Amazon Using Trojan Horse Approach To Go After Smartphone Voice Market. Amazon is agressively pursuing the voice personal assistant market, focusing primarily on the short-term outlook of market penetration of Amazon Echo and Alexa. Amazon may have failed in the smartphone arena, but its tablets and voice assistants are winning.

In the business market, Alexa is integrated with Skyswitch, a Netsapiens softswitch operator.

Better Late than Never: Amazon's Unified Communications Starts with 'Chime' by Edgewater Networks.

Interesting look at Hosted PBX seat pricing at CP online.

Seth Godin asks, "Learn something new and difficult and valuable." Why? "There are people who can cut corners better than you, work more hours than you and certainly work cheaper than you. But what would happen if you became the person who was smarter, better at solving problems and cared the most?"

47% of jobs are at risk for being automated in the next 20 years (faster probably). The only way to stay relevant is "Solve interesting problems"; Consultatively Sell Solutions; and utilize Creative Thinking.

FTTH Council has changed their name to the Fiber Broadband Association.

Windstream is making big waves as it fights against industry consolidation that may make it less relevant. WIND complained about Level3 not paying its bills. Now they are worried that the mergers will strand small business during the TDM-to-IP transition. This is all gamesmanship to get concessions favorable to themselves.

BTW, no one wants to buy Cogent.

Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners has closed a deal to become majority owner of the data center and interconnection company, COLOGIX, which runs 24 data centers in North America. So the data center market is still hot!