Jim Machi : Industry Insight
Jim Machi

March 2014

You are browsing the archive for March 2014.

The New NGN

March 25, 2014

Next-generation networking (NGN) is an overused term.  I’ve been in this industry a long time, and NGN comes around and around and around.  I’ve seen it used in the enterprise to describe moving from 1Gbps to 10Gbps, and now it’s being used to describe the movement to software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV). But the most accurate usage describes TDM and IP unification. 

Why are 2G and 3G Subscriptions Growing?

March 18, 2014

We all hear about LTE this, LTE that. That’s for good reason, given that LTE subscriber growth is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of more than 50 percent for years to come, which is driving a lot of device and infrastructure spending. Global LTE subscribers number in the hundreds of millions today, and by 2018 the subscriber base will have surpassed one billion subscribers. Those numbers are staggering and impressive, but they’re nothing compared to 2G and 3G.

MWC: Hypocrisy about NFV?

March 11, 2014

Two weeks ago, I wrote a blog about my initial thoughts on Mobile World Congress. Even today, I am still surprised by the lack of WebRTC messaging at MWC. But of the themes I talked about in that initial blog, NFV stood out as the week went on.  And I started asking myself some questions.

An SBC is not required for a WebRTC Gateway

March 4, 2014



A session border controller (SBC) is not required for a WebRTC gateway. That might be a strange statement considering most of the industry has assumed an SBC is necessary for successful WebRTC scenarios. Why would the industry make that mistake? Because an SBC is basically an IP-to-IP translation node, and the WebRTC and SIP worlds are both in the IP realm.



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