The first big change is at Comptel. It has re-branded as INCOMPAS under the new association management team and fairly new CEO, former Sen. Chip Pickering. With twitter, Netflix and Google as sponsors of Comptel Plus and members of Incompas, it is a whole new look for the group.

While AT&T is a platinum sponsor of the show, they are absent as they have their own partner show for APEX going on in Dallas as I write this. Nice jab since many Comptel/Incompas members are also APEX customers.

Onvoy bought Layered Communications. I like how the PR calls Layered: "a communications enabler for OTTs, voice service providers and MVNOs."

[I originally wrote that Onvoy was a division of Zayo. Onvoy is no longer owned by Zayo. We are privately held.]

"What Layered Communications adds to the Onvoy portfolio: an automated communications OSS based on REST APIs that enables voice, messaging and mobility service provisioning, including wireless porting." It is all about the APIs. Ask Bandwidth who will be competing against the new Onvoy moreso than prior to this acquisition.

Bandwidth knows that automation (and integration) through APIs is the key to moving a step above a commodity service of just minutes and DIDs. Apparently, Onvoy wants to be the biggest as they announced when they bought Broadvox earlier this year.

The third event is Windstream sold off its data center business for $575 million to Tierpoint. Apparently, WIND needed the cash more than they needed to be in the data center business -- despite going into the enterprise space.

In the channel, WIND was known for cheap T1s. Now the strategy is being pushed that WIND is looking for $1200 ARPU. Well, that is a difference, huh? You would think that data center (colo) business would help raise that ARPU. But then the RLEC space is a mess right now and the data center space is top dollar, so grab the cash and stave off a cash flow problem.