SP4 Service Provider Round Table Double Session State of the Industry

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SP-4 - Service Provider Round Table Double
Session State of the Industry
Frank Estes festes_at_transnexus.com 1.540.220.0309
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State of the Industry

• Telecom Zombies
• Softswitches
• Hey what about retail?
• I didnt make it in Telecom, I am going to try
  and hype wireless!
• Routing for dummies
• Will the real SIP stand up!
• Kiss

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State of the Industry (cont)
Telecom Zombies, the living dead, A new phrase
coined by the Washington Post. Filed Chapter
11 after the bubble, former executives being
investigated, same old business model with the
latest gadgets, no creativity, no margins, and
waiting to die again. Softswitches, PSTN
switches are aging and the big 5 (Nortel,
Ericsson, Alcatel, Lucent, Cisco) are promoting
the softswitch as a replacement. Ideal for
RBOCs LECs and major IXCs. Beware feature sets
in development and what really is a softswitch.
For IP carriers, a step backwards. Hey, What
about retail?, the IXCs and LECs have finally
realized the game is to move high margin retail
traffic into their low cost environments. The
big carriers want to replicate Vonage and bring
any and all retail traffic into their low cost
networks.
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State of the Industry (cont)
I didnt make it in Telecom, I am going to try
and hype wireless!, many of the hot IP vendors
with SIP proxies, border controllers, mega
switches were not successful in generating
revenue, but really good promote HYPE! Their
strategies are retooled and seeking to create
buzz in the wireless market (Did someone
say carpet bagger?). Routing for dummies,
Multiple systems, protocols, route plans, and
scale limitations have made routing important in
todays telecom environment. What is good inside
the domain will not work outside the domain.
Simple, easy to use Routing engines that can work
with multiple protocols, destinations and
devices will become the popular new feature in
late 2004.
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State of the Industry (cont)
Will the real SIP stand up!, SIP has been touted
as the protocol of the future, yet, it is moving
slowly. SIP vendors are building applications for
conferencing, voice, video and other neat and
cool features. However, these applications
are not interoperable, billing has not been
resolved, and a simple, usable SIP proxy is
non-existent. Microsoft has its own strategy, the
carriers want to reach out to the SIP consumer,
and new SIP ITSPs are forming minor islands of
users. Sounds like H323 all over again. Kiss,
Keep it simple stupid!