Analyst Surprises

Analyst Surprises Those guys and gals analyzing the telecommunications space never cease to amaze with their insights. For instance, industry analyst firm visiongain has produced a report, "Mobile Roaming 2006-2011: Increasing Usage and Revenue to Counter Regulatory Burdens" – catchy title, eh? – that offers up the premise that mobile operators must convert the threats Wi-Fi and VoIP pose to roaming revenues into opportunities by incorporating the technologies in their strategies. Now, with any industry other than mobile, this might seem like common sense; in the case of those folks, though, this report, which also pointed out that "VoIP through Wi-Fi will become an increasing attractive alternative to mobile voice calls whilst (their word, not ours) roaming" is something about which the mobile carriers should be aware …. Meanwhile, Research and Markets in its edition of "2006 Asia – Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan" said, among other interesting things, that Hong Kong is one of the most sophisticated and dynamic telecommunications markets in the world. Makes sense. What else can you do on a rock in the ocean? The Vonage File Our friends at Vonage America, a subsidiary of Vonage Holdings Corp., introduced the portable and multifunctional USB-based Vonage V-Phone that comes pre-loaded with Vonage software that is automatically updated on the device’s 256 megabit flash drive. As customers surf the Internet at a Wi-Fi hotspot, they can plug in their V-Phone and make calls, said Vonage …. And Timothy G. Smith was named interim president of Vonage Networks, freeing Louis Mamakos to serve solely as CTO and "focus on more strategic initiatives." Hot Fun in the Summertime Showing that telecommunications progress waits for no season, Saddleback Communications, a service of the Salt River Prima-Maricopa Indian Community in hotter-than-hell Arizona – at least in the summertime – is moving forward with deployment of CopperCom next-generation IP switches as part of a system upgrade. The new gear, including CopperCom’s Converged Switching eXchange next-generation switch, will enable Saddleback to offer next-gen IP services to residential and business customers that include the ability to mange their accounts online 24 hours a day. Saddleback is also deploying CopperCom’s voicemail technology and upgrading its access network using the Calix C7 multiservice access platform. VCom Buys WaveRider VCom has purchased WaveRider Communications (Canada), WaveRider Communications (USA), Jetstream Internet Services, and Avendo Wireless from their parent WaveRider Communications, a subsidiary of Wave Wireless. The shares of all the companies will be purchased for approximately $1 million USD, to be paid in cash. VCom expects the collective revenue of the acquired companies to contribute in the order of $5 million CAD to its fiscal 2007 sales. Benchmarking Results CommuniGate Systems says it successfully demonstrated "real-world" conditions of a 10-million-subscriber VoIP environment. The terms "real-world" and "10-million-subscriber VoIP environment" are rarely seen in the same sentence, but the company said that it worked with HP, Intel, Navel Communications and F5 Networks to document "the massive scalability of CommuniGate’s patent-pending SIP Farm technology on an HP Integrity Superdome system" that could handle that number of subscribers – should they ever develop the need to be handled. Erratum ! This is no excuse, but occasionally these dancing fingers get moving so fast they type the wrong information – not always with the wrong intent. The comment about Suddenlink Communications, a Nortel customer was such an instance. Remarkably, the fingers typed that Suddenlink was in the "top two" of U.S. cable operators. A sharp-eyed Nortel representative alertly and correctly pointed out that Suddenlink was in the top 10. To be fair, even the dummy who writes this knows who the top two MSOs are: TCI and Storer, right?