So Supercomm wound down on Thursday, and here are a few takeaways from this year's edition of the show:

1- IPTV: will be an important driver in the routing market, since the deployment of IPTV will entail a substantial upgrade of the existing routing network infrastructure.  But I doubt that the time frame will be 2 years, as often mentioned by players such as Microsoft and Alcatel.  The resolution of issues such as scalability, maturity of silicon, Microsoft software support, and regulation will take time.  So it might be more a five to eight year horizon for the deployment and actual full blown mass adoption of these services.

2- Chinese are here to stay: vendors such as UT Starcom, ZTE and Huawei had big booths there and there was even a Chinese telecom market mini-show.  Although they are still seeking a greater market penetration on this side of the ocean, they are a force to be reckoned with in wireline (NGN, DSL, triple play) and wireless (CDMA, W-CDMA, CDMA 450, TD-SCDMA). 

3- Blades are also becoming a mainstay - both Intel (ATCA) and IBM (BladeCenter) showcased their blade platforms.  The notion of reusing the chassis and having modules that can be incrementally added for a variety of different applications is gaining popularity.  Intel and IBM are both vying to have their products become the standard platform for carrier-grade applications.

4- IMS was again one of the buzzwords most often heard at the show.  Service providers such as Bell Canada, SBC, Bell South and Comcast are all investigating this framework and evaluating future deployment strategies.  While there were no specific plans / milestones mentioned, there certainly was some optimism vis-a-vis IMS, also tempered with a good dose of realism.