When I arrived at the show today I met with Shrihari Pandit the person who invented the concept of the Voice Peering Fabric (VPF) and we spoke for a great while about all the things going on with the VPF and all the new members who have joined. Perhaps most important is AT&T. Incidentally I blogged about the rumors of AT&T joining the VPF a few days back.

I went to Excel's booth first -- whoops -- the new name is Cantata and when I got there someone was literally going off on a competitive board vendor based in Israel. He continued to explain how technicians from the company are supposed to call but never do. He apparently supplies the hospitality industry with equipment. He had no idea who I was but emphatically told me repeatedly not to purchase boards from this company. Like I have said before -- I seem to be the industry complaint magnet. Even when people don't know who I am, I hear about their telecom vendor problems.

This person was looking to replace his current equipment with Brooktrout products.

On a separate note, Shrihari told me to check out Carrius and when I got to the booth I found that their Compleat 200 device has been reworked to allow Class 5 switches such as a 5ESS to work with the VPF. The way it works is when a number is a dialed on a POTS phone the digits generate numerous ENUM queries to various databases. The first positive response that is received -- directs the call over the appropriate VoIP network. If there is no match the call routes over the PSTN.

The company figures this can save a service provider about $1/month/subscriber or over a million dollars in a year for 100,000 subscribers.

I am still working on my presentation for tomorrow morning and am very excited to be speaking here. I just got back from dinner a and it is a real pleasure to be able to eat outside on a sidewalk. The last few trips I have been on to Atlanta and San Diego were actually pretty cold -- almost as cold as Connecticut. Thankfully Miami does not disappoint. Oh and by the way I ate at Yuca and highly recommend it -- but it is pricey. You definitely want to try the yucca fries, empanadas and the langostino special if it is available.