Wily Coyote may have been purchasing from a fictitious company called "Acme". However, Broadvox's purchase of products is not from Acme but rather Acme Packet.

Gary Tabachnik, VP Carrier Sales for Broadvox, and I attended an Acme Packet event Interconnect 2010 in San Diego on Monday and Tuesday. The attendees consisted of other major carriers, enterprises and Acme Packet technology partners. It was interesting to learn that the origin of the term, session border controller (SBC), is tied to Acme Packet. The central focus of the meeting was a discussion of the many ways their SBC could address the needs of the IP Community. After their tremendous success in the carrier space, they have begun to engage seriously the enterprise market segment.

I learned a little about a lot of different applications for a SBC. I sat in on discussions of voice quality, dial plans, video conferencing, quality of service, mobile roaming, traffic measurement, etc. I participated on two panels:

1.       SIP Trunking Services, are they all the same?

2.       Is IP Voice really better?

It was interesting to discover that most VoIP/SIP Trunking carriers in attendance have few commercial products or deployment strategies. Broadvox's GO! SIP Trunking proved to have the most variety of product offerings while preserving the key technology elements respected by both our competitors and customers.

As most of you know, I believe that a discussion of VoIP voice quality is FUD to the nth degree. I did my best to keep those thoughts to myself as we expressed our views regarding voice quality issues in a round robin fashion. However, I maintained that voice quality is not a major issue and neither is the robustness nor reliability of IP Networks. However, I have to concede that we need more real-time tools to monitor and manage voice quality issues as they arise.

The event was very worthwhile and I am going back to Dallas with a new set of action items. If you too are unfamiliar with Acme Planet, check them out. You may find a place for them in your product portfolio or network.

See you on Friday!