am at it, who manages the baggage claim area at JFK? Is it the airline or the airport. It is a dingy, dark place, more becoming of a dungeon than an airport. This is where the world's only remaining super power welcomes the world? In a basement?

OK, now that that's out of my system. It feels good to be home. I am working on upcoming TMC events and am pumped to make them as successful as ITEXPO in Miami was. We not only sold out the exhibit hall in Miami, we doubled it and now don't fit in a hotel and are moving to a convention center next year. Out next show is Speech-World which is collocated with IP Contact Center Summit. After that is VoIP Developer , followed by ITEXPO in LA. I hope to see you at all TMC events in the future.

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