VoIP Supply is planning to announce the launch of "VoIP Fulfillment" at ITEXPO next week, but they gave me a sneak peak at this new offering which technically was a two-year quiet beta they've been working on. Their VoIP Fulfillment offering covers quite a few things, however one of the biggest is they have opened their infrastructure to VoIP service providers, including an API that lets service providers follow the package through the fulfillment process all the way to the customer's door.

VoIP Fulfillment by VoIP Supply is a suite of services specifically designed for VoIP service providers that increase operational efficiency, decreases costs and bolster customer experience. I spoke with VoIP Supply's Garrett Smith - Chief Marketing Officer, Mike Russo - Executive Vice President, and Donald Stefanie - VoIP Service Provider Program Manager to learn more.

Be sure to get to ITEXPO on Tuesday, February 1st to take advantage of what has shaped up to be a great pre-conference day of networking and learning about communications and technology.

First up us Ingate's SIP Trunking Workshop at 1:00pm. Here is the schedule for the day:

• 1:00pm – The Case for SIP Trunking
• 1:30pm – Delivering SIP to the Enterprise
• 2:30pm – The Value of a Service Provider Demarcation Point
• 3:30pm – Ensuring Interoperability: The Key to Service Revenue Growth
• 4:30pm – Addressing Security Issues
• 5:30pm – Generating Revenue from HD Video
• 6:30pm – Wine Reception

Then at 2:00pm is Telecom One-on-One, a JS&A Power Networking Event. Bring lots of business cards and the sooner you start planning, the more meetings you can schedule and the more networking you can do.

My views have shifted on net neutrality over the years to the point where I firmly believe that carriers have the right to recoup investments they make in networks but at the same time I understand fully well that IP communications is dependent on traffic not being impeded by a carrier looking to promote an alternative service. Having said that, there are a number of peering points located around the US – only a few places where fiber exists in enough quantity to allow massive interconnections between hundreds of carriers, enterprises and web 2.0 companies such as Google and Facebook.

Terremark owns one facility – the NAP of the Americas in Miami, Telx owns another at 60 Hudson in New York and CoreSite at One Wilshire in Los Angeles are three of the more prominent locations in the US ”carrier hotel” market. At industry gatherings I have often asked about the possibility of Verizon or AT&T purchasing one or more companies in the space and the answer has always been that it would be bad news.

It’s no secret that both Microsoft and Google are looking at white spaces and Super WiFi as an area of growth allowing inexpensive broadband wireless signals to be transmitted over long distances.

But technology is difficult to predict – we didn’t know for sure tablets were going to cannibalize PC sales but they are and we didn’t know small, cheap hard drives were going to cut the legs out from the large, expensive hard drive market. You may know that in 1997 when I went to COMDEX and told the world TMC was going to launch a magazine called Internet Telephony – people laughed and told me it wasn’t an industry.

Ten years later after a few “overhype” phases, VoIP software maker Skype has devastated the long-distance market and is hiring by the hundred.

• Support for Microsoft's Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Lync Server 2010
• Support for Microsoft Office 2010 file attachments
• Support for Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2 virtualization platform

Thank you for your message... Please be advised I will be out of the office Feb 2-4, 2011 attending TMC's ITEXPO in Miami.

Arbinet will participate in IP Communications Industry’s Leading Event at Miami Beach Convention Center in February. I'll be at the show covering the latest IP communications happenings. Just got my flight booked today, in fact.

ITEXPO gold sponsor and TMC Global Online Community customer Adtran just announced blowout earnings – fourth quarter profit doubled and sales grew 33%. Net income was $35.96 million or $0.56 per share. Broadband growth was 75% over the previous year led by sales of the Total Access 5000 platform while internetworking grew 37% and optical grew 24%.

Some of this growth was likely due to the Government’s Broadband Stimulus rollout but the declaration of a 9 cent per share dividend shows there is strong confidence that the company sees a bright future even as the program has ended.

For years, Ingate has run a very successful conference as part of ITEXPO the SIP Trunk-Unified Communications Summit and this year the evnt is bigger than ever according to the company. This highly popular educational series, free to all ITEXPO attendees and attendees will hear from Aastra, ShoreTel and Broadvox, as well as Bandwidth.com, Commetrex, EarthLink Business, FaxCore, Intertex Data AB, Qwest Business, SIP Forum, the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF) and VOIPSA.

Additionally, Unwired Revolution will present a case study on SIP: Unifying the Distributed Workforce.  Service provider Telia and Intertex Data AB will discuss their SIP trunk implementation as a case study. 

Last week, TMCnet’s Charles West broke the news regarding TELTUB introducing gHome which links up with your Google Voice account as well as Facebook to allow $5/month calling after a free trial. Yesterday, TMCnet’s Tom Keating reviewed the gHome service with a SIP softphone from Ekiga and he was very happy with the fact that using iHome you can get all the Google Voice features and use any SIP device. And if you’ve seen how many SIP devices Tom has here at TMC HQ, you’d understand the reason for his happiness.

Tom’s review is extremely detailed and worth a read… In it for example, he explains how you can integrate the service with your iPhone.

Expect the free session presented by Ingate and their partners to focus on minimizing deployment costs and maximizing revenue. This half-day workshop will be held February 1, 2011atarting at 1:00 PM – one day before ITEXPO opens. Seminars will be tailored specifically to meet the needs of this audience and include how-to sessions, case studies and more.

Sponsors include: Aastra, Broadvox, ShoreTel

Speakers include: Commetrex, Earthlink Business, Faxcore, Intertex, Maloff NetResults, Phonebooth, SIPconnect, Market Strategy and Analytics Partners, UCI Forum, Unwired Revolution and Qwest Business

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While typical negative social CRM experiences are sent via Twitter and Facebook, occasionally companies get their reputation tarnished via Youtube. This is the case in one of the most elaborate pranks ever where a container was dropped in front of Mobistar’s headquarters in Belgium blocking all traffic. Security at this building with 2,000 employees called the phone number listed on the container only to be connected to the comedians inside the container who repeatedly put security on hold, played music and basically drove them crazy.

This may be one of the most sophisticated acts ever seen of people acting out against a company in response to poor customer service.

For those of you who attended the ITEXPO and related events last year in Miami, you remember it was a very strong show with great attendance. The conference usually draws from all over the world – especially Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Central and Eastern US and of course Canada.

The even better news about this upcoming event Feb 2-4, 2011 at the Miami Beach Convention center is the numbers are trending much better than last year. My marketing team just sent over the comparable stats and here they are:

• Overall attendance up 52% over same time last year
• Paid conference attendance up 54% over same time last year
• Loews hotel block up 31% over last year

The event has certainly grown and there are currently 13 collocated events as follows.

It’s a pain to change mobile devices and carriers. Thankfully over the years many wireless providers have made the process go more smoothly by porting address books in their retail stores. But Apple has gone the extra mile allowing their devices to seamlessly work with most of the existing data from previous phones. In other words upgrading from an iPhone to an iPhone 3G to a 3GS and 4G has been a fairly straightforward task.

Carl Ford is the loveable guy in the IP communications space I used to compete with but we are now family. It is really a great partnership and his company, Crossfire Media has partnered with TMC on a number of events including SIP Tutorial which has been held three times and has educated companies of all sizes, major telcos and technical staffs working at prestigious Ivy League schools.

The next event will be collocated with ITEXPO East 2011 in Miami this February 2-4 and I asked Carl for a few reasons to attend and macro trends which will be discussed.

He mentioned recent SIP meetings in China which show the need to keep current on SIP standards and HTML5 in particular which will integrate with SIP in the future.