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The 20^th ITEXPO which began on September 1, 2009 was nothing if not full of buzz and industry news thanks to Skype has been a news-generating machine.

Video clip of the ITEXPO Keynotes



I have rarely seen any company in fact generate so much news I, the unofficial news-generating machine of the event. It is as if the company came out of eBay hibernation and unleashed an assault on the blogging and reporter communities.

Skype Gets Sold

As ITEXPO opened, news of Skype being sold broke. Ebay received $1.9 billion in cash from a group of investors including Netscape and Ning founder Marc Andresen and the value of the company currently works out to $2.75 billion. As a side note, I think I may have been the only person who thought the eBay purchase of Skype for a super-high valuation of about $4 billion in 2005 made sense. What I didn't know at the time was that eBay wasn't going to try to integrate the companies in a serious manner. Yes, it is still shocking to me that the company says there were no synergies between Skype and their core business. Just showing ads for auctions should have generated huge amounts of revenue for the company. Then there is this list of items - most of which were never were acted on. Another option I suggested was to show Google ads on Skype which I predicted could have grown the bottom line by billions.

JoldID

By now it is well-known that the technology which gives Skype its P2P smarts is actually being licensed by JoltID Limited, a company in control of Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, two people who left eBay on not quite the best terms and are currently suing the auction leader and if they win they could shut Skype down.

At ITEXPO, the talk was that the Skype acquisition was at a high valuation because there were some behind-the-scenes discussions about the outcome of the lawsuit. Joe Nocera of the New York Times sums up my thoughts about Skype from the show quite nicely.

Since that time Joost said they are removing Mike Volpi from his role as chairman. Joost was also founded by Friis and Zennström and the conflict seems to have been caused by his roles both at Joost and private-equity firm Index Ventures, one of the firms involved in the Skype purchase.

Folks, the last time we had this much excitement in communications was when someone hacked into Paris Hilton's mobile device.

At one time Zennström mentioned to me that before the idea to build Skype he considered launching Joost and that there wasn't enough bandwidth at the time so he started a VoIP company instead. He further mentioned he can see a time when Skype and Joost would integrate with one another. It is unclear if that will ever happen now. In fact the only thing which is clear to me regarding Skype these past weeks is that nothing is clear.

Digium, Shoretel PBX Connectivity

But perhaps that isn't 100% correct, for while the world was digesting the news of Skype being acquired, the company was busy integrating with PBX vendors. At ITEXPO in fact Skype announced Skype for Asterisk Software and shortly thereafter, Shoretel was first to market with Skype for SIP interoperability.

No Extras Credit

But the Skype gift of September news is far from over as last week the company decided to nix its Extras program, leaving many developers hanging. Some like Stuart Henshall had some pretty harsh words to say about the company's developer relations and prominent blogger Om Malik was not far behind.

More recently, Michael Arrington wrote that Skype is looking to embrace developers in its next generation platform.

Out of all the news coming from the largest IP communications software company in the world, I think this last bit is the most mystifying. You see if I were to devise a way to anger as many developers as I could I wouldn't have to think - I would just duplicate what Skype just did. Bloggers, developers and everyone else seem determined to point out how incompetent the company's developer relations are.

At a time when developer programs are all the rage, how can Skype be such a disaster in this area? It is pretty mystifying actually and a massive opportunity missed.

It reminds me somewhat of the missed opportunity the company had with integrating with eBay and rolling our more revenue generating services over the past few years.

Conclusion

In terms of positioning, there are few companies like Skype -- they are still on a massive number of desktops and the software is migrating to the mobile space quite quickly. This soap opera is far from over and as this month has progressed I have found myself watching less and less TV as just keeping up with the day-to-day news at Skype has proven to be quite entertaining.

This past February at ITEXPO East 2009, I was honored to host the first panel in the world (that I know of) on the topic of HD Voice. Since that time lots of other people have jumped on the bandwagon which I think is great. A tremendous amount of credit goes to Polycom actually for being a true pioneer in the HD voice market. For over a year in fact the company has sponsored a Global Online Community on TMCnet titled HD Voice.

As you can see in the video below, one of the drawbacks to ubiquitous HD voice adoption is the wireless carriers. This is why I am thrilled to let you know Orange Moldova seems to be the world's first carrier to embrace HD voice in all its glory.

The challenge of course is you have to have a specific Nokia handset the 6720c to take part in the HD voice party. And of course you and the party you connect with have to be in Moldova - which by the way is sandwiched between Romania and the Ukraine.

Other facts of interest - the country's network has recently been upgraded to 14.4 Mbps and the Nokia phone uses Adaptive Multi Rate - WideBand (AMR-WB) technology. This is great news for the communications market as this new standard could be helpful in generating new sales of communications servers and endpoints as the world transitions to better sounding communications solutions. Expect the discussion to continue at ITEXPO East 2010, January 20-22^nd in Miami, FL.

At ITEXPO West 2009 in Los Angeles, I had a chance to sit down with the founders of inVox, the company behind a new easy-to-use cloud-based IVR system which allows rapid application development. Here is a video of my interview with company execs.

I travel a great deal and have had a chance to test AT&T's wireless

service in areas such as Dallas, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Los Angeles, San Francisco and others. What I have noticed is the service is improving and aside from occasional glitches, surfing the web on an Apple iPhone 3Gs is a more pleasant experience. I don't think it approaches Verizon Wireless yet but then again, VZW doesn't have to deal with the onslaught of wireless data requests generated from legions of iPhone users. AT&T has an opportunity of a lifetime to upgrade its network before it loses iPhone exclusivity (assuming it does).

To say the company is rushing to improve its service would be an understatement - in fact it is doubling its data speed through the use of HSPA in six cities -- Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and Charlotte. This is great news as the next ITEXPO and - East 2010 and the collocated 4G Wireless Evolution will take place in Miami this January and these upgrades should be in place by year's end. I am looking forward to testing the service out then.

A big theme at last week's ITEXPO was broadband stimulus and a number of people told me they have bookmarked and are using the new Broadband Stimulus GOC (Global Online Community) on TMCnet as their home page so they can keep up with the exciting developments in the space and the billions of dollars which will be distributed.

Here are some of the recent articles from the site if you haven't visited yet. Be sure to check out the community for yourself. These are certainly exciting times for the broadband market - indeed, any time the government gives billions of dollars in subsidies it is an exciting time - in any market.

Thank you all - sponsors, analysts, members of the press, keynoters, partners, attendees, speakers, friends, colleagues and the TMC team. ITEXPO West 2009 was one of the best events TMC has ever put on thanks to your support.

I will be collecting my thoughts for a while and will have more to report soon.

For now, please enjoy some photos and news from the event.

After an introduction for me, Dr. Don Brown, a true communications visionary and veteran began a presentation at ITEXPO West 2009 which asked where the value was in communications. He explained CEBP and unified communications were terms made up by marketers and he didn't really like the term buddy list either.

In a matter-of-fact manner, he explained where the problems in communications were. One example were the problems associated with processes in a company - they are not automated and they are not easily repeatable and they need to be improved.

He explained his company's mission is to make these processes more efficient and productive - the same way they apply technology to the contact center using skills-based routing (referring to the way a call is directed to the most appropriate agent based on a skill like knowledge of hotels in Hawaii.) He called the idea an all in one process automation platform and I get the feeling we will be hearing a lot more about this topic in the future.

Dr. Don has keynoted many TMC events and this was certainly his best presentation ever - he was enthused and excited about what his company is doing. So am I

He is worth billions and he still works as hard as anyone I know. He travels the world and closes business. He actually said selling things turns him on. It shows - the companies he has started are some of the most successful around. I hope to have a fraction of his energy at his age.

Based upon the crowd here at his address and the focus by audience members on every word Terry is saying, it seems we picked a great keynoter for this event. Here is a clip of Terry speaking and the crowd shot of who was there.

At 4GWE/ITEXPO West 2009, Corporate Vice President of Alvarion Ltd., Mohammad Shakouri began a presentation by explaining how he will help the audience make money. From there he spent time discussing the various levels of broadband penetration in the world - citing how the US is falling further behind - currently considered second world according to him.

Shakouri gave examples of global customers which are benefitting from WiMAX and LTE technology and the audience seemed genuinely interested in his comments and thoughts.

Here is a clip.