Rogers announced today the launch of its Home Phone telephony service in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) starting July 1st.  The much anticipated launch announcement did not bring in too many surprises, as Rogers Home Phone will apparently follow the pricing of Sprint Canada's local and LD offerings.  In order to give customers an incentive to bundle, customers who sign for the telephony service will receive a 15% discount, albeit that will come at a price (a two-year contract). 

The discount over Bell Canada will depend on the service option and the bundling discount.  For instance, for a basic line plus 3 services (from a list that includes voicemail, call display, call waiting, call forward, call return, 3-way calling, call screen, call transfer, and speed call) the Rogers price will be $37.95 without the bundle (a 14% discount over Bell's $44 rate) or $32.26 with the bundle (a 27% discount over Bell's $44 rate).  However, for the standard plan with one feature and no bundling, the Rogers discount is only 3%.  This is in line with my expectations - in other words, "rational pricing".  This is economics 101 - there is no major incentive for Rogers to really drop the pricing too much (a la Videotron), as that would not necessarily be profit-maximizing, particularly considering the fact that Rogers also can parlay its vast wireless infrastructure.

What can one expect for uptake?  Perhaps a conservative estimate would call for 25k subs by year end and 10x that (or a quarter million lines) by YE 2006.  But a lot of that depends on features, initial system performance / customer satisfaction and what Bell Canada might do to counteract this expected move by Rogers.  So how does Rogers pricing stack up against its cable peers?  Not as attractive as Videotron, but certainly better than either Cogeco or Shaw.

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Earlier this spring, I met with Sir Terry Matthews at a Mitel Analyst event here in Toronto and we briefly spoke about one of his investments (Solace Systems), which is focused on application aware networking (i.e. XML routing).  Having heard about Solace's deployment at Allstream, I was already familiar with the company, but his enthuasism was so contagious that I had to go and check the company out myself at Supercomm.

And I came out impressed with seeing some real live demos of application-aware networking, and the notion of being able to classify, filter and parse massive amounts of incoming data as it flows through an enterprise's network.  XML will be an enabler for powerful machine-to-machine interactions in the future.  There are several protocols that already rely on XML to handle and manipulate data streams, including, among others, SAML, SOAP, UDDI, XML-RPC, etc.  There is an obvious need to have some gear that can manipulate, parse and transform XML at network speeds.  We are talking about a potentially destructive technology that can profoundly alter the landscape of the Layer 4-7 routing market. 

The key is achieving this goal and stay within the key CIO goals of not increasing performance bottlenecks or security vulnerabilities.  Market timing is important, and as usual, Mr. Matthews has correctly anticipated the need for XML processing infrastructure.  Hence, it was not surprising to see companies such as Solace and MA-based DataPower get the R&D jump on a few other competitors.  One of the questions on every analyst's mind, though, always was that if this technology was so great and potentially disruptive, how come none of the technology giants made too much noise about it thus far?  Other than Solace and DataPower, only a handful of other vendors had been active in the application aware networking market - including Ciena and NetScaler. 

That is no longer the case.  After a few rumors on the press (most noticeably on this insightful article), Cisco has finally come out with more details on its AON (Application-Oriented Networking) initiative during its Networkers 2005 customer and partner conference in Las Vegas.  This will be Cisco's seventh AT (Advanced Technology) growth market (there are 12 ATs in total, with 6 of them already announced and 6 yet to be announced). Enterprises having Cisco's Catalyst 6500 Series switches or 2600, 2800, 3700, and 3800 Series routers will not have to replace their existing infrastructure - all that will be necessary is for them to plug in AON blades when they will be generally available.  During the event, there was also talk about a likely AON wireless and RFID module for the ISR router, the availability of some management software, and the announcement of some technical relationships with several companies including IBM, SAP and Tibco.

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SMBWorld, a multi-city event put together by Jake Gordon & Associates, had its final day in Toronto last week.  The show was pretty interesting in that it catered specifically to the Canadian small and medium business segment.  I always felt that there was a need to fill in a conference void in that space, and SMBWorld certainly achieved that, presenting a good view on market landscape. 

One of the highlights was hearing ex-Raptor GM, Glenn Grunwald speak about his current responsibilities as the President & CEO of the Toronto Board of Trade.  Glenn mentioned his current efforts in helping new immigrants get integrated within the Canadian workforce (i.e. here in Toronto).  I asked Glenn what is currently being done at the municipal level ot help encourage more telecom investment in Toronto.  He mentioned that much more effort needs to be spent in that direction, above and beyond the Toronto Board of Trade.  I couldn't agree more:  maybe the time has come for the municipal and/or provincial government to give some tax incentives to lure more high-tech to our city.

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One of the fondest childhood memories I have is watching "The Six Million Dollar Man" alongside my dad (it was one of our favorite TV series).  Who can forget the Steve Austin character (played by Lee Majors) and his amazing cyborg powers?  Interestingly enough, since I lived in Brazil, where series would come later (due to dubbing, etc.), this series was still playing when I left in 1983, despite the fact it had been wrapped up in the U.S. in the late seventies.

Well, fast forward to some 20-25 years later, and the real first bionic man is a reality.  Granted this is not a Steve Austin, his doctor is not a Rudi Wells working for OSI, and his boss is not Oscar Goldman.  But I got a big adrenaline rush reading about Jesse Sullivan, the world's first bionic man.  Jesse lost his arms during an accident working as a utility lineman in Tennessee.  Now, he is trying out one of the most advanced artificial arms ever created.  Doctors from the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago attached his arm nerves to healthy muscles in his chest.  Whenever Sullivan's brain sends a message to his arm to do something, it is done in seconds.  Moreover, Jesse has feeling in his bionic arm.  This is quite a breakthrough, particularly for amputees, spinal cord injury patients and stroke victims. 

So what would be the cost of producing such a bionic arm?  You guessed it... $6 million!  Costs have gone up due to inflation... but still, this was certainly very exciting news to read about, and is a great leap forward in myoelectrics (technology relying on electricity created in muscles to control outside electronic devices).

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Robert Liu from TMCnet posted an interesting story on some research done by Deutsche Bank on Consumer VoIP.  The numbers this year also are showing strength, with VoIP residential subs growing from 1-1.2 million (at the end of 2004) to 1.6-1.8 million (at the end of Q1 2005).  Interestingly enough, the report also mentions the advent of IMS and the prospects of wireless VoIP.    more »

India is ripe for a major broadband expansion, to be followed by a wireless broadband uptake.  Currently, there are 183 ISPs that are operational, with 388 licenses having been signed.  There has been a recent easing in regulation that has as a result lowered the market entry barriers, allowing infrastructure sharing among distinct service providers.  The idea is to enable cost reduction via optimal utilization.

VSNL (Tata's Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd.), Reliance Infocomm, and the state-owned BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.) have been testing WiMax services since the start of this year.  They are regarding WiMax as a last mile wireless connectivity solution to be used particularly in rural and/or remote regions.  If things go as expected, WiMax will provide relief for these operators, as they struggle to meet their rural telephony mandates (there is a huge gap between teledensities in urban regions - about 22% versus rural areas - under 3%).

Also in the WiMax front, Bharti has been already running market trials in Bangalore, Bhopal and New Delhi.  Thus far, the results have been good and the company is pretty bullish on the service.

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Another nice finding that I made at Supercomm (albeit unfortunately one hour from the close of the show on Thursday) was that the Ontario Government was helping out some Canadian startups by getting a big booth for them (a total of 8 companies were present).  It turns out that the Government of Ontario (through Ontario Exports Inc.) sponsored a Trade Mission at Supercomm 2005, featuring a total of 8 high-tech companies in the telecom space.  The initiative allowed these startups to hold meetings and presentations at the Canadian Consulate, Supercomm and the Chicago area IT Association.  It was nice to run into an exec from Nimcat Networks (the peer-to-peer telephony czars), to get another Dexit demo (the pre-paid fob or sticker innovators) - this time in US soil - or to visit the Plaintree booth (experts in broadband optical wireless).  But even better to see the provincial government step up to the plate in supporting our own startup companies get even more notoriety at one of the biggest telco shows in the world.

Note: I also included a few photos on my album.

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Another key takeaway from Supercomm last week was the fact that the FCC (at least for now), despite its recent E-911 decision, will attempt to keep its VoIP-friendly posture.  It was good to hear new FCC Chairman Kevin Martin repeatedly express his belief that cable and phone companies should compete on a level playing field.  Therefore, MSOs have been able to enter the voice business world with few regulatory barriers.  With the phone companies battling local municipalities over the need to obtain franchises to offer video service, Congress will likely get a chance to review the current federal communications law.  Regardless of the uncertainity of future regulation reform, the one sure bet is that all players will increase their network spend in the future.  Anyone at the CRTC listening?   more »

Rodrigo Sepúlveda Schulz wrote about a new cool blogging editor/tool: BlogJet. Actually, it is more than just an editor: it is a full blog management tool. BlogJet is compatible with most weblog services, including Blogware (which is used here), Blogger, TypePad, MovableType, .Text, etc.  Its editors features a spell checker, 20 high-quality smileys, the "Now Playing" feature (that detects the song title and artist name for the song being currently played on an MP3 player in the computer), and voice attachments (no monthly fees or external plug-ins required).  There is a free 30-day trial, and I will be experimenting BlogJet shortly...

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The big news today, as reported by Om Malik: Yahoo! got serious about adding VoIP to its portfolio and acquired Dialpad, the well-known VoIP operator.  Almost everyone I know used Dialpad for free calls to the US at some point circa 1999 (this was due to the agreement that it had in place with GTE, to put some traffic on GTE's network).  Then, as usage went up, calls were being cut-off after three minutes (or was it a minute?), and then Dialpad became a paid service.  Granted the uptake might have not been as phenomenal as with Skype (and the freebie calls were only for the US), but Dialpad certainly had a huge base of customers, many of which were lost as the company transitioned towards prepaid services.  Fast forward to 2005, and now Yahoo! sees potential to make inroads in the telecom space and offer new services such as PC to phone and inbound calls.  Interestingly enough, Yahoo! will integrate Dialpad functionality into its IM client, which is the mirror image of what Skype did (i.e. add IM on top of a softphone platform).

Yahoo! gets a quick entry to VoIP services on its own terms, rather than relying upon the services of other companies (such as Yahoo's own past use of Net2Phone).  Moreover, Dialpad also has a lot of billing/OSS expertise, in addition to fraud management detection. 

So the million dollar question is: how will MSN and/or Google react?  Can this open the door to some new acquisitions of VoIP SPs?  What about Skype?  Mr. Zennström (the CEO) certainly does not appear to be in a big rush to sell, but will the VCs and other Skype execs consider a sale at an attractive valuation?  We will soon find out...

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Nortel bashers had a field day last Friday, as they took the stock on a roller coaster ride (down, for the most part) on a negative sentiment due to the resignation of recently-hired COO Gary Daichendt (followed by the departure of his handpicked CTO and ex-Cisco colleague, Gary Kunis - likely a solidarity move).  As usual, there has been a lot of speculation (including today's interesting story on the Globe - hat tip: Mark Evans) on the reasons that led the two Garys to leave.

So why so much turmoil?  Well, Mr. Daichendt came with high accolades since he ran the worldwide sales organization at Cisco during the period of phenomenal growth in the company back in the 1990s.  No doubt about it, Gary's credentials were unquestionable, as he not only ran sales, but also played an instrumental role in shaping up Cisco's manufacturing.  However, as the Globe article states, Mr. Daichendt might have committed the ultimate faux pas right after being hired, making public his plans to eventually become Nortel's CEO.  Granted that might not have gone over very well with the hierarchical culture instilled by a military officer such as CEO Bill Owens. 

But from what I have heard (from some insider Nortel sources), it was the aggressiveness of Daichendt's plan that ultimately sealed his fate.  Apparently, it was the proverbial CLM (Career Limiting Move) - not only audacious in strategic terms, but also perhaps a bit unrealistic in terms of timeline (and the hint was that apparently the board agreed more or less with about 80 percent of what was proposed, but just could not come to terms with the overly ambitious time milestones).  Perhaps an interesting question is whether or not Mr. Daichendt egregiously established such an aggressive restructuring plan, being fully aware of the consequences, just to gauge how much support he would receive from the Nortel board, or to assess how long it would take him to become the CEO.  In case he would not get the board's buy-in, then he would have the excuse needed to leave the scene. 

That has been the subject of a lot of speculation around the Internet, but regardless of the motives, the truth is that perhaps Daichendt might have not been the best suited exec for the job, and in all fairness, perhaps way too much was expected of him.  Remember this is a gentleman that was out of the telecom business since late 2000, and while he was a great exec in his previous life, what works for Cisco does not necessarily work for Nortel.  Nortel right now is seeking a turn-around, emphasizing operating income, profit and strategy rationalization.  An aggressive strategic mind whose previous modus operandi was shaped in a company set to always be the number one or number two in any market it competes might not quite be the best fit.

So why was Gary hired in the first place?  Well, the mystery remains, but regardless of the soundness of that decision, and all the negativity of Bay and Wall Street, the fact is that during his short stay at Nortel, Daichendt's mandate was to explore the organization and come up with a plan.  Three months into his mission, Gary did indeed propose a plan that proved to be a bit too much ambitious.  So he is gone after a short stint, but the flip side is that perhaps it is better that his departure happened sooner rather than later given the big gap in culture that existed.  Also, chances are pretty good that 90 days was hardly enough time for him to begin implementing his own ideas.

As far as Kunis' departure, undoubtedly, he is a sharp technology strategist who will be missed.  The board has placed this position under review (given that Brian McFadden, the previous Nortel CTO is now Chief Research Officer.  My suggestion for that particular CTO role is to promote from within, and my vote would be for Phil Edholm, who is currently the CTO and VP of Network Architecture for the Enterprise Networks Division.  And the search for the new COO goes on...

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Blogging was light over the past two days, as I cope with my office move (it is unbelievable the amount of junk that one can accumulate over a four year span). As I took refuge at a local Starbucks, I bumped into a famous National Post columnist who I enjoy reading (Andrew Coyne).  In order to preserve his sanctuary intact (from other avid fans such as myself), I shall keep the Starbucks location incognito. But I do admire him - being able to work in such a prolific fashion, while I was bothered by any single noise being made, from a dog barking outside to a toilet being flushed in the washroom inside.  I wish I could move to another spot which is less noisy - and more importantly having fewer distractions.

But the Starbucks Wi-Fi hotspot got me thinking about the lack of availability of public WLAN access here in Toronto.  After all, we live in one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world (supposedly), and yet, I can get better access in downtown São Paulo than I can in Toronto (and down in Brazil, it is even free of charge!).  For instance, there are many "dead" areas without any wireless broadband connectivity in the downtown core (e.g. downstairs in the BCE Place cafeteria area).  It would be nice if our city did more for the cause (taking an example from Philly, as reported in this forum before).

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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.

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Last night, the Ditech dinner revealed a bit more about its acquisition of Jasomi Networks, yet another SBC (Session Border Controller) company to be acquired recently (following Kagoor, which got snapped up by Juniper).  The final price tag was $20 million ($13 million in cash and $7 million in convertible notes), which might seem a bit underpriced compared to Kagoor (which fetched $67.5 million).  On the Wednesday analyst/press dinner event, the answer given to me about this difference in valuation was pretty much the same as what was quoted on a LightReading article, namely, that Kagoor was funded by VCs, whereas Jasomi got most of its capital from angel investors.  The transaction is expected to close by the end of the month.

The rationale behind the acquisition is to complement the PVP Packet Voice Processor product (an offering that was talked about at the Spring VON show).  The PVP is expected to begin generating revenues in calendar Q1 of 2006.  One idea is to develop the PVP into an SBC, or even perhaps as a media gateway.  In order to shorten the time-to-market, the company chose to purchase rather than to develop such an offering in-house.  Jasomi's 23 employees are mainly based in Canada (the HQ for product development is in Calgary), with a few others working out of Mountain View, CA. 

Another possibility is parlaying Jasomi's SBC competency in the IMS space, albeit thus far Jasomi's biggest customers have been in the enterprise market (versus carriers) - can that be scaled up or is more development needed?  There were rumors from my Wall Street connections that sometime ago, Cisco had tested Jasomi gear in Singapore and passed up on the opportunity, but a good chunk of time has passed since then.  Jasomi's current partners include the likes of Microsoft, Broadsoft, Sylantro, RADVision, and General Bandwidth, among others.

The million dollar question now is: which will be the next SBC vendor to be bought?  I will be willing to make a couple of bets: one is Nextone (since au contraire of vendors such as Acme Packet or Netrake, Nextone's solution can be put on a blade - and hence be a part of the IBM Blade Center / IMS ecosystem).  The other one?  Ditech itself - since the company could be positioning itself to be bought at some point in the future by an even bigger player.

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Note: Jeff Pulver was a guest speaker at the Ditech dinner and gave a great keynote.  I have posted a couple of photos of the event in my photo album.

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Nortel execs take note: Siemens joins other vendors in exiting markets in which the company underperforms (other recent examples: Lucent, exiting the GSM business, or Ericsson, which left the CDMA market for the most part, except for emerging opportunities such as CDMA450).  In Siemens' example, the Munich-based multi-national finally unloaded its wireless handset unit to Taiwanese vendor BenQ.  As reported here before, Siemens' quest to unload its underperforming mobile phone division has been going on for a long time.  The transaction, expected to close in September 2005, calls for Siemens to purchase $61.4 million (€ 50 million) of BenQ stock, in addition to taking a $429.5 million (€ 350 million) charge.  The division's workforce (totaling roughly 6,000) will remain in Munich.  Siemens and BenQ combined in 2004 to amass about 10% of the overall global market (4th in the world, behind Samsung).  Geographically speaking, the deal makes sense, with BenQ being strong in APAC and Siemens showing strength in Europe and Latin America (including Brazil). 

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Tuesday and Wednesday also brought a flurry of new announcements at Supercomm, including, among others:

• Adtran unveiled the Total Access 1100F, which delivers IPTV and deep fiber connectivity for its Total Access OSP and Mini-DSLAMs.  The company also announced the next version of the OPTI-6100 Optical Multiplexer, which comes with enhanced Ethernet service capability and SDH for foreign markets.
• Alcatel made public its UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) solution, which delivers cellular/WiFi convergence.  This offering works by providing seamless roaming for subscribers in GSM (and GPRS) networks and 802.11 (and Bluetooth) unlicensed bands.
• Foundry announced the NetIron XMR(TM) series family of Internet and Metro MPLS Routers.  These routers (IPv4, IPv6, MPLS) routers are geared towards delivering triple play services, converged backbone and broadband VPN.
• Lucent introduced new features for its Stinger product line (i.e. DSL Access Concentrators that will empower SPs to deliver triple play services to their customers.
• Two Nortel partners (Calix and Keymile) debuted new voice gateway functionality to their broadband access products that make them compatible with Nortel's VoIP offerings.  Both products have been tested with the Nortel softswitches.
• Sonus announced its own IMS solution, and a lunchtime presentation revealed some detail - the IMX App Server will serve as the service broker (SCIM) component, and also store data in the HSS.  The company will also have its own ASX Feature Server, HSX HSS and PSX BGCF.  Sonus will count with its own IMS partner ecosystem, including the likes of IP Unity, Sylantro, Genesis, IPeria and BayPackets, among others.

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Lucent is going full steam ahead with its plan to amalgamate its wireless and wireless LOBs.  After taking that decision back in April, Lucent is currently undertaking a 4 month period to analyze its entire portfolio of products and resources.  The vendor is promoting its capabilities in wireline (VoIP, optical) and wireless (CDMA, 3G) as key components of IMS.  Relationships with players such as Broadsoft will continue to be important as Lucent builds its IMS partner ecosystem.  During a breakfast meeting with analysts, the company also stressed its strength in the services business (LWS) and its relationship with Cap Gemini.  On the wireless front, Lucent will try to get a piece of the Ericsson market share, as the Swedish vendor exits the CDMA market (albeit Ericsson will still continue to focus on emerging CDMA market opportunities such as CDMA450).  There have been some hints from Wall Street that Lucent might get an EV-DO contract next week.  Last but not least, I also sat a bit on the Lucent Labs table and felt a great dose of optimism coming out of that organization, particularly with the return of Dr. Jeong Kim as the President.

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The two IEC IMS events were pretty interesting (the first one, a full day IMS session on Monday - where I gave a talk - and the second one, an hour-and-a-half long wireless IMS perspective on Tuesday). 

The first day featured the perspectives of SBC (David Deas) and Comcast (Jason Livingood).  David's presentation focused on wireline/wireless convergence and brought up a few key points, including cellular/WiFi integration, and the big divide between wireline and wireless service providers. David mentioned that wireline carriers overwhelmingly believe in FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence), whereas wireless operators are quite skeptical.  The latter part of his talk was also interesting, as he considered implementation issues (such as Parlay/OSA integration options).  Jason offered a very insightful perspective on the MSO view of IMS, including the ongoing standardization efforts and the issues faced by most cable companies in considering their strategies.  He also mentioned a few IMS applications that could be of interest to MSOs, and the ongoing Cable Labs activities.

 The second day featured the perspectives of Bell Canada (Philippe Jetté) and Bell South (Bill Smith).  Phillipe's presentation emphasized the evolution towards the seamless access in the world of IP (wireline/wireless and nomadic/fixed). IMS will play a key enabling role in the transformation from a single bill to a single network and to a single (user-centric) seamless application space, according to Philippe. Bill's presentation highlighted the IMS view not only from Bell South's, but also from Cingular's perspective.  He emphasized some of the consumer IMS apps, including managing a family's communications, seamless roaming, etc.

Overall, the consensus throughout the two days was that while IMS still is very much a work in progress, it will play a key role in the transformation towards a user-centric world in which applications can be delivered quicker and more efficiently to certain segments in the subscriber bases.  All in all, the IEC put together a couple of great sessions that provided a good current perspective in the world of IMS.

Note: I posted a few photos from my day on Monday (including the IEC session and an evening at Wrigley Field). 

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The Supercomm Nortel update included the revelation that the MPE9000 switch/router that was announced last year will finally hit GA by the end of June.  The MPE is expected to be a "big product" (according to VP of Carrier Marketing Jim Dondero) for Nortel within six months, as wireline and wireless operators will begin to rely on it to aggregate ATM, Ethernet, Frame Relay and IP at the edge of their networks.  Nortel has been quoting some pretty impressive VoIP numbers: 55 carrier VoIP customers and 20 out of 35 MSOs that have made VoIP decisions up to now.

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Blogging has been a bit light the past few days, as I have been caught up in a lot of work, office move, and a trip to Supercomm.  Speaking of which, a lot of announcements were made during the first day of the show, including, among others:

• Cisco, announcing its DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) protection offering, which is now a part of the company's NGN IP architecture.
• Juniper giving demos of its newest software upgrade (5.0) to its Secure/Remote Access SSL VPN appliances; the company also unveiled its new E320 broadband services router, the industry's largest capacity broadband router.  The E320 is a pretty good platform for delivery of services such as IPT, VOD, and IPTV.
• ADC, Lucent, Nortel and Tellabs all revealed their new products targeting the emerging FTTX / "triple play" markets.  Lucent announced a collaboration with Polycom geared towards delivering IP voice, video and collaboration solutions.  Nortel introduced next-gen features for its optical network solutions.  These features will allow service providers to deliver high bandwidth content and application-based services in a much faster fashion.
• Sonus unveiled its GSX4000 compact gateway which caters to the lower end of the VoIP market.
• On the M&A front, Ditech announced it was acquiring Jasomi, in a marriage of SBCs and voice processing technologies (I will attend Ditech's dinner on Wednesday evening and learn more about synergies, and the rationale behind the purchase).

P.S. I will have a separate posting about IMS and will also share a few recent pics taken in Chicago with my camera.   more »

This was the claim made by Sir Terry Matthews, as Ubiquity Software became the latest startup in his universe of high-tech investments to go public in the London AIM (Alternative Investment Market) (ed. note: prior to Ubiquity, another one of Terry's companies, March Networks, also went public).  Ubiquity, which raised about $47 million in its IPO, had about $15 million worth of sales.  Sir Matthews told a group of technology executives in Ottawa late last month that the London AIM has a key tax advantage over other exchanges such as the NYSE and Nasdaq.  By holding on to a startup investment for three years, there is no tax on the gain for a company listed on AIM. 

Separate Note: Interestingly enough, Sir Terry admitted for the first time that if someone made a "big enough offer" for Mitel he would consider selling the company.

 

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IPTV has been getting quite a lot of bandwidth lately, and there have been a lot of stories such as the ongoing SBC effort and the Alcatel/Microsoft alliance, among others.  However, despite all the hype, here's a reality check on the current status of the technology: last week, it was announced that Swisscom delayed its own IPTV launch.  IPTV is turning out to be quite more complex than previously thought; one of the technological challenges is scalability, and it still remains to be proven that IPTV networks can scale.  Another potential headache is regulation, as there are some regulatory risks that can potentially impede the ILEC rollout of TV services.  So in the next two years, expect there to be a lot of access network buildouts, with initial deployments (in small scale) only really beginning to ramp up in 2007.  Therefore, a wider consumer adoption of IPTV services probably will not happen before 2008-2009.

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