Irwin Lazar's "Real-Time" Blog

VoiceCon is NEXT WEEK!!

VoiceCon 2005 takes place next week in Orlando, FL.  I will be participating in the following sessions on Tuesday, February 8th:

• VoiceCon Great Debate: "One Vendor or More" featuring Phil Edholm of Nortel and Rick Moran of Cisco debating the topic of single vs. multi-vendor strategies for voice/data convergence.  I will be participating as one of the panelists asking questions of the debaters.
• Update on on Presence: I will be moderating a panel discussion featuring Cullen Jennings of Cisco, Timothy Miller of Siemens, and Stephen Beamish of Mitel on the future of presence-based services
• SIP Status and Prospects: I will be presenting an overview of SIP issues and trends and participating in a panel discussion with Carl Baptiste of Avaya and Ed Simnett of Microsoft

In addition, my colleague Mark Cortner, who focuses on VoIP and real-time communications strategies as one of our Senior Consultants here at Burton Group, will be moderating a session on Wednesday, Februray 9th entitled "Is Your Data Network Ready for Voice? Part 1: Design and Assessment".  I hope to see many of you at the event.

AT&T / SBC

Of course the "hot" (and that would be a tremendous understatement) topic of the day is the news that SBC is acquiring AT&T.  An acquisition of AT&T by a baby-bell has been a forgone conclusion for at least the last two years, but I think that the news that it is SBC and not Verizon or BellSouth doing the buying comes as a bit of surprise to industry watchers.

Om Malik and several others have been doing a terrific job following the story and its likely impact on the telecom industry, but what would a blog about telecom be without further comments on this news.

For the last few years AT&T has been transitioning itself to a company focused on enterprise customers (AT&T CallVantage not withstanding).  AT&T is still arguably the dominant provider for global WAN services among enterprises, having gained tremendously from MCI's & Global Crossing's problems and the aborted Sprint acquisition by Worldcom a few years back.  SBC's move is a good thing for AT&T's current customers, it helps to stabilize the organization and it gives the former AT&T a firm financial footing to move forward with its aggressive plans to modernize its infrastructure around an IP/MPLS core, as well as deliver new value added services in the areas of voice and security.  It looks like SBC intends to keep the AT&T name, which is wise.  There aren't very many companies in the world with the name recognition of AT&T, especially in the enterprise arena.

From a VoIP perspective, my best guess is that this acquisition sets the stage for AT&T to begin to offer a global hosted IP centrex services, something that is currently lacking among service providers.  SBC has been a leader in the IP Centrex space and their influence should help AT&T move forward to leverage its customer base to deliver value added services based on VoIP.

Looking forward, I think we'll see this move spur significant changes in the global telecom arena as the race for regional telcos to acquire global WAN services providers begins.  There are already rumblings that France Telecom will acquire Equant.  It is almost certain that someone will buy MCI fairly soon, with BellSouth, Verizon and Sprint being the leading candidates.  Even smaller players with a global footprint such as Global Crossing, Virtela, and Savvis might become increasingly attractive acquisition targets for larger regional telcos concerned about being a player in the enterprise WAN space

For enterprises, the long awaited merger & acquisition activity should be a positive development.  Enterprises have been wary of of making long-term commitments to service providers due to the perceived instability in the marketplace.

The Sharks Are Circling Around L3

Rich Tehrani writes

Volo Chases Level 3: "Volo Communications has been making quite a splash lately. Most recently they announced they are going after Level 3 customers. Volo is a lot smaller than Level 3. They can't afford to advertise on TV like Level 3 can."

Someone will make a killing in the next few years buying up the assets (and customers) of failed VoIP providers for pennies on the dollar.

SBC, AT&T in Merger Talks?

Pointer to Om Malik on Broadband which has been covering this story quite closely.

Level 3 Drops 3Tone

Credit Andy Abramson for getting the scoop on this one:

Seems My Sources Are Right On The Money About Level3

Despite all the hype surrounding hosted VoIP services, the bottom line is that there still isn't a profitable business model. With Level 3 dropping 3Tone one has to wonder if that will slow the push from other carriers to bring their services to market.

McDonald's: Want VOIP with That?

E-Week has an article describing McDonald's initial pilot of a system that would use VoIP to enable drive-through order takers to be remotely located. In theory this would free up staff inside the store from having to take orders, provide more efficient service, and thus hopefully reduce operating costs while increasing revenue.

See:

McDonald's: Want VOIP with That?:
"The fast-food giant is experimenting with VOIP-enabled drive-throughs staffed through distant call centers."

There are obvious benefits to such a system from an operating cost perspective, but also from a customer satisfaction point of view. I would envision that customers would be given the opportunity to choose the language they wish to use to place their order, thus overcoming language barriers that exist in many parts of the country today. In addition, by centralizing such a system McDonalds could ensure that promotions are offered, standards are followed, and order takers are adequately trained. In addition, it should allow them to do a far easier job of generating sales data. I would imagine that inventory systems would be tied into the system so that the order taker could be aware of in-store outages as well.

Microsoft LCS: Everyone climb aboard

From Steve Taylor & Larry Hettick's Network World on Convergence Newsletter:

Telecom companies converge on Microsoft.

Major points from the article include announcements by both Siemens and Alcatel to work closely to integrate their telephony offerings with Microsoft's forthcoming "Istanbul" rich media client. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. :-)

WiFi vs. Cell or WiFi + Cell?

Following up on the Ford announcement, here is a detailed examination of the cell vs. WiFi phone debate along with some predictions of how the technologies will evolve.

TMCnet.COM: WiFi vs. Cell or WiFi + Cell?

Ford to cut cord on 8,000 phones

From Network World:

Ford to cut cord on 8,000 phones:
"Ford is expected to announce today that it is replacing the traditional wireline phones of 8,000 employees in its product development department with wireless phones from Sprint."

This is a pretty bold move by Ford, especially since the phones will be cellular, not WiFi, and that means they will operate separately from their Cisco VoIP network though the article notes that the long range plan is for integration of both networks (which means that they will need to get Sprint and SBC to work together).

As mentioned in the article, current tools for cellular phone integration are lacking though, Orative has a nice solution for "semi-smart" and smart phones that enables fairly nice integration with the current telephony infrastructure, but service provider offerings are sparse. It will be interesting to see if Ford's move to support cellular users represents a trend or if enterprises will wait until large-scale WiFi phones are ready for prime-time.

IBM plays up Workplace suite

My colleague Peter O'Kelly is desperately trying to make his way to Lotusphere from snowed-in Boston, and I'm sure he'll be blogging on the event if he can get there tonight, but I wanted to share one announcement about IBM's planned enhancements to Lotus Team Workplace.

From CNET News: IBM plays up Workplace suite

Still no news on plans to embed real-time communication capabilities ala Microsoft "Istanbul".