VOIP News

One thing to keep an eye on this week is any activity surrounding the Mitel/Inter-Tel merger that’s on the table as Inter-Tel shareholders meet to vote this Friday 6/29. While there has been a counter-proposal/recapitalization proposal from Steven Mihaylo, Inter-Tel’s special committee recently recommended that shareholders unanimously vote for the Mitel merger. Two weeks have passed since the Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period had expired. That’s a standard anti-trust waiting period that companies must go through to satisfy regulators. Inter-Tel CEO Norman Stout said at the time: “Expiration of the waiting period without a second request for information represents a significant milestone towards the completion of our combination with Mitel. We remain on schedule to close the transaction in early July…” Most recently, Mitel CEO Don Smith sent a letter to Inter-Tel stating that Mitel cannot raise the price of its offer, in response to a request from Inter-Tel to increase that offer price. Smith cited a number of reasons supporting his belief that the Mitel offer is truly superior to any other plan or proposal. Said Smith: “We remain committed to delivering this premium valuation to Inter-Tel shareholders for 100% of their shares. The recent receipt of very favorable ratings from both S&P and Moody’s should provide you with further comfort around the deal certainty we have already committed to Inter-Tel and its shareholders.”  

So, when I was sitting at LaGuardia last week, waiting for my flight, I promised to write something about Nortel’s Global Connect event if I ever got there. Well, much like the Hotel California, getting there turned out to not be the real issue. It was coming home that proved to be a challenge. Canceled flights, delays, bumps…suffice it to say, returning home wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had. In between the travails of air travel, I had a wonderful time at the Nortel press and analyst unified communications event, which took place in Tampa, Florida at the convention center. I’m only sorry it took me so long to complete my wrap-up of the event. Big thanks to all the organizers, and a special thanks to Christie Blake for putting together a valuable day of networking and information sharing. To view the article, please click here.

As part of the Covad blogger relations program, I’ve recently had a T1 line installed at my home. Of course, as soon as the line was installed, I’ve been on the road non-stop, traveling all over to various places, and I haven’t had a chance to spend any “quality time” with my new broadband connection. I was going to forego the standard speed test, since Ken Camp and Phoneboy have already covered it here and here. Still, I decided to do the bandwidth check myself using the Speakeasy Speed Test.The T1 performed as expected, with 1,446 kbps down and 1,449 kbps up. That’s as close to1.5 MB as any reasonable person has a right to expect. For comparison I decided to check out my Cablevision connection to see what I’d be missing. Either I’m the only one in my neighborhood who was online that evening, or Cablevision deserves some kind of award. Over 10 megs down and 1.5 kbps up. I certainly didn’t expect to have this kind of bandwidth using a shared connection that is cable, though I do feel a bit better about the 40 bucks a month knowing that I have a decent connection. Once I get back from this next leg of my ongoing journey, I’ll baseline the two pipes again and see about testing a video conferencing app like Skype or Sightspeed.

Over the past month or so, TMCnet visitors have been greeted with a quick survey form asking for their responses to a series of Unified Communications (UC) related questions. Recent surveys have dealt with the views, deployment plans and vendor preferences of TMCnet visitors regarding UC. In the latest research survey conducted in partnership with IntelliCom Analytics, we were interested in seeing how our readers would actually go about selecting their UC solutions once the adoption decision had been made. To view the results of this latest survey, click here.

I’m sitting in New York’s LaGuardia airport watching the storm clouds roll in. My flight’s already been pushed back 15 minutes (last I checked) and it doesn’t look too promising. I’m on my way to Tampa Florida for INNUA’s Global Connect 2007 conference sponsored by Nortel. For those who don’t like to play ‘the acronym game’ INNUA stands for the International Nortel Users Association. The conference expects to draw close to 2,500 participants and more than 100 exhibitors. I’m looking forward to hearing Nortel’s Ruchi Prasad, GM of the Nortel/Microsoft Innovative Communications Alliance speak tomorrow about the state of the companies’ Unified Communications strategy, as well as hear more about Nortel’s participation in the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics, which will be held in Vancouver Canada. Nortel recently announced that they will be the Official Converged Network Equipment Supplier for the 2010 Winter Games. As part of the sponsorship agreement, Nortel will supply the network communications equipment required for what will be the first all-IP converged Games network. Nortel will be providing the converged local area network (LAN) equipment to VANOC (Vancouver Organizing Committee) at 15 Games venues in both Vancouver and Whistler, as well as at the Vancouver 2010 headquarters and numerous supporting venues. If I make it to Tampa tonight, you can look forward to my reports about the event. I’m the eternal optimist, so I’m hoping we’ll get out of NY before too long. If not, well, at least I’m on home turf in NY and home is not too far away.

At long last, I am the envy of my colleagues. You see, as part of the Covad Blogger Relations program, I have now been availed of a T1 line streaming into my house. Verizon came out a few weeks back and replaced a box on the side of my house. Once completed, the installer, a convivial gentleman by the name of Darryl Richardson came by the house, ran the cabling from the box into the house, plugged in the Cisco 1720 router, and… nothing. Turns out there was a problem with the Verizon circuit. So Darryl sent a trouble ticket and said he’d be back once the circuit was repaired. Sure enough, the Verizon van rolled up two days later. Several days afterwards, Darryl returned to finish the installation. He turned to set up the router and… nothing. In the end it turned out to be a problem with the router itself. Luckily Darryl had a spare in his car, and once installed, we were up and running! I haven’t had the chance to spend any time with my new high-speed connection, and I am really looking forward to checking out the capabilities of having a T1 at home. Ken Camp and PhoneBoy have already posted their initial experiences, complete with speed tests. 

This week at the Communications Developer Conference, I had the opportunity to catch up with Ken Osowski, vice president of marketing and product management at Marlborough, MA-based, Pactolus, Inc. Pactolus is a leading developer of feature-rich, carrier-ready IP voice services for converged TDM/IP and VoIP networks. The company’s suite of SIPware services and SIP-based RapidFLEX service delivery platform are designed to reduce the cost and time-to-market required to launch new subscriber services. Here’s what Osowski had to say regarding the opportunities facing developers today. “When the company launched in 1999, H.323 was still the rage, and we adopted SIP throughout our product line. Those were very early days, and what we’re seeing finally is just an all-out movement to SIP. “Developers are looking for fast robust ways to develop applications around SIP protocol.” Osowski continued, “We have been selling traditionally to service providers and what we are seeing is a channel develop for applications; both as resellers to service providers and also resellers to enterprise and hospitality and a number of other marketplaces, which is actually. This is being borne out by what we are seeing here at the show. It’s the people who have been reselling traditional PBXs or they started reselling IP PBXs, but now they want to own the application as a reseller. “In fact this might be the first opportunity for them to do that. “One fundamental change that developers are recognizing here at the Communications Developer Conference is that the software and the application development environment are totally separate from the hardware. What this allows the developer to do is make choices.” I asked Osowski to explain a bit about what SIPdev.org is and what it means for developers. “SIP dev.org reflects several of the components needed at the application layer. It includes the service creation environment the application server and the media server. There is no real definition in the industry of what a service delivery platform is, although several analysts have tried. Suffice it to say we probably have the most complete set of components that represent that. “In a lot of cases you have service delivery platforms without service creation. You might have application servers without media servers. In some cases you’ll find hardware media servers with application servers mixed in. “So there are all kinds of combinations. We are doing it on a pure software basis, all of which is downloadable from SIP dev.org. I was curious to find out what we might see from Pactolus in the days and weeks and months ahead. Osowski shared the following. “Well definitely you’ll see us augmenting SIP dev.org. I wouldn’t be surprised to see us putting up our software development kit, which allows people to extend the SCE and the application server on their own, with some open source opportunities for our objects that go into that, so that people cold actually write their own protocols in to it or API interfaces for legacy protocols. “This would allow people to add what they need, if there was some special vertical market that they were going after and we didn’t supply that interface in the SCE or the application server. “We’ll also likely see more reference applications.”

Fonality’s Kerry Garrison, senior product manager, trixbox, addressed the assembled crowd of developers at the Communications Developer Conference on Wednesday afternoon. In a speech entitled “Considering Open Source?” Garrison presented an overview of the open source movement and suggested to developers that they need to do their homework and decide whether open source is right for them. Garrison delved into a bit of the history of open source, and it turns out that open source is not new by any means. Garrison gave several examples: 

• We have been trading code since the very first computers, he said.
• There was a time when we would order code from a catalog.
• Magazines had source code available through barcodes.
• USENET was a wealth of source code.

 Of course one of the hallmarks of open source is that once a project reaches a certain critical mass, it can become a disruptive force. Garrison provided several examples of the more well-known disruptive open source projects: 

• Linux – Very successful in the operating system wars (ubuntu on the desktop?)
• mySQL – took on big database installs, and has had success
• Asterisk/trixbox – big success story in the PBX/telephony space.

 Garrison pointed out several advantages as well as disadvantages of open source software, and posed the following question: “Where can this go?” He believes that developers will face a choice between commercial and noncommercial opportunities. As a project matures, Garrison feels a commercial angle is usually appropriate to support the user base. As for advice to developers considering an open source project, Garrison told the audience to ask questions, and find out if the project is right for them. 

• If you want to work on an OS project, make sure you are comfortable with the team.
• Is there a project roadmap?
• Does the project get updated on a regular basis?
• Is there good code control?
• Do your homework – stay on top of trends and developments.

 Finally, Garrison suggested that developers do some soul searching. Should your project be open source? It all depends on your needs, he said. Do you want help? Are there elements you cannot do yourself? Are you comfortable dealing with remote developers Weighing the pros and cons, garrison conclude by telling the audience, that, “Open source can be rewarding. It presents an opportunity to work on larger projects than you could do on your own.” 

Inter-Tel Inc. shareholders enjoyed watching their stock rise to a 52-week high today, closing up $1.34 at $26.90. According to published reports, Inter-tel said it had received a letter from Vector Capital Corp.  expressing an interest in buying the company in a cash offer of $26.50 per share, which puts the value of the  offer at about $715.8 million. As was reported earlier by TMCnet, Inter-Tel already has an agreement with Mitel Networks Corp. and Arsenal Acquisition Corp., which agreed to buy it for $25.60 per share in cash.The current reported offer represents a premium of approximately $23 million over the Mitel-led bid. Today, Inter-Tel said its special committee had determined that Vector Capital’s bid was reasonably likely to lead to a superior proposal, and that they have notified Mitel of the committee’s decision to engage in talks with Vector Capital.

Rich Tehrani offers his take on the news here.   

A last-minute replacement for Vish Nandall, Nortel’s Michael Thomas delivered a keynote presentation titled Wireless Service Providers (WiSPs) and Application Service Providers (ASPs) Partnering for Mobile Internet Applications. Thomas asked the audience, “Why should ASPs partner with Wireless ISPs (WiSPs)?” Developers have been faced with a series of challenges when it comes to creating applications for the wireless space. For one thing, wireless networks traditionally featured lower bandwidth relative to fixed Internet. As bandwidth increases, there is an opportunity to create applications to run over wireless broadband networks. Thomas discussed other historical impediments, including: 

• Unfriendly handset ergonomics;
• Difficulty in obtaining and viewing content
• A lack of mobile content development guidelines, which hinders usability and deters content development

 On the positive side, groups such as the W3C are making moves, addressing the mobile device and development space by providing a series of best practices and mobile device descriptions. A fragmented market limits the market scope for developers, by giving them less to shoot at, and as such, reduces the developer’s incentive to create applications. The increasing amount of broadband is a mitigating factor. Thomas also mentioned that he believes that the walled gardens are crumbling as carriers like Sprint announce more openness. So, there is a huge demand being forecast for enterprise mobile applications coupled with communications. But Thomas warned that best effort VoIP is not good enough for mobile customers, and only a WiSP can deliver consistently “quality” of voice. Some of the other trends that are creating opportunities for developers are

• Increased desire for personalization of user services;
• Gen “Y” social networking, and Multiplayer Multimedia Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) are all looking to take advantage of the latest innovations;
• Seamless service across all devices with content/application adaptation per device/place/time/role, etc…

 Thomas reiterated, “Broadband decouples applications from access, and broadband enables the opportunity to create newer richer multimedia applications.” The last trend Thomas touched on was IMS. “This is a whole new opportunity to develop applications,” he said. In the end, WiSPs need ASPs to create innovative applications and in order to compete. Developers need to be cognizant of creating applications designed for handsets and delivered with the goal of expedited time to market. Thomas concluded by stating that collaborating with WiSPs can open market segments for some ASPs and improve market share for others.