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Named to the Smith Top 30

I am truly honored to be part of the Smith Top 30 blog. Who is Smith you ask? Well Smith is a highly esteemed VoIP blogger of course. Actually I wasn’t too familiar with him before the list but it seems the best way to get in the good graces of bloggers is to give them some much-needed recognition.

Of course I am not sure how much Smith knows about my blog as he erroneously ranked me at #3 when somewhere around 31 or 32 might be more appropriate.

Sure Google ads are great and all but industry or peer recognition makes this job so much more fun. Sure us tech bloggers may never reach rock star status but then again we will leave a different sort of legacy on the world – one where we help people understand the daily news and happenings from our unique perspective and style.

It seems the style and opinions of individual bloggers is what makes me look forward to reading what they have to say. I am at the point where I can guess who has written a particular entry from the headline alone.

On a separate note, in many cases I know some blogger’s writing styles exceedingly well yet I have never met them in person.

Certainly blogging has changed the world. Political races must take blogs into account, companies must be careful of how they treat customer s because of bloggers and of course there was that whole Dan Rather thing.

But getting back to the world of IP Communications, here is the top 10 list of bloggers. Thanks again Smith on VoIP for the recognition.

Here is his top 10

Andy Abramson - VoIP Watch
Om Malik - GigaOm
Rich Tehrani’s Blog
Jon Arnold’s Blog
Greg Gatlitzine’s VoIP Authority Blog
Skype Journal
Russell Shaw’s IP Telephony Blog
Tom Keating’s VoIP and Gadgets Blog
Jeff Pulver - Pulver Blog
Mark Evans Blog

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Call Center Training

The field for call center training is expanding rapidly – perhaps because there are so many new call center agents being hired on a daily basis. It is staggering that even in the US the pace of call center growth is brisk. As these agents are hired, call center training becomes a more important issue as some call centers have had turnover rates in the hundreds of percent range.

This subject came up recently as I was discussing Call center training with a coworker who told me Ulysses Learning wants to be known as the call center training company.

Certainly there are many companies looking to be leaders in call center training and with thousands of new agents being hired each day there is lots of opportunity out there. Hopefully companies like Ulysses are targeting Dell and other companies who are getting slammed for hiring untrained call center agents.

One can only hope companies take call center agent training more seriously as the world becomes more competitive and people like Lou Dobbs begin to berate companies who not only use overseas agents but who take a customer service hit for doing so.

See also:

Dell: More, Not Better, Call Centers The Answer!
The CRM Week In Review
Dell Call Center Deja Vu
Sales slump prompts Dell to rethink strategy

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Right on Russell

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VoIP Services

One of the more exciting things we do here at TMC is build communities. If you haven’t checked out what TMC is doing in this area you really should as there are lots of very exciting things happening as the world of communities collide with the world of the Internet and Web 2.0.

The most recent Global Online Community TMC has produced was in conjunction with Packet 8 and is titled VoIP Services. So what is a community? It is an area online or portal that is focused on a specific topic. In this case VoIP Services is the focus of this community and you can bookmark it so the latest VoIP services news is always available to you.

Hats off to the sponsors who support TMC’s efforts to objectively bring news and analysis to the world and by doing so build strong communities of related people looking to find out more about various products and services in the market.

Stories of interest from today for example are Minneapolis Public Libraries Deploys Mitel IP Communication System, ZyXEL Selects TI's VoIP Solutions and Cable Poised for Growth in VoIP Services.

Here are some links from our sponsor worth looking at -- Packet8 VideoPhone - Speak in Color and Packet8 Referral Program - Learn More.

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VoIP Phone Systems

Speaking of VoIP-based phone systems the people at Allworx have been very busy lately generating new products as well as getting funding. I had a chance to meet with the company and their team a while back and they seem like a super-excited group of people looking to set the world on fire.

Here is a good article on what the company is up to. Mae covered most of the important points so there isn’t much more for me to add except that the company seems reenergized. For more information on the category just visit the VoIP Phone Systems channel.

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Tier One Service Providers Worldwide

I have never seen so many registrations form Tier one service providers at any previous TMC event. This Internet Telephony Conference & Expo this October will have a massive showing of Tier 1 and smaller providers. In addition we are getting major decision makers – the technical people. We are still on track for about 9,000 total attendees which will be split – not exactly equally - between service provider, enterprise and reseller. There will be a good industry and developer showing as well. One difference ITEXPO has from all other events is how many serious buyers we attract. We are told by exhibitors the attendees at ITEXPO are ready to buy and deals close quickly – more quickly than other events.

We are really pumped about the show and the collocated IMS EXPO and Call Center 2.0 events are on track as well.

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Layoffs at Network Computing

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Alcatel Acquires 3G Assets from Nortel

Today Nortel announced it has shed its 3G UMTS radio access assets and sold them to Alcatel. On a conference call with financial analysts and the media, Nortel President and CEO Mike Zafirovski was quick to point out that his company remains committed to next-generation mobility through its remaining GSM access and core business, Long Term Evolution (LTE), WiMAX as well as its CDMA businesses.

This seems to make sense for Nortel and Alcatel. On the one hand, Nortel is shedding a division that doesn’t make money and in an area where it has less than 20% market share. The 20% mark is where Zafirovski draws the line. Any less share than that and the business unit has a limited life at Nortel.

Shedding the unit makes sense for Nortel from a business standpoint but I can't help but wonder what synergies are lost when an important unit such as this gets sold off.

I don’t have all the answers of course but I wonder how much smaller Nortel plans on getting. The ability for the company to share R&D costs decreases as similar divisions get spun off.

The flipside is a leaner company which in a growing telecom market could perhaps do even better if there is less divisions to have to worry about.

The question of scale must come up often at Alcatel where they are currently approving the Lucent merger and now this. Is there any stopping Alcatel? The challenge the French communications leader has is one of digestion – and how do you digest Lucent and part of Nortel all at once.

Other telecom players are taking note and fear the combined company but also point out it will take a year to integrate Lucent.

As always the telecom market is full of excitement and this announcement just shows you how things can change in a day and before you know it companies get repositioned and once again customers, the media and analysts are trying to make sense of where the communications market is heading.

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