I hope to connect with many of you next week at ITEXPO to discuss these matters in detail.
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IMS
There are a number of trends that will alter the communications landscape of the future. Perhaps the most important trend is the move towards IMS. Service providers are getting larger and spending more and more on equipment and software enabling them to connect their various networks together in a seamless fashion. This transition will happen while these service providers look to new services to help them generate more money as telephony revenue declines.
Examples of new services include allowing calls to seamlessly be handed off between office phones and cell phones as well as applications allowing consumers to see movie previews while conferencing with others and then purchasing movie tickets in a single session.
IPTV
IPTV is an important technology and the integration of IMS and IPTV would provide applications allowing consumers to see Caller-ID information on their television as well as using a TV remote control to chat or SMS with others.
Open Source
Without a doubt one of the biggest threats to the entrenched PBX players is the competition from open source payers such as Digium/Asterisk and Pingtel. Just as Microsoft and Oracle feel pressure from open source; companies like Avaya, Lucent and others need to be concerned about this real and growing threat.
Voice/VoIP Peering
The world is changing. More companies from service providers to government agencies and corporations are working with peering organizations to ensure they can communicate with one another without the need for the PSTN. Among other advantages this allows cost savings in the form of reduced fees and taxes. In addition quality improves when voice peering takes place. New ideas using peering are allowing stereo calling between Vonage and Packet8 subscribers. The winners in this space will be the peering companies themselves as well as session border control and transcoding companies. A big release in the transcoding space will be made by a publicly traded company at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo next week.
Cable Technology
Many are predicting the cable companies are unbeatable and they will easily clobber AT&T and others. Why? They have the video, data and voice market down and will take more telecom share while competitive providers struggle to get into the video market.
VoIP Security
VoIP networks are rolling out but in many cases corporations don’t understand how to secure VoIP in their organization or how to ensure quality. A huge opportunity exists for companies to become the leader in the VoIP quality monitoring and security spaces.
Wireless VoIP/Dual Mode
The future of IP communications is wireless. Opportunities abound to provide wireless VoIP solutions for corporations and prosumers. In addition the integration of cellular/WiFi networks is an exciting space worth watching closely.
SIP Trunking
More than 50% of IP PBX installs connect to the PSTN. Obviously there is a tremendous opportunity to get into this space and connect IP PBXs to SIP-based VoIP trunks over time.
Conclusion
There is a whole lot more. These areas I have outlined have very large amounts of content dedicated to them and I recommend the entire investment community come to this event. Service providers and enterprises are investing in communications infrastructure like no time since 2000 and just recently Verizon announced they will spend just over 20 billion dollars to roll out their next generation network. This is just the spending being done by a single company. Imagine how much spending the IP communications market will witness over the next five years.
