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VoiceCon eNews for the week of January 11, 2010

Weekly opinions and analysis of the trends in
enterprise communications and technologies.
http://enews.voicecon.com/

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New Regulatory Battles on the Horizon

Regulation of the U.S.’s communications infrastructure has
always lagged far behind technology developments. The
Communications Act of 1934 was the cornerstone of our
federal regulatory regime until 1996, though it probably
didn’t escape even the politicians’ notice that a lot of
things changed about technology during that period. We may
now be reaching another inflection point, where regulators
and/or legislators are forced to take on extremely complex
legal and technical challenges because everybody - but
especially the entrenched interests in the industry - feel
they can no longer tolerate the status quo.

AT&T lit the fuse with an end-of-year FCC filing asking the
Commission to embark on a process whose intended culmination
would be the “retiring” of the Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN). We’ve covered this on No Jitter here, here,
and here. This filing asked the FCC to issue a Notice of
Proposed Rulemaking on the subject, which is the step that
would kick off any formal process - so these documents
weren’t necessarily the place for AT&T to get into a lot of
detail about what exactly they want to do with their PSTN
assets and when. But if the FCC issues the Notice AT&T seeks,
we can expect AT&T, and everyone else, to jump in with lengthy
descriptions of exactly they think should (or shouldn’t)
happen, on what timetable.

No Jitter: AT&T’s Call to Sunset the PSTN>>
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/atts_call_to_su.html
 

There are a ton of issues that have to be addressed, and Gary
Audin, one of our regulars, has started working on a feature
article for No Jitter that will highlight some of them -
starting with the question of exactly what network elements
AT&T plans to retire, what will happen to people who only need
or want Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS), and what role the
state public utility commissions (PUCs) will play in this drama.

It’s clear from the filing that AT&T’s aims are anything but
altruistic. The bottom line is…well, it’s the bottom line.
AT&T is spending a lot of money delivering POTS to people whose
POTS AT&T would rather not be bothered with, when it could use
the money it spends providing that service, to…well, what
they would use it for, I’m not really sure. They talk in their
filing about modernizing their infrastructure, but they need to
do that anyway if they want to have any customers left in a
few years, so ultimately this has as much to with dividends as
it does dialtone.

Here’s a separate but peripherally related item: Michael
Finneran has a blog on No Jitter about MagicJack, the company
whose commercials you see in between Vince the Slap Chop guy
and those inane “male enhancement” ads. Turns out, the MagicJack
folks are branching out from landline toll arbitrage to cellular
arbitrage, in a way that I can’t believe will withstand
regulatory scrutiny. According to Michael, MagicJack is basically
selling a product that uses licensed cellular frequencies, and
claims it can do so without the licensees’
(i.e., cellular carriers’) permission, because the product is
used inside people’s homes.

No Jitter: MagicJack Works Their Magic in Femtocells>>
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/magicjack_works.html

I don’t see how that’s going to fly, but whenever you see a
cutely named telecom product - think Hush-a-Phone - what you’ve
got is somebody who’s sharper and faster than the telecom
monopolists or duopolists, coming up with a product that hits
the carriers where they live; and so the carriers immediately
release the hounds, who file suits that wind up bearing awesome
names like “Hush-a-Phone v. United States.” When carriers start
going to court against products like this, they may have the
law on their side, but the customers are often another matter.

Hush-A-Phone v. United States>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-a-Phone_v._United_States

So in ways big (AT&T’s PSTN-sunset filing) and small
(MagicJack’s femtocell-killer), we may be entering the next era
of regulatory battles.
Eric Krapf
Editor & Lead Blogger, NoJitter.com
VoiceCon Program Chair
 

 
——————————
This issue is sponsored  by VoiceCon Orlando 2010
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————————————————–
This Week’s UC Weekly - The UCstrategies.com team
————————————————–

UC in 2009: How’d We Do?

Last year at this time I wrote about my wish list for UC in 2009. Let’s
see how we did:

1. Channel training and incentives for UC: A year ago the channel needed
to be incentivized to go beyond selling switches to selling UC solutions,
especially those that integrate with business processes and applications,
and most VARs were still leading with IP Telephony rather than UC. This
hasn’t changed much, especially in light of the poor economy. To make
things worse, several vendors took away incentives for selling UC licenses
by bundling UC functions with core PBXs. I don’t expect much of a change
in 2010, although some vendors are working with their channel partners to
assess their UC sales readiness and capabilities, which will help identify
areas of strengths and weakness and where more work is needed. Grade: C.

2. Develop and provide ROI tools that demonstrate how UC will impact the
bottom line.

Read More>>
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/uc_in_2009_howd.html

=======================
On No Jitter This Week
=======================

* Rating the Vendors: TEQConsult Group’s Consultant Survey
http://www.nojitter.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222300076

* Siemens, Shared Technologies Make Deal
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/siemens_shared.html

* MagicJack Works Their Magic in Femtocells
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/magicjack_works.html

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Register today and get VIP Special pricing
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VoiceCon TV
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Watch keynotes and event videos from VoiceCon San Francisco >>
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From The Blog 
==================

* “Unified Communications” Is Neither Unified nor Communications.
Discuss.
http://blog.voicecon.com/2009/10/06/unified-communication-is-neither-unified-nor-communications-discuss/

*  The VoiceCon Countdown
http://blog.voicecon.com/2009/08/08/93/

* VoiceCon Wins!
http://blog.voicecon.com/2009/07/21/88/

More articles >>
http://blog.voicecon.com/

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* 10 Guiding Principles of Reducing Network Costs:
http://nojitter.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=454751

* AVST-Unimax
http://nojitter.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=454082

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