Weekly Erlang: A Digest of Telephony News Traffic

Cable Voices As the world turns… We knew that (outgoing) Cox Communications President and CEO Jim Robbins was going to be one of the keynoters at next week’s Telecom 05 at the Venetian in Las Vegas. Now a Time Warner Cable exec has been slated to fill a similar role at the Internet Telephony Conference and Expo, also slated for next week, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Deane Levenworth, VP of corporate relations and communications for Time Warner’s Los Angeles division, apparently plans to deliver a talk underscoring the MSO’s commercial services offerings. IMS, continued

Lucent may have won over SBC and Cingular, but there are others working the IMS space. Convedia and BEA Systems announced a plan to develop an IMS-compliant SIP application deployment architecture. The plan entails collaboration between Convedia media servers and the BEA WebLogic SIP ServerT. Meanwhile, Convergin has launched a service capability interaction management (SCIM) solution for its Accolade wireless convergence server (WCS) platform to help service providers reach mass deployed client devices including wireline, 2G/2.G wireless, and 3G, as well as the growing segment of SIP/IMS and dual mode devices. Adult Mobility Here’s something for cable if it ever develops a mobile wireless offering. Brickhouse Mobile this week said it would enhance its portfolio of adult content for mobile devices by joining forces with TPG, the adult industry’s full service management and production firm. "If adult content drove the Internet there’s no reason why it wouldn’t do the same thing with mobile because mobile is just another way to access the Internet," said Clinton Payling, Brickhouse Mobile’s president. Meet the New Boss Mike Zafirovski, a former Motorola president-COO this week joined Nortel as president-CEO, replacing 65-year-old CEO-vice chairman Bill Owens, who will be stepping down after turning around the financially scandalized company in the last few years. Zafirovski made it clear immediately that he would not change some things – Nortel will stay in Canada and its headquarters will stay in Toronto – but is likely to change some others. "Most of us still think of Nortel as a telecom company," said Zafirovski, who may have missed this reporter’s coverage of Nortel’s loud support for fixed broadband wireless WiMAX technology. "But enterprise, security and services are significant elements of growth for this company." No WiMAX? Hummph! Besides that, Zafirovski, who stepped down as COO at Motorola earlier this year, said there would be no such position at Nortel. "My perspective has been for 30 years that it’s virtually impossible to separate execution and strategy and at least for the foreseeable number of years, if not decades, I would not think about having a COO position." You can read into that as you like; we (mostly) only report the news.… In a less ballyhooed personnel announcement, B. Michael Adler was named chairman and CEO of VoIP Inc. as current chairman-CEO and founder Steven Ivester steps aside to become the company’s corporate strategist. Ericsson Takes HSDPA to Dallas Ericsson says it has upgraded Cingular Wireless’ Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) infrastructure in Dallas/Fort Worth market to High Speed Data Packet Access (HSDPA). Cingular will use the HSDPA mobile broadband network to carry all voice and high-speed data traffic from existing UMTS customers. Not to Forget Bell South and Verizon While BellSouth may not have yet joined its fellow telcos in an IMS play, it did announce this week that it would ally with Yahoo! to provide co-branded service to DSL subscribers throughout its nine-state operating region beginning later this year…. Verizon Communications, meanwhile, which went nowhere near IMS, did offer its own little bit of convergence news by expanding a new feature that lets the company’s voice messaging customers receive alerts on their Verizon Wireless phones. One small step for Verizon, one giant step for bosses tracking down wayward workers. Speaking of DSL Independent telecommunications holding company SureWest Communications has reached 30 percent DSL penetration for its residential customer base where it’s the incumbent local telephone company. With nearly 27,000 DSL subscribers – 24,00 of whom are residential – SureWest provides high speed and Internet service and a video-over-DSL service for customers in Roseville, Citrus Heights, Antelope and Granite Bay, Calif. – proving, among other things, that with town names like that Californians have no right to make fun of New Jersey. Members Only VoIP application software provider BroadSoft and InterVOIP Exchange, a members-only VoIP peering network announced the availability of a special "BroadSoft Membership" in the InterVOIP Network for service providers using BroadSoft’s BroadWork’s VoIP application platform. By joining, members can terminate calls for free on other members’ networks, avoiding the cost of PSTN termination. (Left unsaid whether members would get bag tags, if greens fees are covered, etc.)