IP Business News - Blogs

BroadSoft nabs VocalData

Scott Wharton — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:06:48 -0700

My former employer, BroadSoft announced today that they will be acquiring the application server assets of Genband (fomerly known as VocalData, formerly owned by Tekelec).

This is a win for BroadSoft in that it removes a weak competitor from the market (a distant number 4 behind Sylantro, and Comverse) and adds the VocalData installed base to farm some revenue from. It also provides owner Genband with an out: Getting cash for their struggling unit, stop the development bleeding, and allow them to focus on their core business of gateways.

This also reinforces the trend in next-gen telecom where the dominant player continues to increase their market share as the expense of weaker rivals. BroadSoft, Acme Packet, Sonus, and Polycom are all examples in application servers, session border controllers, media gateways, and IP phones respectively.

This move is going to put some pressure on remaining players Sylantro and Comverse (aquired NetCentrex) to either up their investment in the space, stake out a niche of the applications market, or watch their market share and position continue to decline over time.

99% Retention Over 7 Years

Gary Kim — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 07:20:31 -0700

Now here is something one doesn't hear every day: over seven years in business, Smoothstone has had 99 percent customer retention, losing "about five" enterprise accounts, including those that might have gone out of business. In fact, I am hard pressed to think of any other company I've ever encountered that can boast of retention that high.

Of course, Smoothstone has some advantages. It doesn't serve consumer accounts, which typically have churn rates in 1.5 to three percent a month range. Smoothstone has no clients with less than 50 users. Its sweet spot is customers with 100 to 2,000 seats, but the company focuses on 50 to 5,000 seats.

Smoothstone credits "overstaffing" for the retention performance, as much as anything. All customers have a four-digit number for support, and those calls go directly to one of Smoothstone's network operations centers, staffed by Cisco-certified engineers. "About 85 percent of calls are resolved by the first call," says Piazza.

"We will provide access and WAN services, professional services, systems integrator and software developer for CRM and Microsoft unified messaging software and fully managed networks," says Smoothstone SVP Chuck Piazza. "We do surveys of each client's applications environment as it affects collaboration, voice and data communications."

Embarq Launches Hosted IP Using MetaSwitch

Gary Kim — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:51:58 -0700

Embarq is basing its new Smart IP Enterprise service on the MetaSwitch softswitch, media gateway and MetaSphere application suite. The Smart IP Enterprise service will provide business customers with a bundled package of dedicated Internet access, local and long distance voice services and IP-enabled call features, including click-to-dial features and Microsoft Outlook integration.

The move gets Embarq into the hosted IP communications business that now represents about 25 percent of all new IP phone services solutions being bought by business customers.

Portal control of features and settings, rules-based call forwarding, auto attendant, music on hold, simultaneous or sequential ring also are features Embarq will be able to provide. Embarq also will be using the MetaSwitch’s SIP Provisioning Server to help ease the deployment of its SIP phones.

Embarq's move is illustrative of moves by major service providers with a telco legacy to get into the managed IP services business in a bigger way. Cable companies for the most part have yet to do so, but such services are on their roadmaps.

XO Communications Offers More-Granular Ethernet Access

Gary Kim — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:50:47 -0700

XO Communications now offers customers Ethernet services at additional speed ranges, including 20 Mbps, 30 Mbps, 40 Mbps, 50 Mbps, 60 Mbps, 70 Mbps, 200 Mbps, 300 Mbps, 400 Mbps 500 Mbps at on-net fiber locations, and speeds of 15 or 20 Mbps at locations served by last mile copper where XO has deployed Ethernet over copper technology.

These speeds are currently available in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, San Jose, Seattle, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. XO expects to roll out the speed options to all of its markets across the country early next year.

SEACOM Shows the Way

Hunter Newby — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:39:56 -0700

SEACOM recently announced that they are on schedule to bring a new undersea cable to South Africa by June 2009.

http://www.seacom.mu/news/news_details.asp?iID=53

This is major news for a few reasons.

1. Any new cable system to points in Africa is a big step in the right direction no matter what - the current fiber cable / transport capability to that part of the world is no where near that of other areas.

2. It builds the foundation for a future global Meet -Me point in South Africa which will link not only East Africa with West Africa, but also provide the critical mass and justification for other such underdsea projects to link South America with Asia and the Middle East via South Africa. This is incredibly important given the current reliance on New York and London for this route. A true ring around the world is a good thing.

3. The driving force behind the SEACOM build is rooted in the need for fiber to transport HD video for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Without this fiber there would have been no practical way for the broadcasters to access the HD feeds coming from South Africa. The days of satellite and SD are ending and will be over by 2010 for major live sporting events. This announcement and entire project underscore that reality.

There is much that is not known about what would have become of the FIFA World Cup if the SEACOM cable was not being built. Would the games have been brought to a place where there is ample fiber to carry the HD? A political mess for sure, but apparently that will be averted. Obviously this is a substantial revenue opportunity for the fiber-based transport providers. One thing is certain - it is an interesting time in networking history when we can directly link a new undersea cable build to South Africa with the specific intention of meeting video broadcasters broadband requirements. Supply is built to meet demand and the business case is made that simple.

IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft OCS Interop on a Subscription Basis

Gary Kim — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:36:06 -0700

So far, the jury appears still to be out for many large enterprises weighing their unified communications options. IBM Lotus Sametime is considered to have the largest installed base and Microsoft Office Communications Server seems to be high on just about every enterprise list of providers. But it probably is fair to note that few enterprises have made a firm decision about a single provider for the whole enterprise.

In many cases, a bridge between the Sametime and OCS environments is likely to be necessary. So Covergence has unveiled its Covergence Collaboration Gateway, which supports interoperability between Microsoft OCS/LCS and IBM Sametime version 6.5, 7.0, 7.5, and 8.0 and also features new pricing, with subscriptions as low as $1 per user, per month. That price is available on three-year subsciptions with about 8,000 user seats. One-year and two-year plans also are available.

The subscription plan, in particular, gives enterprises the ability to interoperate between Sametime and OCS environments without making a final and complete commitment to either Sametime or OCS, and to continue unifying communications where both environments exist.

“Converting to an enterprise-wide, single-vendor UC solution can be an expensive, lengthy and sometimes impractical proposition,” says Jim Moran, president and CEO of Covergence. “By offering interoperability on a subscription pricing model, our customers are in control of their migration path and timeline.”

CCG delivers controlled, secure connectivity between disparate UC platforms, allowing users from different organizations – even different companies – to work together as if they were served by the same UC platform, enjoying shared presence information, instant messaging and other features.

For organizations committed to an eventual corporate UC standard, CCG’s subscription pricing enables a faster return on their UC investments by allowing them to implement the solution immediately and maintain their subscription for as long as it is needed.

SIPX Shows ENUM, hiQ Signaling Capability

Gary Kim — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:05:55 -0700

The Dutch Cable SIP Exchange project (SIPX), an initiative of the Dutch cable industry, successfully tested interoperability between its peering system, which is provided by XConnect Global Networks, Ltd., and the Nokia Siemens Networks hiQ VoIP platform used in many of its participant networks.

The advantage is signaling redundancy and the ability to use legacy signaling to support delivery of IP traffic. As envisioned, cable operators first will route calls on an ENUM query. If the number is found in the ENUM Registry then that is the basis for routing the IP call.

If the number is not found in the ENUM Registry, then the calls are still passed IP between NSN hiQs, and the receiving hiQ uses SS7/C7 to handle the final termination leg of the call.

The SIPX is the world’s first cable telephony peering federation project, and is developed by XConnect Global Networks, Ltd. and Kayote Networks. The SIPX will provide its members with an all IP interconnect so that calls from one network to another by-pass the PSTN and associated toll charges. An additional benefit to maintaining an uninterrupted IP path is the ability for the participating cable telephony providers to offer hi-fidelity codecs and video telephony on a cross-network basis.

Reducing Network Disconnects

Hunter Newby — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:57:34 -0700

Recently I was introduced to a new website with a somewhat old idea. www.buysellbandwidth.com seeks to reduce and, or eliminate the disparity and inefficiencies in sourcing available capacity on different networks through a "members-only" access view to what is in demand and also available for global networks. The thought is to bring the information forward to the real principals in order to facilitate a meaningful solution. A worthwhile and even noble cause indeed.

This has of couse been attempted before in various fashions dating back to the "bandwidth trading" days and beyond. We probably all remember ENRON Broadband, Reliance (not the Indian company), Dynegy Connect, El Paso Global Networks and many others. Most of the attempts at this were made as pure broker models, but some realized that as a broker in the middle you typically had no control and in the end got burned. In other words, if your business model relied on revenues from commissions you would be chasing your own tail in to the ground. There was (and is) no standard interconnection platform for bandwidth - unlike natural gas, oil and power.

Those that discovered this reality tried to actually own the network facilities in the middle so that they could control the process, but this lead them to the new reality that they had to actually run a network. Something most of them had no knowledge of, or experience with. The two shining examples of actual telecom-based attempts at this that come to mind are Universal Access and Last Mile Connections. I experienced all of this first-hand as most of these companies were my customers in 60 Hudson Street, NYC at one point. Interesting times.

There is something about buysellbandwidth.com that is differnet though - the Founder, Neil Tagare, has real experience with network provisioning issues. When someone looks at an opportunity from the perspective of solving a problem there is hope that it will succeed.

From his bio and other sources I gathered the following:

- He was involved with FLAG which, from a construction and operations perspective, worked and it was global

- One of the motivations for this site was the middle east undersea cable cuts of this year, something that intentionally doesn't get any coverage, but exposes THE major weakness/vulnerability in the civilized world - reliance on networks

- He mentions diversity as being essential and that it can be achieved (with what's in the ground now) by having visibility to others that possess routes/network/assets. More information and knowledge is a good thing

- He is actually using this platform to "pre-sell" other projects to his members. A good way to determine where the demand is, or better yet create demand for where assets currently are not, but should be.

These are all great points and in his favor. Also it that matter that the business is being based on trust. It is good to be upfont about that. Establishing it with everyone and then getting it back in return is the trick.

All in all these types of businesses have failed in the past because they always boil down to relationships, trust, setting the right expectations and the underlying revenue model itself. All you need is a few deals to go bad, or someone to represent they have something that they don't, or can't deliver and then trust in the system is broken. No one wants to waste their time so they usually stick to doing deals with their friends and people they know. Those are usually safe, small circles. This is not to say that buysellbandwidth.com won't work, but it needs constant daily attention.

Also, if buysellbandwidth.com is getting involved in deals from a project development standpoint it may become perceived as being non-neutral and steering things the way they want them to go for their own gain. (Since buysellbandwidth doesn't own a "neutral" interconnection facility they can't inherently benefit from everyone transacting in their space - although Neil seems to know a few things about the benefits of Carrier Neutral Landing Stations). This can also lead to another fundemental issue that plagues the comms business - provisioning. Leaving the carriers, etc to actually sort how they are going to get connected has proven to be quite challenging. Layering the buysellbandwidth.com concept on top of known, established physical layer interconnection facilities around the world would probably do much to help drive the greater good and benefit all parties involved.

Check it out www.buysellbandwidth.com - what do you think?

Enough with the Ads!

Scott Wharton — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 22:08:53 -0700

It's been over a month since I've moved to Silicon Valley and life is very good although busy unpacking. My company, Vidtel, has raised a seed angel funding round, hired out our core initial management team, and we are off and running building our product. Hence the long delay in writing.

One observation about working in Silicon Valley is the over-reliance on advertising for new business models. Almost everyone you speak with has some Web 2.0 startup with a "free" service and the promise of success based on ads.

Vidtel's office space is in a start-up facility called PlugandPlay which houses 118 small promising young start-up ventures. The energy is incredible and it is something out of a movie and perhaps only something you would find in Silicon Valley.

As much as I love the energy, I suspect most of these companies will fail. Not because of the economy or because they are not smart people but because of this reliance on advertising.

First, there is only so many ads in the world that people will be able to watch. Yes I know online ads are more efficient and targeted but there is a limit to how many can be sold. Second, the same people pushing the advertising model are the same ones with TiVOs for skipping ads and if they are honest with you, will admit they they themselves don't look at the online ads nor like watching them (and in fact avoid them like the plague). Third, in many cases the cost of the service way outstrips the amount of advertising one would need the end user to see, making the business hopeless (they will never make it up on volume). Fourth, advertising is by definition an interruption and by implementation usually annoying. When people had only 4 TV channels and they had to watch the ads, they put up with it. Now people have hundreds or thousands of choices to spend their time so the users will naturally gravitate to activities that are less annoying (for example, ubiquitous ads on MySpace got annoying and drove users to Facebook - how long before annoying ads on Facebook drive users to the next ad-free experience).

I know that getting millions of users is the model du jour but there are just so many businesses where ads will work. If a service has merit, try to charge them for it. If not, go back to the drawing board but please don't bet your life and success of your business on your ability to annoy your customers. This is one trend I predict that will run out of steam soon.

VPNs: Lots of Drivers

Gary Kim — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:09:40 -0700

It might be hard to single out one reason why virtual private networks continue to gain in popularity, but distributed work forces and IP technology itself are huge factors.

A significant and growing percentage of the work force is based someplace other than the headquarters office. But remote workers need access to the same enterprise applications as workers at headquarters sites, so VPNs are used to enable that access on a secure basis.

Another driver is Internet Protocol itself. Where in the past organizations might have bought "nailed up" private lines, they now can tunnel through broadband Internet connections. That is one reason there is a shift to Secure Socket Layer VPNs rather than private lines. When virtually everybody has Internet access, SSL can be used to create a virtual and secure network.

And since, by some estimates, 80 percent of enterprise workers are not equipped with notebook PCs, but sometimes must travel, encrypted tunnels made possible by VPNs make it possible for employees to work from virtually any Internet connected PC.

Vonage U.K. Launches Lower-Cost Plans for North America Calling

Gary Kim — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:51:36 -0700

Vonage U.K. has launched two new "value" call packages for consumers concerned about their phone bills, as well as a new £6.99 plandesigned for the high percentage of Vonage consumers who call North America. The two new call plans offer Vonage’s lowest ever tariffs and are priced at £5.99 per month for unlimited calls to the U.K. and £6.99 per month for unlimited calls to the U.K., United States and Canada.

The £6.99 plan also includes an option that for £1 extra a month providing unlimited calls to mobile phones in the United States and Canada.

Vonage’s £7.99, £14.99 and £18.99 plans incorporating up to 45 countries remain unchanged.

CRG to Open New Data Center

Gary Kim — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 06:55:54 -0700

CRG West is opening an energy-efficient data center campus in Santa Clara, California. The company plans a three-building, 350,000 square-foot, 50 MW campus with the first building completed in August and expects to
the second quarter of 2009.

The phased 50-Megawatt development will be powered by Silicon Valley Power and be comprised of over 350,000 square feet of data center and ancillary office space. At this campus CRG West will provide data-center and peering solutions to its customers along the continuum from single-cabinet colocation space through custom-built cages of any size up to blocks of wholesale data center space up to 20 MW.

Additionally, CRG West can construct one of the planned buildings to meet the exact specifications of a single user for any corporation that wishes to design its data center but lease it rather than fund the up-front capital required to
construct it.

Verizon Launches Wholesale Wireless

Gary Kim — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:11:07 -0700

The Verizon Wholesale Mobility Solutions suite of services is now part of the portfolio of products offered by Verizon Partner Solutions, a leading wholesale provider of networks and network services to competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) and other telecommunications providers based in the United States.

The move is important because mobility solutions are a more-important part of consumer and business communications spending. And if that is so, competitors will need to bundle wireless solutions.

The introduction of Verizon Wholesale Mobility Solutions means wholesale clients have the opportunity to bundle their full-service Verizon wholesale wireline services with wireless voice, text messaging and mobile broadband services to offer their retail end-users a single source for both fixed and mobile voice and broadband services.

Lightyear Network Solutions LLC is the first VPS client.

The Verizon Wholesale Mobility Solutions suite is comprised of two wireless service offerings: Verizon Wholesale Mobile Voice and Verizon Wholesale Mobile Broadband.

Verizon Wholesale Mobile Voice offers wireless calling plans with a choice of designated minutes of use allowances per month. Each plan includes Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Three-Way Calling, No Answer/Busy Transfer, Caller ID and Basic Voice Mail at no additional monthly fee. Premium features, like Enhanced Voice Mail, monthly mobile-to-mobile minutes and directory assistance, are each available at an additional monthly charge.

In addition to voice plans, wholesale clients can offer text-messaging plans with a choice of designated message allowances per month to end-users that have also purchased wireless voice service. Optional international messaging and premium messaging packages are each available at an additional monthly charge.

Verizon Wholesale Mobile Broadband offers high-speed wireless Internet access via laptop computers with a choice of designated packet data transport MB allowances per month. This product can be sold as either a stand-alone service or as an addition to a voice calling plan. In addition to wireless network services, Verizon Wholesale Mobility Solutions provides wholesale clients with tools that enable them to become one-stop wireline and wireless services providers.

Vapps Saves SME Money on Conferencing

Gary Kim — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:46:58 -0700

Silverpoint is a small-to-medium sized business, with offices in Baltimore, New York and San Francisco, providing web design and development for schools widely spread across the country. Silverpoint also was a heavy Skype user, and required a high-quality, cost-effective voice conferencing solution that could easily be integrated with Skype as well as conference calls using standard phone lines.

Vapps provided the company with a high-definition audio conferencing system using both Skype and standard phone lines and Silverpoint immediately realized a 50-percent cost savings from using the service over its previous old-style conference line while obtaining a higher quality voice service that easily interfaces with Skype.

"We were spending almost $500 a month on conferencing alone and our costs were steadily increasing," says Silverpoint Chief Financial Officer Andrew McKenzie. "Now we're spending a flat $200 a month." But the one-click conferencing using Skype also is valuable, he says.

Providers of audioconferencing services for smaller organizations might not be too pleased about the trend, but it is not stoppable. Conferencing has been a high-margin service, but like music, video, voice and just about every other legacy service, IP-based alternatives are compressing margins.

High-Definition IP phone from snom

Gary Kim — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:48:29 -0700

snom technology AG has introduced high-definition snom klarVOICE phones capture more than twice the spectrum of voice frequencies captured by standard phones.

The new snom klarVOICE handset works with the codec G.722.2 PSTN.

In standard narrowband VoIP calls, the voice signal is sampled at 8,000 Hz, resulting in an effective voice pass-band of about 200 to 3,300 Hz. The new wideband handset offers a doubled sample rate, providing an effective pass-band of 50 to 7,000 Hz.

Use of snom klarVOICE results in a much higher fidelity voice call, more akin to talking to someone in the same room rather than over a phone. snom klarVOICE will be available for purchase in July 2008.

New 8x8 Phone Features Better NAT Traversal

Gary Kim — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:44:07 -0700

8x8 has announced the launch of a new line of broadband agnostic, plug-and-play IP phones designed to enhance the features and functionality of Packet8 business phone services.

Developed in conjunction with Aastra Telecom, the Packet8 675xi series of IP phones incorporates 8x8's NAT traversal technologies, allowing the phones to be plugged into any public or private Internet connection and immediately make or receive calls without performing any network configuration or firewall manipulation.

Though now available for use with Packet8 hosted services, the nat traversal capability will be offered in Aastra phones sold to other service providers as well, says Huw Rees, 8x8 VP.

The Packet8 675xi IP phones also deliver enhanced equipment and service features including corporate directory display and lookup, intercom paging, shared line appearance and Power over Ethernet capability. Other services such as stock quotes or local weather or road conditions "will be available in due course," says Rees.

"The second thing is that Aastra had been working on SIP busy line appearance function, which is quite difficult to do," says Rees. "A lot of the companies we sell to are small businesses and key system functionality such as shared line appearance is quite important," he says.

"They need the ability for somebody else to pick up an inbound call without parking," he says. "It seems like a small function but it is actually quite complicated to do." The other feature is ensuring that emergency calls deliver the right location information, which can be tricky when shared line is in use. A call sent to San Francisco might be picked up in New York, for example, and the emergency calling information has to reflect the location where a call actually was picked up.

Belgacom Selects BroadSoft

Gary Kim — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:42:33 -0700

Belgian telecom operator Belgacom has selected BroadSoft to deliver hosted voice and multimedia services to the enterprise market. The BroadWorks application platform will be used on top of an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) core network. The service is commercially available and will migrate from a pre-IMS environment onto the IMS core network.

Belgacom’s Integrated Telephony Services (ITS) is targeting SMEs and multisite enterprises, including retailers, with hosted unified communications service packages and phones, including desktop clients that increase productivity, such as BroadWorks Receptionist.

Some might wonder "what took you so long?" but the small business market really is just at the front end of its IP telephony adoption. Even for enterprise IP telephony shipments in Western Europe, just a quarter of new lines shipped by PBX suppliers were of the IP variety, acording to researchers at Canalys.

And if European adoption is akin to the U.S. market, premises-based IP telephony is about 75 percent of all IP lines sold, with hosted services representing 25 percent.

Canalys forecasts that IP telephony lines will rise to nearly 70 percent of all new lines sold by 2012, though.

Canalys research indicates that EMEA remains the largest region for enterprise telephony systems, making up 43 percent of global shipments, compared to 25 percent in the Asia Pacific region, 24 percent in North America and eight percent in Latin America.

The evolution to IP telephony has taken a lot longer than many expected in EMEA, particularly in the small business sector, as price sensitivity and lack of dedicated IT resource has restricted adoption.

Medium to large sized enterprises have so far invested the most in converged networks, encouraged by the potential cost savings. Small business adoption generally has lagged. But “the small business sector is now receiving more focus from leading vendors looking for new growth areas,” says Canalys analyst Matthew Ball.

“A large proportion of the installed base that was purchased during the Y2K compliance drive 10 years ago will reach the end of its life over the next three years,” Ball says. “Replacement of these systems will fuel more investment in IP, stimulating the enterprise telephony market to increase further until line shipments peak in 2010.”

Cbeyond provides SIP Trunking for Microsoft Response Point

Gary Kim — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:03:24 -0700

Cbeyond now preconfigures its BeyondVoice with SIPconnect service pre-configured for use with the Microsoft Response Point IP based phone system. The move makes it easier to install, configure and use the Response Point small business IP telephone system.

Though some will argue the point, Microsoft's Response Point appears to be the premises-based small business IP phone system that is easiest to set up and use, according to at least some value-added resellers who have had a chance to deploy Response Point, Asterisk and other systems for small business customers.

Sprint Upgrades to 40 Gbps

Gary Kim — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:39:38 -0700

Sprint, Cisco and Ciena are implementing 40-gigabits-per-second (Gbps) network capabilities on the Global Sprint Tier 1 IP Network using a technology called Internet Protocol over dense wavelength-division multiplexing, or IPoDWDM. The new capabilities mean Sprint can upgrade its network to 40 Gbps on the same infrastructure now used to support 10 Gbps service, while preserving a migration path to 100 Gbps systems in the future.

As far as the industry debates about whether upgrades from 10 Gbps ought to be to 40 Gbps or 100 Gbps, Sprint's answer is clear: 40 Gbps is needed now. Providers who think they can get along with 10 Gbps might be able to wait for 100 Gbps capabilities.

SME Call Center Voice Recording Solution from OrexX

Gary Kim — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:17:09 -0700

Voice recording has become a necessity in any customer service call center but, due to its cost, it has been out of reach for most SMEs. OrexX has created Oreka TR, the first open source based VoIP and TDM call recording system for SMEs.

It will allow organizations to improve customer service by recording and retrieving phone calls without disrupting operations, exhausting annual budgets, or paying for extra implementation services that never get used.

The open source platform allows for all-call, on-demand or selective recording while providing managers with options for live call monitoring.

It's just one more example of how open source software is creating new opportunities for innovation that drive price points low enough that new user populations have access to advanced applications.

Birch Buys 30,000 Business Lines

Gary Kim — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:32:37 -0700

Birch Communications Inc. has agreed to buy about 30,000 business access lines from Navigator Telecommunications, increasing Birch's customer base to more than 325,000 access lines.

The transaction will enable Birch to increase its customer density in Texas, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and Missouri. It also will expand Birch's market coverage to Arkansas and California.

"This move further advances our strategy to be a leader in serving the voice and broadband communications needs of small and medium business customers across a footprint of 31 states," Birch CEO Vincent Oddo says.

Birch is based in Atlanta. Access Integrated Networks, which bought Kansas City-based Birch Telecom, changed its name to Birch Communications.

It's just another example of continued consolidation in the independent CLEC space.

Watch Fonolo: This is a Winner

Gary Kim — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:55:31 -0700

Lots of people think telcos are too "dinosaur-like" to keep up with the fast-paced world of IP communications. There's a logic there, to be sure. Large organizations with lots of regulatory and technological requirements act that way. Talk to any software developer working with really large systems and the danger of breaking something while fixing something else is obvious.

While nothing will change the need for some circumspection, it is a fallacy to think telcos are so hidebound they can't see where they must go. In fact, there's now widespread recognition that rapid software innovation is necessary, and cannot be done on an "in house" basis.

That means there is widespread recognition of the need for partnerships of all sorts. So consider Fonolo, an application intended for use by large communications providers. It is the sort of third party innovation carriers are looking for, and need, to create new value.

"Or mission is to help users deal with large companies over the phone, especially when interacting with interactive voice response systems," says Shai Berger, Fonolo cofounder and CEO.

"Our key innovation is a way for you to visually preview the IVR and take short cutswithout listening to all the prompts," he says. Essentially, the application works by sending out spiders, much as Google and other search engines send out spiders to find and index Internet content.

The Fonolo spiders crawl around, investigate IVRs and build maps. Based on that knowledge, Fonolo allows users to "click the spot you want to reach, then we ring your phone and "deep dial" you to where you want to go," says Berger. "It's just like deep linking in the Web world, where you can bookmark your spots so you can go right back," he says.

Another feature is intelligent call histories. "You can use any phone and all the call history is available to you as an end user. Fonolo also supports full call recording.

Say you have an interaction with a customer service agent about a billing, technical support or other issue. Those interactions can be recorded as a way of documenting the "trouble ticket."

Then, when a user interacts with the next agent for follow up, "you can play the recording back to the agent while you are on the phone, if you need to," he says.

And note: Fonolo was intentionally built as an application carriers can use. "The key for us is carrier partnerships," says Berger.

"Even non-tech-savvy users get it," Berger says. "IVR interactions are a major consumer pain point."

No downloads are required, by the way. As every provider likes to say, "it just works."

Fonolo now is in private beta and will move to public beta in a month. Berger expects to launch formally in the fourth quarter of 2008, with pilots beginning in the first quarter of 2009.

Asked where he thinks he'll get traction, Berger says that although Fonolo already has been contacted by carriers "all over the world," he thinks the intial deal or two will come from smaller providers that can move faster. He'll work up the food chain from there.

Fonolo is an excellent example of how application developers and carriers can work together to create and popularize new applications that enhance and change the communications experience. Granted, some developers will just want to build "over the top" apps. But what really will be interesting is the emergence of a class of developers that see what can be done working with carriers.

Sprint Picks Dragonwave for Backhaul

Gary Kim — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:38:04 -0700

DragonWave says Sprint has selected DragonWave’s IP backhaul solutions for its Xohm WiMAX service. DragonWave’s Horizon Compact and Horizon Duo products will be deployed initially in the Baltimore/Washington and Chicago markets.

DragonWave’s native Ethernet radios will provide Sprint’s network with carrier-grade reliability, capacity, throughput and QoS for backhauling 4G traffic. Make a note that Dragonwave's radios are rated at 99.999 percent availability (five nines), a more-reliable backhaul choice in that sense than T1 lines, frame relay or ATM.

The deal also marks a shift in thinking among at least one U.S. wireless carrier. Traditionally, U.S. mobile operators have preferred T1 lines for backhaul, though wireless backhaul is quite common in Europe and other markets.

The amount of bandwidth now required for 4G networks, however, means Ethernet transport is necessary. Given the difficulty and cost of getting fiber-provided Ethernet connections at many cell site locations, wireless appears to be among the best solutions.

VoIP Supply Adds Bandwidth.com

Gary Kim — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:19:07 -0700

VoIP Supply , a retailer of IP-based phone systems, VoIP hardware and solutions, now offers Bandwidth.com SIP trunking. VoIP Supply will now be able to offer small and mid-sized businesses complete nationwide Internet, VoIP, network and wireless services in addition to its current phone system and VoIP hardware offerings.

The move is one more sign that SIP trunking now is gaining traction as a way to connect IP phone systems to the public network. Providers of some of the 700,000 or so business T1 connections might not be so happy users are able to do so, but users of IP phone systems will be.

Cable TV Model is Relevant for Telecom as Well

Gary Kim — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:14:17 -0700

"An unconstrained profit-maximizing platform charges a positive fee to the other side of the market if and only if content providers value additional consumers higher than consumers value additional content providers."

In other words, platform and service providers have opportunity to earn revenue from content partners when new, emergine or highly-focused content partners want expedited carriage, placement or promotion on platform portals.

It's the same sort of thing the cable industry long has had as a business practice. Popular networks get paid, low-viewership networks often must pay to get carriage (shelf space). In a service provider context, the analogy is that promotion, targeting, location, billing and other features and services can be so useful a content partner might be willing to pay to obtain them.

If, on the other hand customers highly value a particular content provider, a rational platform simply will make sure the popular provider is well supported, and will do nothing to impede customer access.

It's still an emerging sort of thought, and the services and applications platforms can offer partners isn't so well developed. But it is coming.

T-Mobile $10 a Month VoIP

Gary Kim — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:13:06 -0700

T-Mobile @ Home is a new nationally available over-the-top consumer VoIP service pricied at $10 a month. There isn't much of a catch, aside from the fact that the service only is available to T-Mobile wireless customers on plans costing $40 a month or more.

It isn't so much that T-Mobile wants to be in the over-the-top VoIP business. It is that it needs something jazzy to keep its mobile customers loyal. The company hopes $10 a month home phone service is that sort of thing.

The new service is different from the Hotspot @ Home offering T-Mobile also has been testing. That is a dual-mode mobile service that allows some mobile phone models to connect to an in-home Wi-Fi router.

The real effort here is to insulate T-Mobile from churn. After all, it can't offer the iPhone or 3G service yet.

Still, independent VoIP providers have to be wondering what might happen if others start to emulate the offer.

Peering Potential

Gary Kim — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:11:15 -0700

In principle, most international voice traffic is amenable to interconnection using some type of neutral peering federation.

The reason is that it is expensive and time-consuming to negotiate separate bilateral interconnection agreements with the ever-growing number of carriers.

If all one wanted to do was pass traffic back and forth between mobile networks, a company might have to negotiate more than 300 separate agreements.

The advantage peering federations provide is a simpler, faster way to create those business and technology agreements by joining a federated interconnection provider's community, much as Internet service providers peer with each other.

In principle, much interconnection now handled by bilateral agreements could shift, not to mention wholesale traffic, which generally isn't exchanged using a bilateral agreement because the cost of doing so is prohibitive.

Up to this point, tier one service providers have been somewhat reluctant to embrace hubbed or peered traffic. But now that carriers are agreeing to preserve existing business relationships while doing so, the way seems to be cleared for more extensive peering by tier one providers.

Compute Globally, Assemble Locally

Gary Kim — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:08:54 -0700

There's an obvious relationship between cloud computing, "over the top" applications, open networks, open devices, importance of application program interfaces.

The ability to compute, store data and execute code remotely means it is more affordable than ever for small developers and individuals to create applications that are immediately available to users anywhere. The existence of those applications "on the Web" makes the Web a more-powerful platform for bringing applications of any sort to market. That puts business pressure on walled garden business models of all sorts.

The existence of cloud computing also means software is becoming unbundled from hardware to a large extent. Not completely unbundled; not unbundled for every application or service. In fact, some apps require tight integration to execute with the greatest elegance. But the direction is more in the direction of how people use PCs than how they consume cable television.

The application explosion, built on open platforms and APIs, also means new applications can be built on the shoulders of existing apps and applets. Assembling apps begins to be a process akin to what one does with Legos, to oversimplify.

That also means apps more often are created globally, assembled locally. That has implications for browsers, networks and protocols. To assemble apps locally means a premium for rapid response. If assembled apps are to mimic the feel of locally-stored apps, response time is a crucial requirement. This requires more than big, fast pipes. It means browsers that are much faster than we have used in the past. It means a computing architecture that does not require so much traversing of wide area networks to grab app elements.

The issue is to answer a question: “How do I pair together one customer that’s CPU-intensive and another that’s IO-intensive and have the sum appear just like a single, well performing application?”.

There is lots of room for innovation here. And lots of distance to cover. But it's coming, even if most users only gradually are being exposed to use of remote and locally-assembled apps.

Transit, Not Access, Getting to be the Problem

Gary Kim — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:07:46 -0700

So we've been kicking around lots of issues around telecom industry transformation at the Voice Peering Forum June 23 and 24, 2008. An attendee from Telecom New Zealand pointed out something interesting.

"In the U.S. market, contestants seem to spend a lot of time fighting over rights to use or lease the access network," he said. "That's not where the rub is, which is in IP transit."

That might strike you as an incongruous statement. After all, isn't long-haul a fairly easy thing to build? Isn't there lots of fiber?

Well, yes, there's a substantial amount of fiber, even though lots of it might not be in the right places, or lots of it concentrated inside the same cable sheaths, on the same routes.

But there's another issue, not related to fiber but to IP transit costs. If a service provider owns its own facilities, there is not much of a problem on that score. No matter how much Internet bandwidth is required, the incremental cost of supplying that demand is controllable.

That is definitively not the case for a service provider that does not own its own wide area network, and has to lease capacity in the form of IP transit. In that case, it is quite expensive if a service provider's users start to download or stream significant amounts of video.

That isn't to say access is not a crucial problem. For many contestants it is a key problem. But let's not forget that IP transit costs are growing as video consumption is growing. Sooner or later, larger service providers who do not own their own WANs will start looking at buying them or building them. That's one good way to save money on spiraling IP transit costs.

Broadband Over-Supply

Gary Kim — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:06:49 -0700

Cox Communications is doubling the download speed of its most popular residential Internet service (Preferred) in Northern Virginia and increasing the speed of its Premier service by thirty-three percent.

PowerBoost, which supplies temporary "burst" bandwidth for uploads, also has been added to the Preferred and Premier packages. PowerBoost for downloads has been available since 2007. This is the fifth consecutive year that Cox has enhanced the speed of its Internet services in northern Virginia (credit Verizon's FiOS service for that).

Verizon has boosted FiOS downstream speeds to 50 Mbps, with 20 Mbps upstream, for its top package, available everywhere FiOS is sold.

Cox customers will get the speed increases automatically in July, without need for a call or technician visit.

The PowerBoost feature means uses of the Preferred package will experience speeds up to 12.5 Mbps down/2.5 Mbps up. Premier customers can achieve 25 Mbps down/3.5 Mbps up.

Policy advocates often complain about the U.S. "broadband problem." Sometimes they mean it isn't available, isn't fast enough or costs too much. The evidence suggests availability isn't a problem. Whether a service is "fast enough" is a matter of interpretation, but I don't see evidence of anything but increasing speeds, often for the same cost. "Price" likewise is an issue.

With the exception of Japan and South Korea, though, cost per Mbps in the United States is quite comparable to nearly all other leading nations.

Complaining about broadband is a bit like similar observations we could easily have made about wireless penetration or use of text messaging, where U.S. users lagged way behind European users for quite some time. That "problem" doesn't exist anymore.

Neither will the "broadband" problem. Have there been issues with availability and speed? Yes. Are those problems in the process of resolution? Yes. Pointing to the existence of problems is fine. Ignoring clear evidence that problems rapidly are being fixed is either misinformed, intellectually dishonest or sloppy.

Some people like to say the definition of broadband is a problem, pointing to data collection that defines "broadband"--at minimum--as 200 kbps. That is wrong, also. The FCC recently changed its minimum definition to 768 kbps. A couple of points.

The only definition the global telecom industry ever has formally set was way back when ISDN was created. Broadband still formally is defined as any bit rate over "voice" rates of 64 kbps. So 128 kbps "traditionally" has been considered "broadband."

Market have moving definitions. But you can hardly fault the FCC for initially setting a minimum standard that is in fact above the recognized global nomenclature. In recent practice, industry executives might have considered broadband to be 1.544 Mbps or above, while anything between 64 kbps and 1.544 Mbps is "wideband."

All that is meaningless. It will be even more meaningless when cable operators start branding some broadband speeds as "wideband," to suggest it is more bandwidth than "broadband." Markets may like that. But it doesn't change the only formal definition the global engineering community ever has embraced.

Also, "minimum" is one thing. "Maximum" or "mean" are other things. Megabit access now is the norm. Targets will continue to shift higher over time. Call it the broadband version of grade inflation. The minimum "passing" grade might be a "D." That doesn't mean people expect that to be the norm.

The United States once had a major "broadband" availability problem. It no longer has. There are places where "access" by wire remains a problem. Most of those places have satellite alternatives, though. And many places have fixed wireless access as well.

Honestly, most potential users have one or two wired networks to choose from, two satellite providers and two or three mobile providers. Many consumers soon will be able to choose from as many as five mobile broadband providers.

Under-supply won't be an issue for most, much longer. Over-supply is the looming problem.