VoIP History

PSTN Backgrounder

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:51:30 +0100

Gary Audin has developed a comprehensive discussion guide to considerations about the state and future of the PSTN, the public switched telephone network. The amazing global engineering feat (what other human achievement enables any one person to reach any one (or sometimes more) of four billion others?) is faced with both structural change and in the United States, regulatory change. In this paper entitled Can the PSTN be Shut Down?, available for free download on www.webtorials.com (free accoun...

History of Audio Conferencing

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:00:19 +0100

I've been searching for information on the history of audio conferencing and somehow came across this really interesting Google resource. I'm blogging about it because I don't know quite how to repeat my success. My usual sources - the [[Wikipedia]] and failed to get many relevant, credible details. I think I inadvertently clicked on the 'Timeline' link in the left hand margin which generates a chronological presentation incorporating the above graphic in an interactive format. The Timeline ...

The Future of Landlines

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:32:48 +0100

A recent article in FierceTelecom's newsletter highlighted how Cincinnati Bell was enhancing landline service with SMS. To make the service work, you need a special telephone ($29.99), a bundled service involving both DSL Internet and home phone service and then for a $9.99/month, you can send and receive SMS on the home phone. Cincinnati Bell promises more integrated features including wireless address books, white pages and email in the future. For incremental $ charges of course...

My experience with NBX @ home

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 06:03:21 +0100

When I moved to New England in the summer of 2004, to take on a senior marketing role at 3Com, we bought a 10-year-old home in one of the prettier neighborhoods of suburban/rural MA. The all-wood home (Cape Cod style of course) did not have Ethernet services installed throughout the three floors. My goal was to deploy a 3Com NBX V3000 with as many extensions as my family could tolerate (wife and two teenage sons at home with two daughters in college). At the time, 3Com was in the process of be...

Balance of Power 2

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 01:00:00 +0100

It was the US Telecom Act of 1996 that changed the game for the US telecom manufacturer - supplier balance. In a Business Communications Review article in the August 2006 issue, Tom Nolle, wrote an awesome piece about the fundamental way suppliers reflect and react to the power of their customers. He writes that in a market where there are few customers, suppliers must gain scale to offer ever-lower prices for their 'commoditized' supplies. Since Congress set about enabling the man...

Balance of Power 1

Sat, 09 Sep 2006 01:00:00 +0100

The role of standards facilitated the development of markets for telecom infrastructure and devices. The merger of Lucent and Alcatel was approved by their respective shareholders earlier this week and I ponder the development of competitive markets and how exactly did we get here, and what can we do about it? International standards such as ANSI and its European equivalent CCITT which became ITU, have for several decades facilitated the development of markets for telecom infrastructures an...

Before there was VoIP...

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 01:00:00 +0100

Voice over frame relay had been around for a few years... In the early 1990s, I worked in the marketing group of the data networking division of Nortel (then called Northern Telecom). We built terrific X.25 packet switching systems that were optimized for large phone company-style implementations (DPN-100) of lots and lots of analog or low speed access circuits connected over a connection-less higher speed (T-1 (1 Mbps) was the fastest WAN link for the longest time) backbone. In 1993, the ...

Infonetics Shows IP PBX Market Growth in 4Q05

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 01:00:00 +0100

Larry Howard released the market analysts' report for 4Q05. I didn't buy the report, but here are the details, confirming rapid transition to IP PBX from digital telephony and strong performance by Cisco. REPORT HIGHLIGHTS: 4Q05 Enterprise Telephony worldwide TDM system revenue falling 15% and IP PBX revenue rising 23% between 2004 to 2005 worldwide TDM and IP PBX totaled $8.1 billion in 2005, 12% over 2004, reach $11.6 billion by 2009 IP PBX revenue is forecast to j...

Messaging Forecast

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 01:00:00 +0100

Om Malik reported the Radicati Group 's email forecast.Here's the Radicati Group view between 2006 and 2010: Feature 2006 2010 Active email boxes 1.4 billion 2.5 billion Instant Messaging accounts 0.94 billion 1.4 billion ...

Yankee Group Segmentation Predicts Growth in VoIP revenues

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 01:00:00 +0100

Hosted voIP services is expected to grow five fold over the next five years to $1.2 Billion/year. Yankee Group released their forecast for voIP services. Of course popularity is not reflected in the revenue growth since voIP represents a lower cost per unit than ever before.Segmentation of the business voIP market talked about: Hosted services growing from $233 million to $1.2 Billion by 2010. VPN voIP (voIP over the corporate IP-based WAN) to grow from $268 million to $1.25 Billion ...

Wall Street Confirms: Wireless is a Growing Market

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 01:00:00 +0100

The Street reacts negatively to acquiring land line or Long Distance companies. In today's WSJ article, Dionne Searcey (subscription required), writes about the Street's reactions to Verizon's and AT&T (formerly SBC)'s acquisitions of long distance companies: POORLY. Verizon is down 21%, AT&T is flat. Meanwhile Alltel, which is trying to dispose of the landline operation and invest in wireless is growing in appreciation by 14% or so. Now that Verizon sold off the...

Brockmann claims hindsight Victory

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 01:00:00 +0100

Really? I saw the Nimcat announcement last month and stopped by their booth at VON. It brought back memories and goose pimples. Interestingly, Brian Collie (GM of Chantry Networks, division of Siemens), Bob Myers (CTO of Chantry Networks, division of Siemens) and I were asked in 1998 to review the Nortel enterprise telephone operation and to determine what we thought could be done with it. A strategic committee was considering selling the operation to Aastra, and since we were the 'Idea ...

Networld + Interop Create History

Sat, 30 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0100

The first ever IP dial-tone for the vendors in the show floor is showcased as the USA's largest networks conference and exposition begins. Amazing that nobody ever thought of it or delivered on it before. A completely reliable, highly secure logical network for ~100 IP phones on the show floor, ~100 IP phones in conference rooms and show management offices. Applications include dial-tone, auto attendant, directory, IP conferencing and IP messaging services. Worthwhile experiment in engi...

Brothers in VoIP

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 01:00:00 +0100

It turns out the senior leaders of senior VoIP industry players worked together as part of a great fraternity. True, a great fraternity of former Nortel enterprise executives. Well, maybe not great, but a fraternity none-the-less.I'm at 3Com, and was Nortel VP Marketing 2000-2001. Rick Moran, is SVP and GM of Cisco Enterprise Voice business. He was VP Marketing Nortel 1999-2001. Alex Piersen is VP Product Line Management of Nortel Meridian since 2000. Micky Tsui is VP respon...

USA Today Keeps Writing about Enterprise VoIP

Sun, 06 Mar 2005 01:00:00 +0100

Not that I can blame them, though... It should come as no surprise that USA Today might be writing from time to time about Enterprise IP Telephony. It's something I write about - often. :) I only get to read USA Today when I travel (and stay at Marriott hotels), otherwise, it's a daily diet of The Wall Street Journal. One thing I like about USA Today is their use of statistics and pie charts to show data related to the article. For example, on January 27, 2005, USA Today covered how...

Amazing Gartner Report

Tue, 01 Mar 2005 01:00:00 +0100

Bob Hafner, Chief Researcher at Gartner Inc, authored the most comprehensive Position Paper on IP Telephony and VoIP I have read. True. Insightful, clear and quite logical. Thanks Bob. The report is entitled "Positions 2005: Voice and Data Will Converge onto a Single Network via IP Telephony and Voice over IP." It is Gartner report # G00126433 and is dated February 17, 2005. Key highlights: Voice over IP is a transport while IP telephony is an application that deliv...

H.323 History and Issues

Mon, 12 Jul 2004 01:00:00 +0100

H.323 is an umbrella recommendation from the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) for real-time multimedia over Local Area Networks. Originally approved in 1996, the protocol offers no Quality of Service definition, but is supported without regard to the layer two protocol suite - IP, IPX - or the layer one physical environment - Ethernet or Token Ring for example. The widespread adoption of the Internet eliminated market demand for other protocols - IPX, Token Ring, or ATM at the desk...

And Along Came Selsius...

Thu, 27 May 2004 01:00:00 +0100

Selsius Systems was a subsidiary of Matra Communications, with expertise in call setup using H.323... Matra, the French communications equipment company with which Northern Telecom had a joint product and distribution relationship in France, owned a subsidiary in Texas (Intecom) with a subsidiary called Selsius that had developed an IP telephone, call manager and IP-analog gateway for fax machines or other telephones. Selsius Systems, earned an early product review in Network Computing and ...

A Little History Before We Get Started...

Wed, 26 May 2004 01:00:00 +0100

The Convergence story can only start from the beginning... By the end of the calendar year 1997, Northern Telecom (now Nortel Networks) had divided the data division which had been a growing unit of the Enterprise Networks (Meridian, Norstar, Passport, Micom, Call Center apps) division under Rick Faletti (in the fall of 1997, Rick left NT and Jim Long was appointed President Enterprise Voice) into three parts: Enterprise Data Networks (led by Bill Conner) which had the Passport Wide Area...