First Coffee

Does it pay to buy IP Transit instead of investing in your own international IP network? TeliaSonera thinks it does.

For one thing, TeliaSonera officials say, large-scale peering drives excessive costs. “While capacity prices have been stable or decreasing in most important markets, router prices have increased – making capital expenditure the dominating risk factor. The more peers, the more related equipment required, and the higher the capital expenditure.”

And if that’s not enough, there are the increased network management costs.

The mobile market is growing, worth something in the neighborhood of $500 billion in 2010. The strongest growth is posted by data services such as mVoIP, both on fixed and mobile networks, according to a new study, “The Mobile VoIP Market Report 2010-2015.”

Among other findings, the report says sales of Internet connections and data services on fixed networks will grow in 2010 by 7 percent, to around $250 billion. Mobile data services -- such as mVoIP -- “are posting even stronger growth” as well.

The report “outlines how the mobile VoIP market will evolve further during the next five years, ensuring that you are in the know when it comes to important decisions within the mVoIP industry,” company officials say.

And yes, of course there’s the obligatory social media angle: “The online social networks such as Facebook and Myspace have integrated mVoIP services to offer opportunities for development of third-party applications and software, as well as multimedia content and advertising. Facebook users for example currently send one billion IMs per day.”

Read more here.

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Voxeo, a vendor of Unlocked Communications, and Collab, a European-based provider of OneContact, a contact center tool for hosted contact center providers, outsourcers and enterprise contact centers, have announced Collab has chosen Voxeo’s technology to deliver its contact center software.

“We selected Voxeo as the technology of our choice since it is the best, fully SIP-based IVR platform for VoiceXML and CCXML in the market, with very strong hosting capabilities,” explains Carlos Pedro Vasconcelos, Marketing & Business Development Manager at Collab.

One area where businesses continue to see significant budgetary waste is around inaccurate contact data - that's why address verification software is so important.   Of course your company doesn't do that. No reason at all for you to be reading this, right?

In August 2010, Experian QAS conducted a survey to better understand contact data perceptions, cleansing practices and accuracy levels. The report, "The Impact of Contact Data Quality," does a good job reviewing current thoughts on contact data quality and gives quality advice on how to clean and maintain company database. According to the survey, "nearly two out of three businesses find that between five and thirty percent of their marketing budget is wasted annually as a result of bad data."

Excerpts on six best practices for cleaning and maintaining your database:   Understand Your Database.

Xelerated is a company working in providing processing technology for the networking industry, helping network equipment vendors build wire speed programmable carrier-class systems for prolonged product life times, streamlined R&D and accelerated time-to-market.   "Overall," company officials say, "Xelerated provides tools that make fixed and mobile broadband networks faster and more efficient."   The networking industry is currently undergoing a major shift with 10GE and soon 100GE interfaces enabling new systems that support significantly higher bandwidth, company officials say, adding that as fiber-based access and 3G move to 4G, "applications benefit from more bandwidth -- pushing network system vendors to develop equipment with much higher processing bandwidth and richer service densities."   Xelerated officials are pitching their products and know-how as tools which, when coupled with "a rich ecosystem of partners, can unleash the full power of Carrier Ethernet." Targeting metro Ethernet, unified fiber access, mobile backhaul and cloud computing systems, these data plane solutions can be customized to any vendor feature set.   Read more here.
...   Farmers Insurance Group includes home and auto insurers, and some 500 Farmers employees are served by the company's communications system at its service center in Aurora, Illinois. The facility consists of 100,000 square feet of office space covering three floors.
Recently Farmers encountered a new state statute requiring employers occupying more than 40,000 square feet to have advanced communications functionality so 911 centers would know the exact location of a caller, not just the building's address. Hearing this, Farmers "decided to go the distance," company officials said.   The company decided to ensure added protections for its staff - "and peace of mind for its managers knowing that their people and property would be able to receive an immediate response in the event of an emergency because its main telephone system would be properly equipped," company officials say.   Beyond advocating safety as an integral part of its service offering, this particular office had encountered some emergencies of its own. "In fact," company officials say, "the Illinois service center averaged one or two 911 calls each quarter.

In an announcement sure to tingle the legs of Star Wars aficionados everywhere, Verizon Wireless has announced that the limited edition DROID R2-D2 by Motorola will be available online and in select Verizon Wireless Communication stores beginning Sept. 30, 2010.   So if you see a line of people outside Verizon stores, and you wonder why none of them look like they get out much, that's why.   With a graphic design to look like the iconic Astromech Droid from the Star Wars Saga, Verizon officials say, the DROID R2-D2 by Motorola will be packaged in a custom box resembling carbonite and come with a Star Wars media dock and wired stereo headset.   Yes, men over the age of 40 will want this. They will purchase this. They will expect you to share in the joy with them the next time you have an IT question and can't avoid them.   Read more here.
  ...   Never let it be said TMC doesn't span the globe to bring you the news you need. This is your New Zealand-based reporter checking in with news from Ecuador that Elster has announced that Electrica de Guayaquil, the largest electric utility in Ecuador, has selected the Elster EnergyAxis Smart Grid for one of South America's first two-way advanced metering infrastructure deployments.   EDG, Elster officials say, "will rely on Elster's EnergyAxis to accelerate its billing process, more quickly respond to customer requests and reduce commercial losses."   EDG provides electric power services to more than 550,000 residents across Ecuador.