1984 SBC was split from AT&T ans started to merge baby. Staret local phone service in 13 stgates.
1999 Aquire Comcast Celleus
2001 establish Cigular wireless with BellSouth
2004 Aquired AT&T Wireless from AT&T become no.1 mobile operator.
2005 Aquired AT&T with 15 billion USD. and use AT&T as their name.
2006 Aquired Bellesouth with 67 billion USD.
relative
1997 Bell Altantic aquired Nynex.
2000 June QWest aquired US West.
2000 July Bell Atlantic merge with GTE with new name Verison.
2000 Oct AT&T sell Cable operator to Comcast.
2004 Dec Sprint & Nextel merge with new name Nextel Sprint.
Qwest Communication start by Philip Anschutz who is owner of Southern Pacific Railroad. Its core business is backbone service with fiber optical along with railroad. 1998 Southern Pacific Railroad merge with Union Pacific Railroad. QWest aquired LCI and start telecomm market. It aquired US West from baby Bell.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Friday, November 16, 2007
LNP (Local Number Portability) rules apply to interconnected VoIP providers just like they do to conventional wireline and wireless telecom carriers
If you need proof that VoIP is becoming mainstream, just look to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The agency issued an order on October 31 stating that LNP (Local Number Portability) rules apply to interconnected VoIP providers just like they do to conventional wireline and wireless telecom carriers. The commission also took steps to make sure that number porting in general goes more smoothly that it has in the past. The combined moves make clear that, from a services standpoint, the FCC sees VoIP as just another phone business.
VoIP 將漸漸邁向主流通訊
如果你想知道VoIP會不會是主流通訊你只需要從FCC對VoIP的處理便可以知道.FCC於10/31開始將LNP(區域可攜式電話號碼)應用在VoIP上,也就是說VoIP不只可以得到電話號碼,更可以和有線或手機電話號碼換機換服務商不換號.委員會也會去管理以便號碼轉換很順利.從此可以知道FCC認為VoIP就和手機或有線電話一樣的通訊產業.
VoIP 將漸漸邁向主流通訊
如果你想知道VoIP會不會是主流通訊你只需要從FCC對VoIP的處理便可以知道.FCC於10/31開始將LNP(區域可攜式電話號碼)應用在VoIP上,也就是說VoIP不只可以得到電話號碼,更可以和有線或手機電話號碼換機換服務商不換號.委員會也會去管理以便號碼轉換很順利.從此可以知道FCC認為VoIP就和手機或有線電話一樣的通訊產業.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
2006 fast growth broadband
At a time when broadband is quickly reaching saturation point in most developed markets, less developed markets across the globe continue to exhibit extremely high levels of growth. Within these markets there are a number of common factors, but there are also some unique market characteristics that are shaping the way broadband and future services are adopted.
The top ten markets:
• Greece
• Indonesia
• India
• Ireland
• Russia
• Thailand
• The Philippines
• Turkey
• Ukraine
• Vietnam
The top ten fastest-growing markets in 2006 include countries from Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe and the Middle East & Africa (MEA), but they also include those from Western Europe.
The top ten markets:
• Greece
• Indonesia
• India
• Ireland
• Russia
• Thailand
• The Philippines
• Turkey
• Ukraine
• Vietnam
The top ten fastest-growing markets in 2006 include countries from Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe and the Middle East & Africa (MEA), but they also include those from Western Europe.
Monday, October 08, 2007
MTube微網機 全球最小
MTube微網機 全球最小
【經濟日報╱記者李立達／台北報導】 2007.10.09 02:30 am
行政院科技顧問組昨（8）日發表新世代手持產品「MTube微網機」，大小僅8.5公分見方，厚度僅2公分，號稱全球體積最小，具備筆記型電腦、WiMAX無線寬頻通訊功能的手持式產品。
研究計畫主持人、行政院科技顧問組召集人林逢慶指出，此產品將於六個月內完成，2009年授權廠商量產。
由於產品具備輕薄短小及強大的行動通訊功能，昨天發表會中，包括廣達、華碩、大同等電腦廠商，均到場展現濃厚興趣。
行政院科技顧問組表示，此產品由科技顧問孔祥重主持，2006年9月開始，委由工研院、資策會開始研發，並結合包括威盛電子、鈺程及韓系廠商GCT等技術支援，並提供相關零組件。其中威盛提供CPU、鈺程負責WiMAX模組、GCT負責WiMAX晶片、統寶負責LCD面板等。
孔祥重表示，MTube具備六項功能，堪稱全球第一，包括採用x86，1GHz的處理器；具備2.8吋觸控螢幕，在移動中可進行全速率（30fps）及高解析度顯示；可支援電腦等級的全功能瀏覽器；支援所有主要媒體格式；可利用WiMAX進行移動式個人寬頻廣播。
MTube重量僅150公克，擁有8G硬碟，並可持續擴充，當現場媒體詢問孔祥重對UMPC的看法，他說，「UMPC像塊石頭」，他並不看好其市場性。市售的UMPC重量約700公克到1,000公克間。
科顧組表示，MTube不但支援多媒體格式，並可預先下載及採離線模式使用。目前智慧型手機並無法操作全功能瀏覽器，包括iPhone也僅支援部分網站，但MTube系統，可瀏覽2,000多個營運網站，並且可採用離線操作，待連線恢復後將自動與伺服器同步，完成工作。
科顧組指出，MTube採用最重工作量情況下，電力可支持四小時，未來將朝高功率低耗能等方向持續改善。
昨天展示為原形機，預定半年後推出最終版本，屆時上市售價預定在1萬元以內。
【經濟日報╱記者李立達／台北報導】 2007.10.09 02:30 am
行政院科技顧問組昨（8）日發表新世代手持產品「MTube微網機」，大小僅8.5公分見方，厚度僅2公分，號稱全球體積最小，具備筆記型電腦、WiMAX無線寬頻通訊功能的手持式產品。
研究計畫主持人、行政院科技顧問組召集人林逢慶指出，此產品將於六個月內完成，2009年授權廠商量產。
由於產品具備輕薄短小及強大的行動通訊功能，昨天發表會中，包括廣達、華碩、大同等電腦廠商，均到場展現濃厚興趣。
行政院科技顧問組表示，此產品由科技顧問孔祥重主持，2006年9月開始，委由工研院、資策會開始研發，並結合包括威盛電子、鈺程及韓系廠商GCT等技術支援，並提供相關零組件。其中威盛提供CPU、鈺程負責WiMAX模組、GCT負責WiMAX晶片、統寶負責LCD面板等。
孔祥重表示，MTube具備六項功能，堪稱全球第一，包括採用x86，1GHz的處理器；具備2.8吋觸控螢幕，在移動中可進行全速率（30fps）及高解析度顯示；可支援電腦等級的全功能瀏覽器；支援所有主要媒體格式；可利用WiMAX進行移動式個人寬頻廣播。
MTube重量僅150公克，擁有8G硬碟，並可持續擴充，當現場媒體詢問孔祥重對UMPC的看法，他說，「UMPC像塊石頭」，他並不看好其市場性。市售的UMPC重量約700公克到1,000公克間。
科顧組表示，MTube不但支援多媒體格式，並可預先下載及採離線模式使用。目前智慧型手機並無法操作全功能瀏覽器，包括iPhone也僅支援部分網站，但MTube系統，可瀏覽2,000多個營運網站，並且可採用離線操作，待連線恢復後將自動與伺服器同步，完成工作。
科顧組指出，MTube採用最重工作量情況下，電力可支持四小時，未來將朝高功率低耗能等方向持續改善。
昨天展示為原形機，預定半年後推出最終版本，屆時上市售價預定在1萬元以內。
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Microsoft Unveils Pricing for Small Biz VoIP System
By Jennifer Hagendorf Follett, CMP Channel
9:00 Oct 02, 2007
While solution providers anxiously await the release of Microsoft's unified communications product portfolio later this month, the company in the meantime is making strides to bring its small business VoIP wares to market.
Microsoft on Tuesday said it has released its Response Point phone system to manufacturing, meaning that OEM partners D-Link and Quanta Computer will soon have general availability for products based on the software. Microsoft also said both partners will be pricing their products below $3,000.
Microsoft joins vendors such as 3Com, Cisco Systems and Digium in recently targeting VoIP systems at small businesses.
The systems, which include VoIP call processing and features such as voicemail, call forwarding and integration with Microsoft Outlook, are targeted at small-business customers with up to 50 users, though they will scale higher, said Jeff Smith, senior product manager at Microsoft, Redmond, Wash.
Microsoft's small business VoIP move comes two weeks ahead of the planned launch of Microsoft's Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 and other communications products at a launch event in San Francisco on October 16. Smith noted that Response Point systems were built from the ground up as small business solutions and are not designed to work as branch office systems off of larger OCS deployments.
Two OEM partners, D-Link and Quanta, are preparing to ship product bundles within the next few months that package Microsoft software with their base hardware units, gateways and phones.
Systems based on Response Point software will be available to solution providers via the distributors working with D-Link and Quanta, including D&H Distributing, Ingram Micro, Synnex, Tech Data and several others.
"I've looked into Response Point, and it looks like a compelling solution for small businesses who just want basic PBX features like dial tone and voice mail," said Travis Fisher, executive vice president at Inacom Information Systems, Salisbury, Md., via e-mail. "They say that it will support up to 100 extensions, but my guess is that businesses with 40-plus users will be looking for a more sophisticated solution [with] things like toll bypass, screen pops, SIP compatibility, custom apps on the phone, etc."
D-Link, Fountain Valley, Calif., plans to make its VoiceCenter phone system available during the fourth quarter. A starter pack, which includes a base unit, analog telephone adapter (ATA) and five phones, will be priced at $2,999. Additional phones will cost $149.
Taiwan-based Quanta will begin taking pre-orders for its Syspine system on Oct. 5. A package that includes a base unit with built-in ATA and secure gateway as well as four phones will cost approximately $2,500. Additional phones will cost $159 each.
Microsoft had also named Uniden America, Ft. Worth, Texas, as an OEM partner in March when it first introduced the product line, but Uniden has decided not to ship product this year, Smith said.
Smith stopped short of saying that Uniden America had pulled out as an OEM partner. "We continue to work with them and are positive about our relationship overall," Smith said.
Meanwhile, communications networking vendor Aastra Technologies, Ontario, Canada, has signed on as Microsoft's newest hardware partner with plans to ship Response Point-based phone systems with wireless handsets next year, Smith said.
In addition, Microsoft Financing will be available for all Response Point systems, enabling customers to pay for all associated software, hardware and installation fees over a three-year period, Smith said.
Microsoft expects to have about 1,000 solution providers trained on Response Point by the time products begin shipping. D-Link and Quanta are also training channel partners, Smith said.
Response Point is comprised of three software pieces: the call processing software that runs on the base unit; Response Point Administrator, a management console for monitoring system health and making moves, adds and changes; and Response Point Assistant software, a client application for Windows PCs that enables on-screen call notification.
Kevin McLaughlin contributed to this story.
9:00 Oct 02, 2007
While solution providers anxiously await the release of Microsoft's unified communications product portfolio later this month, the company in the meantime is making strides to bring its small business VoIP wares to market.
Microsoft on Tuesday said it has released its Response Point phone system to manufacturing, meaning that OEM partners D-Link and Quanta Computer will soon have general availability for products based on the software. Microsoft also said both partners will be pricing their products below $3,000.
Microsoft joins vendors such as 3Com, Cisco Systems and Digium in recently targeting VoIP systems at small businesses.
The systems, which include VoIP call processing and features such as voicemail, call forwarding and integration with Microsoft Outlook, are targeted at small-business customers with up to 50 users, though they will scale higher, said Jeff Smith, senior product manager at Microsoft, Redmond, Wash.
Microsoft's small business VoIP move comes two weeks ahead of the planned launch of Microsoft's Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 and other communications products at a launch event in San Francisco on October 16. Smith noted that Response Point systems were built from the ground up as small business solutions and are not designed to work as branch office systems off of larger OCS deployments.
Two OEM partners, D-Link and Quanta, are preparing to ship product bundles within the next few months that package Microsoft software with their base hardware units, gateways and phones.
Systems based on Response Point software will be available to solution providers via the distributors working with D-Link and Quanta, including D&H Distributing, Ingram Micro, Synnex, Tech Data and several others.
"I've looked into Response Point, and it looks like a compelling solution for small businesses who just want basic PBX features like dial tone and voice mail," said Travis Fisher, executive vice president at Inacom Information Systems, Salisbury, Md., via e-mail. "They say that it will support up to 100 extensions, but my guess is that businesses with 40-plus users will be looking for a more sophisticated solution [with] things like toll bypass, screen pops, SIP compatibility, custom apps on the phone, etc."
D-Link, Fountain Valley, Calif., plans to make its VoiceCenter phone system available during the fourth quarter. A starter pack, which includes a base unit, analog telephone adapter (ATA) and five phones, will be priced at $2,999. Additional phones will cost $149.
Taiwan-based Quanta will begin taking pre-orders for its Syspine system on Oct. 5. A package that includes a base unit with built-in ATA and secure gateway as well as four phones will cost approximately $2,500. Additional phones will cost $159 each.
Microsoft had also named Uniden America, Ft. Worth, Texas, as an OEM partner in March when it first introduced the product line, but Uniden has decided not to ship product this year, Smith said.
Smith stopped short of saying that Uniden America had pulled out as an OEM partner. "We continue to work with them and are positive about our relationship overall," Smith said.
Meanwhile, communications networking vendor Aastra Technologies, Ontario, Canada, has signed on as Microsoft's newest hardware partner with plans to ship Response Point-based phone systems with wireless handsets next year, Smith said.
In addition, Microsoft Financing will be available for all Response Point systems, enabling customers to pay for all associated software, hardware and installation fees over a three-year period, Smith said.
Microsoft expects to have about 1,000 solution providers trained on Response Point by the time products begin shipping. D-Link and Quanta are also training channel partners, Smith said.
Response Point is comprised of three software pieces: the call processing software that runs on the base unit; Response Point Administrator, a management console for monitoring system health and making moves, adds and changes; and Response Point Assistant software, a client application for Windows PCs that enables on-screen call notification.
Kevin McLaughlin contributed to this story.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
家用無繩電話即將跨入互聯網時代
家用無繩電話即將跨入互聯網時代
現有的家用DECT無繩電話可通過加撥17909或其它特殊號碼打IP長途電話，但其實它算不上真正的IP電話，因為它不能打本地IP電話，它只是將傳統長途電話線路改走互聯網罷了，本地線路仍然走的是傳統電話切換式網路。但隨著去年底DECT Forum正式對外宣佈新的全球寬頻家庭聯網技術CAT-iq，家用無繩電話產品也終於走進了互聯網時代。
CAT-iq融合了寬頻互聯網和成熟可靠的DECT電話技術，它可以為整個家庭提供有QoS保證的聲音服務。基於該技術的全新設計的無繩電話將可以直接連接到寬頻互聯網上，從而使得新一代無繩電話在進行VoIP通話時能擁有盡可能自然的聲音品質。新的CAT-iq器件還將使得喇叭擴音器的設計和性能可媲美昂貴的會議系統，而且沒有相應的高成本。
除此之外，CAT-iq技術的興起還將促進2大應用產品(智慧手機和家庭閘道)的更新換代。智慧手機將開始集成CAT-iq技術，以使得手機一進入家庭應用環境就從蜂窩通信系統自動切換到CAT-iq家用無繩電話系統進行VoIP通話、可視通話、互聯網流覽或email收發，以最大限度地節約消費成本。家庭閘道也將越來越多地集成CAT-iq介面，因為隨著家庭中PC、筆記型電腦、TV、音響、手機和無繩電話都開始產生上網需求，消費者必然希望有一種產品能夠自動集中管理上述這些設備的上網需求，而這產品就是現在人們逐漸開始瞭解的家庭閘道。
根據市場研究公司IDC的一份報告，到2009年，集成了CAT-iq技術的家庭閘道光在歐洲市場的發展潛力就將達到430億歐元。而且很明顯，未來連接到寬頻互聯網的所有家庭配備家庭閘道產品將是大勢所趨。可見其市場發展潛力之大。
現在已經有下一代家庭閘道供應商在其產品中實現了CAT-iq，而且這一發展也已得到了電信運營商和互聯網服務提供者的推動，不過，它們要求不同供應商開發的CAT-iq產品具備魯棒的互通性。為了滿足這一要求，DECT Forum目前正在考慮建立一個認證程式，以在應用層上確保CAT-iq通信服務的互通性。
CAT-iq是目前全球唯一的支援無線音樂和音訊應用的技術，它可以連接到互聯網以支援音訊流應用，CAT-iq標準將激發從事電話行業的設計工程師開發新一代針對無線家庭通信和娛樂的消費電子產品。例如，下一代家庭中的身歷聲播放系統將既可播放來自家庭中多媒體伺服器的音訊內容，也可通過家庭閘道直接接收和播放來自互聯網的音訊流。
CAT-iq技術還能使無繩電話和其它可擕式設備連接到新興的IMS網路(集成多媒體子系統)。具備這一能力的CAT-iq電話能夠訪問全球各地的黃頁和其它公共電話簿。而且，CAT-iq提供了到互聯網和IMS應用的通用介面，並提供了與新興Web 2.0應用的相容性。
“新的CAT-iq技術標準充分利用了迅猛蔓延擴散的全球互聯網路，推動室內無線通訊和娛樂產品進入一個新的發展時代。消費者、製造商和服務提供者都將受益于高性價比的CAT-iq產品，它們可提供互通性、易用性和突破性的新寬頻應用和功能。”DECT論壇董事長Erich Kamperschroer表示。
CAT-iq技術包含一系列profile，並將一波一波地推出。第一波CAT-iq產品將於今年年中推出，以下應用profile計畫在2009年前分批推出。1. 寬頻語音(具備基本互通性)：高性價比無繩電話，帶基本電話服務和最低限度的補充服務功能。2. 互聯網資料和音訊流：此類產品可以直接訪問互聯網，並提供像即時音訊流這樣的應用，它允許欣賞全球各種不同的互聯網無線電廣播服務。3. 寬頻語音(具備增強型互通性)：多功能無繩電話應用，帶更多的補充服務功能。4. 智能聯網：提供自動配置和自我管理功能，以使得消費者很容易對產品進行安裝和使用。
現有的家用DECT無繩電話可通過加撥17909或其它特殊號碼打IP長途電話，但其實它算不上真正的IP電話，因為它不能打本地IP電話，它只是將傳統長途電話線路改走互聯網罷了，本地線路仍然走的是傳統電話切換式網路。但隨著去年底DECT Forum正式對外宣佈新的全球寬頻家庭聯網技術CAT-iq，家用無繩電話產品也終於走進了互聯網時代。
CAT-iq融合了寬頻互聯網和成熟可靠的DECT電話技術，它可以為整個家庭提供有QoS保證的聲音服務。基於該技術的全新設計的無繩電話將可以直接連接到寬頻互聯網上，從而使得新一代無繩電話在進行VoIP通話時能擁有盡可能自然的聲音品質。新的CAT-iq器件還將使得喇叭擴音器的設計和性能可媲美昂貴的會議系統，而且沒有相應的高成本。
除此之外，CAT-iq技術的興起還將促進2大應用產品(智慧手機和家庭閘道)的更新換代。智慧手機將開始集成CAT-iq技術，以使得手機一進入家庭應用環境就從蜂窩通信系統自動切換到CAT-iq家用無繩電話系統進行VoIP通話、可視通話、互聯網流覽或email收發，以最大限度地節約消費成本。家庭閘道也將越來越多地集成CAT-iq介面，因為隨著家庭中PC、筆記型電腦、TV、音響、手機和無繩電話都開始產生上網需求，消費者必然希望有一種產品能夠自動集中管理上述這些設備的上網需求，而這產品就是現在人們逐漸開始瞭解的家庭閘道。
根據市場研究公司IDC的一份報告，到2009年，集成了CAT-iq技術的家庭閘道光在歐洲市場的發展潛力就將達到430億歐元。而且很明顯，未來連接到寬頻互聯網的所有家庭配備家庭閘道產品將是大勢所趨。可見其市場發展潛力之大。
現在已經有下一代家庭閘道供應商在其產品中實現了CAT-iq，而且這一發展也已得到了電信運營商和互聯網服務提供者的推動，不過，它們要求不同供應商開發的CAT-iq產品具備魯棒的互通性。為了滿足這一要求，DECT Forum目前正在考慮建立一個認證程式，以在應用層上確保CAT-iq通信服務的互通性。
CAT-iq是目前全球唯一的支援無線音樂和音訊應用的技術，它可以連接到互聯網以支援音訊流應用，CAT-iq標準將激發從事電話行業的設計工程師開發新一代針對無線家庭通信和娛樂的消費電子產品。例如，下一代家庭中的身歷聲播放系統將既可播放來自家庭中多媒體伺服器的音訊內容，也可通過家庭閘道直接接收和播放來自互聯網的音訊流。
CAT-iq技術還能使無繩電話和其它可擕式設備連接到新興的IMS網路(集成多媒體子系統)。具備這一能力的CAT-iq電話能夠訪問全球各地的黃頁和其它公共電話簿。而且，CAT-iq提供了到互聯網和IMS應用的通用介面，並提供了與新興Web 2.0應用的相容性。
“新的CAT-iq技術標準充分利用了迅猛蔓延擴散的全球互聯網路，推動室內無線通訊和娛樂產品進入一個新的發展時代。消費者、製造商和服務提供者都將受益于高性價比的CAT-iq產品，它們可提供互通性、易用性和突破性的新寬頻應用和功能。”DECT論壇董事長Erich Kamperschroer表示。
CAT-iq技術包含一系列profile，並將一波一波地推出。第一波CAT-iq產品將於今年年中推出，以下應用profile計畫在2009年前分批推出。1. 寬頻語音(具備基本互通性)：高性價比無繩電話，帶基本電話服務和最低限度的補充服務功能。2. 互聯網資料和音訊流：此類產品可以直接訪問互聯網，並提供像即時音訊流這樣的應用，它允許欣賞全球各種不同的互聯網無線電廣播服務。3. 寬頻語音(具備增強型互通性)：多功能無繩電話應用，帶更多的補充服務功能。4. 智能聯網：提供自動配置和自我管理功能，以使得消費者很容易對產品進行安裝和使用。
Wi-Fi手機前途看淡 CAT-iq手機將成熱點
Wi-Fi手機前途看淡 CAT-iq手機將成熱點
http://www.sina.com.cn 2007年06月29日 14:35 pconline太平洋電腦網
西門子英國家用及企業通信設備部門主任John Smitch近日接受媒體採訪時表示，提供僅具有Wi-Fi網路連接功能的手機產品將不被市場接受。
僅具有Wi-Fi網路連接功能的手機問世已經有兩年時間了，其最初定位為在具有Wi-Fi網路的環境下通過內置軟體連接Skype等互聯網電話服務提供者從而實現語音通話等功能。但由於具有蜂窩網和Wi-Fi連接功能的雙模手機不斷湧現，僅具有Wi-Fi網路連接功能的手機的前途黯淡。
Smith表示“我們曾盡最大努力把Wi-Fi手機打入市場，但其在市場上的表現遠沒有之前所預計的那樣好。晶片的售價和電池的容量決定了這種手機不能被大眾所接受。”Smith表示，現在的雙模手機已經成功解決了這個問題。
Smith預測，未來整合了3G和CAT-iq(互聯網和高品質先進無繩技術的簡稱)功能的手機將成為潮流。CAT-iq是最新版本的DECT(高級數位無繩通訊)標準。在DECT的語音功能中加入IP功能，將能夠提供高品質的語音服務。同時，由於該技術使用1.9GHz頻帶，所以不會像Wi-Fi和微波那樣共同使用2.4GHz頻帶從而造成混亂。
Smith表示“雖然CAT-iq是為家用電話所設計的，但由於其與UMTS(3G)網路的頻帶寬度一樣，因此很容易就可以研發出支援UMTS/CAT-iq雙網路的手機。”他預測，這種 雙模手機將於2012年問世。Smith認為雖然CAT-iq手機主要針對個人用戶，但其也可以在商務市場上分一份羹。特別是對於那些需要進行高品質語音會議的小企業使用者來說用處最大。Smith最後談到，西門子公司的首款整合了CAT-iq技術的產品將于未來的幾個月內上市銷售。
作者：Phoneme
http://www.sina.com.cn 2007年06月29日 14:35 pconline太平洋電腦網
西門子英國家用及企業通信設備部門主任John Smitch近日接受媒體採訪時表示，提供僅具有Wi-Fi網路連接功能的手機產品將不被市場接受。
僅具有Wi-Fi網路連接功能的手機問世已經有兩年時間了，其最初定位為在具有Wi-Fi網路的環境下通過內置軟體連接Skype等互聯網電話服務提供者從而實現語音通話等功能。但由於具有蜂窩網和Wi-Fi連接功能的雙模手機不斷湧現，僅具有Wi-Fi網路連接功能的手機的前途黯淡。
Smith表示“我們曾盡最大努力把Wi-Fi手機打入市場，但其在市場上的表現遠沒有之前所預計的那樣好。晶片的售價和電池的容量決定了這種手機不能被大眾所接受。”Smith表示，現在的雙模手機已經成功解決了這個問題。
Smith預測，未來整合了3G和CAT-iq(互聯網和高品質先進無繩技術的簡稱)功能的手機將成為潮流。CAT-iq是最新版本的DECT(高級數位無繩通訊)標準。在DECT的語音功能中加入IP功能，將能夠提供高品質的語音服務。同時，由於該技術使用1.9GHz頻帶，所以不會像Wi-Fi和微波那樣共同使用2.4GHz頻帶從而造成混亂。
Smith表示“雖然CAT-iq是為家用電話所設計的，但由於其與UMTS(3G)網路的頻帶寬度一樣，因此很容易就可以研發出支援UMTS/CAT-iq雙網路的手機。”他預測，這種 雙模手機將於2012年問世。Smith認為雖然CAT-iq手機主要針對個人用戶，但其也可以在商務市場上分一份羹。特別是對於那些需要進行高品質語音會議的小企業使用者來說用處最大。Smith最後談到，西門子公司的首款整合了CAT-iq技術的產品將于未來的幾個月內上市銷售。
作者：Phoneme
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
100 ranking of the VoIP service provider
VoIP Provider Ranking
9 Mutual Phone
10 VoIPJet
5 Buzzer (Canada)
6 VoIPGo (Canada)
7 Yahoo Voice
14 Viper
16 Gafachi
17 Teliax
18 Best
21 Axvoice
24 eFonica
27 viaTalk
28 CallontheNet
29 Voxee.com
32 inPhonex
33 Go2Cll
37 Talqer
38 DingoTel
39 VoIP.com
45 QuantumVoice
47 Click4NetPhone
49 GizmoProject
54 Rubicom
55 Packet8
58 StanaPhone
59 Voiceral
60 Lunaphone
63 ITP
64 sipTalk
68 GlobalTel
71 Lingo
72 DiGiLinear
73 Globalinx
74 OnyxConcept
75 ZingoTel
76 TerraCall
77 VoiceEclipse
78 ZiVVA
79 AT&T
80 SpectraVoice (Canada)
83 Vonage
84 Snaptel
85 MyPhoneCompany
86 TotalCall
87 BroadVoice
89 PCCall
96 Phoneopia
99 Soyo (Canada)
9 Mutual Phone
10 VoIPJet
5 Buzzer (Canada)
6 VoIPGo (Canada)
7 Yahoo Voice
14 Viper
16 Gafachi
17 Teliax
18 Best
21 Axvoice
24 eFonica
27 viaTalk
28 CallontheNet
29 Voxee.com
32 inPhonex
33 Go2Cll
37 Talqer
38 DingoTel
39 VoIP.com
45 QuantumVoice
47 Click4NetPhone
49 GizmoProject
54 Rubicom
55 Packet8
58 StanaPhone
59 Voiceral
60 Lunaphone
63 ITP
64 sipTalk
68 GlobalTel
71 Lingo
72 DiGiLinear
73 Globalinx
74 OnyxConcept
75 ZingoTel
76 TerraCall
77 VoiceEclipse
78 ZiVVA
79 AT&T
80 SpectraVoice (Canada)
83 Vonage
84 Snaptel
85 MyPhoneCompany
86 TotalCall
87 BroadVoice
89 PCCall
96 Phoneopia
99 Soyo (Canada)
The Best Alternatives to Vonage
The Best Alternatives to Vonage
Though their prices may be similar, these 4 VoIP competitors distinguish themselves with exciting features.
Robert Poe on May 16, 2007
1. VOIP.COM
http://www.voip.com/l7b/
One of the rising stars of the business, voip.com offers unlimited North American calling for $19.95 a month for residential users, or $16.95 a month if you pay $203.40 for a year in advance. You can also get 200 minutes a month for a mere $9.95. The adapter to hook your standard home phone to your broadband Internet connection comes free. Alternatively, you can use a soft phone plan for $14.95 a month for unlimited calling from your PC using a headphone and downloadable client, or pay $3.95 for 100 minutes a month.
But voip.com isn't just about price, it's also about all the other features and capabilities only VoIP can provide. For example, Main Number ($9.95 a month) gives you a single number that will ring on all your phones, whether work, residential or mobile, when someone calls it. Voicemail ($4.95) lets you access your messages by phone or Web browser, and have them emailed to your computer. Mobile Line 2 ($8.75) provides an additional number that will ring your cellphone, allowing you to differentiate between personal and business calls, for example.
Naturally, international rates undercut most traditional carriers'. Voip.com will also launch business services soon, as well as a prepaid connect-a-call service (currently in beta) called Make a call.
2. SUNROCKET https://www.sunrocket.com/
3. LINGO
Ravi Bhatia: President
tel: 703-902-2800
www.lingo.com
Keeping up its end of the annual price war, Lingo offers unlimited North American calling (like the others, it also includes Puerto Rico in the package), for $195 a year. On a monthly basis, unlimited calling costs $21.95, which includes 21 international countries as well, while 500 minutes run $14.95. A $34.95 international package gives you unlimited North American calling plus 300 minutes to most overseas locations. Additional domestic numbers cost $4.95 a month, with international numbers, a great feature for those with a lot of overseas relatives, adding a mere $10.00 on top of other charges. Lingo also has small-business plans starting at $49.95.
3. PACKET8 http://linkshare.packet8.net/
4. ViaTalk Company www.viatalk.com
5 verizon www22.verizon.com
6 InPhonex http://www.inphonex.com/
Though their prices may be similar, these 4 VoIP competitors distinguish themselves with exciting features.
Robert Poe on May 16, 2007
1. VOIP.COM
http://www.voip.com/l7b/
One of the rising stars of the business, voip.com offers unlimited North American calling for $19.95 a month for residential users, or $16.95 a month if you pay $203.40 for a year in advance. You can also get 200 minutes a month for a mere $9.95. The adapter to hook your standard home phone to your broadband Internet connection comes free. Alternatively, you can use a soft phone plan for $14.95 a month for unlimited calling from your PC using a headphone and downloadable client, or pay $3.95 for 100 minutes a month.
But voip.com isn't just about price, it's also about all the other features and capabilities only VoIP can provide. For example, Main Number ($9.95 a month) gives you a single number that will ring on all your phones, whether work, residential or mobile, when someone calls it. Voicemail ($4.95) lets you access your messages by phone or Web browser, and have them emailed to your computer. Mobile Line 2 ($8.75) provides an additional number that will ring your cellphone, allowing you to differentiate between personal and business calls, for example.
Naturally, international rates undercut most traditional carriers'. Voip.com will also launch business services soon, as well as a prepaid connect-a-call service (currently in beta) called Make a call.
2. SUNROCKET https://www.sunrocket.com/
3. LINGO
Ravi Bhatia: President
tel: 703-902-2800
www.lingo.com
Keeping up its end of the annual price war, Lingo offers unlimited North American calling (like the others, it also includes Puerto Rico in the package), for $195 a year. On a monthly basis, unlimited calling costs $21.95, which includes 21 international countries as well, while 500 minutes run $14.95. A $34.95 international package gives you unlimited North American calling plus 300 minutes to most overseas locations. Additional domestic numbers cost $4.95 a month, with international numbers, a great feature for those with a lot of overseas relatives, adding a mere $10.00 on top of other charges. Lingo also has small-business plans starting at $49.95.
3. PACKET8 http://linkshare.packet8.net/
4. ViaTalk Company www.viatalk.com
5 verizon www22.verizon.com
6 InPhonex http://www.inphonex.com/
25 Most Interesting VoIP Startups
25 Most Interesting VoIP Startups
(10 Comments)
This list presents our choices for some of the most exciting VoIP companies and products to watch.
By Jim Higdon on February 12th, 2007
If you’ve only heard about Vonage and Skype when it comes to VoIP, you’ve only scratched the surface. Dozens of startup companies from the U.S., Canada and Europe are bringing out innovative IP telephony products – from hooking up your cell phone, to the company phone system (free minutes!), to phones that switch from cellular signals to WiFi instantly. In fact, some of these startups are are over 12 to 18 months old and on the verge of being mature businesses. Here are our picks for the Top 25 new VoIP companies set to change the way we all work and do business… and the products are pretty cool, too.
________________________________________
VONAGE STALKERS: RESIDENTIAL SERVICE PROVIDERS
SunRocket
Wouldn’t it be great to be the fastest-growing fish in a giant tank of sharks? That’s SunRocket’s position in the VoIP market.
While the company still has a relatively small customer base compared to Vonage or its corporate competition, SunRocket has become the fastest-growing company to offer residential VoIP services by focusing on customer service, and trying to be a phone company that people actually like.
How are they doing that? Sunrocket recently announced a new calling plan that drops rates to Asia to as low as one cent per minute. Although this plan will likely benefit mostly West Coast businesses and residential subscribers with relatives living in Asia, at 90 percent less than other major VoIP calling plans, it’s likely to be an effective wedge into the VoIP subscriber market.
As SunRocket continues to grow, it will either become a shark of it own or a tasty meal for one of its giant opponents to devour.
ViaTalk
Flat-rate phone service so cheap that you pay for it by the year instead of by the month – that’s ViaTalk’s angle, and it seems to be catching on.
Leveraging the 50,000 website customers hosted by parent company HostRocket, ViaTalk has quickly become a major player in the VoIP service industry with customers in 2,200 markets throughout all 50 States.
ViaTalk offers phone rates as low as $199 per year, with a year for free. Plus, ViaTalk provides all the features customers expect from traditional phone companies like e911, caller ID and voicemail, plus fax service.
COOL IT SOLUTIONS: STREAMLINED COMMUNICATION
FirstHand Technologies
Where’s your boss? On her mobile phone and out of the office – again! So how do you transfer her calls? Or patch her into the important, last-minute conference call? FirstHand Technologies has figured it out.
Based in Ottawa, FirstHand helps your IT department integrate mobile devices within the company’s phone system and provides single-number reachability for executives and sales staff on the go. Firsthand, formerly called SIPquest, changed its name in May 2006 when it secured $7 million in Series C funding.
OneConnect, a division of Globalive Communications, has been using a trial version of FirstHand’s Mobile Assistant for Blackberry devices since 2006, and intends to purchase the full commercial service in the first quarter of 2007. With the company’s release of its Enterprise Mobility Gateway, which allows access to features previously only available through their desktop phones, FirstHand is creating more services for more platforms. It's a company to watch as it develops.
GrandCentral
To win at this game, you gotta build a better mousetrap.
GrandCentral took the same problem solved by LogiTell and FirstHand – integrating mobile phone users into the office’s phone system – and found possibly the simplest solution with the widest potential impact to the workplace. Their final answer: all you need is one phone number.
Using VoIP plumbing, GrandCentral routes your calls so all of your phones ring when you get a call and also consolidates your voicemail using a handy Web interface. This interface allows you to organize your contacts into groups and setup automatic behaviors and filters for each incoming phone number.
When you answer a GrandCentral call, the interface first tells you who’s calling, then gives you several options. They offer the standard features, accept it or send it to voicemail. But also offer unique features including the option to accept and record the call, or GrandCentral’s trademarked ListenIn feature. With ListenIn, listen in real time as your caller leaves a voicemail with the ability to take the call at any time, you can also press 4 at any time during the call to start recording.
GrandCentral isn’t yet available outside the U.S. or even in every area code, but it’s a company on the move.
LignUp
As Abraham Lincoln once said, “A VoIP infrastructure divided against itself cannot stand.”
LignUp, a California based company with offices in Utah, China and Japan, has taken the 16th president’s words to heart and designed solutions to support, integrate and optimize a company’s IT architecture upon which its voice and data networks are built. The service is currently deployed in over 140 organizations around the world.
LignUp delivers a converged IP communications platform that includes hosted telephony, voice mail, unified messaging, auto attendant and other Web applications. The 100 percent software, native-SIP platform enables solution integrators and service providers to quickly create unique, high margin VoIP applications and services. In June 2006, LignUp secured a new round of funding worth nearly $10 million.
LignUp has been named to the Pulver 100 list of leading private VoIP companies, and has been recognized for innovation with the TMC Labs Innovation Award and the EuroStart Channel Excellence Award.
As the VoIP market organically grows, companies will need LignUp to keep their IP architecture humming.
Logitel
Good minds think alike, but LogiTel thinks faster, it was the first company to introduce complete integration of cell phones within a VoIP network.
Engineered to combine the highest reliability with ease of use, LogiTel products integrate VoIP, TDM and mobile capabilities with intelligent user interfaces. The result is an easy to implement, robust and flexible solution, backed by a commitment to superior customer support.
Their unique interfaces make LogiTel’s VoIP and wireless products easy to install and manage—so you don’t need to be a back office genius to use them.
MORE COOL IT SOLUTIONS: CONNECTING CUSTOMERS
BlueNote Networks
When guests enter their rooms at the four-diamond Seaport Hotel in Boston, they find a touch screen and voice-activated Web portal where the telephone used to be. The new VoIP system, by BlueNote Networks allows guests to place free VoIP-based local and domestic long distance calls, view current hotel and local attraction info, video and audio entertainment, travel updates and access to Web-based e-mail.
Founded in January 2005, BlueNote Networks deploys interactive real-time communication services for business customers in a new and compelling way. BlueNote Networks designed its award-winning SessionSuite, which allows businesses and their partners to embed interactive real-time communication services into a range of applications, web sites and internal business processes.
BlueNote Networks' innovative leadership has helped the company raise over $23 million in venture funding from investors that include Commonwealth Capital, Fidelity Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners.
DiVitas Networks
Next year, you will own a phone that works on a cellular connection, but switches to WiFi when it detects a network, allowing seamless VoIP-to-cell handoff. DiVitas Networks is the company that is making it possible.
While it’s a dream-come-true to cell phone users with residential WiFi, DiVitas is also solving business problems – like extending enterprise security, management and cost control to mobile communications. Users communicate their availability status simply by being detectable by the network, whether the underlying network is cellular, WiFi, Internet/IP WAN,or wireline.
DiVitas will be in the middle of the fight for the voice over WiFi market, and it's worth watching to see if they can perform better than the competition.
Fonality
Sometimes your best ideas come when you’re working on something else. Fonality never intended to provide superior IP PBX phone systems to 2,000 clients in 25 countries and all 50 states.
The startup’s original mission was as a residential VoIP provider. As the company’s phones started ringing, the startup’s founders were shocked at the price of basic phone systems, so they built their own in-house IP PBX network, adding features as time went on.
PBXtra has undergone a major overhaul to introduce scalability, security and ease-of-use.
Today's PBXtra is a robust and economical product built upon a Linux backbone, with the Asterisk platform. At the end of 2006, over 40,000 business users had placed more than 50 million calls using Fonality’s system.
GotVMail
Don’t let the name fool you. GotVMail is much more than just voicemail.
GotVMail understands what large telephony providers do not, the entrepreneur and very small business market, often with a workforce of one. GotVMail provides a nationwide toll-free or global local telephone number, and a customized main greeting that enhances the image, productivity and professionalism of small businesses with 1 - 10 employees for as little as $9.95 a month.
Incoming calls can be routed to multiple employee or department mailboxes using a dial-by-name directory, and can be forwarded or transferred to any phone, anywhere. It also provides "one stop" Web and Email delivery of all voice and fax messages, with an unlimited number of incoming calls so callers never hear a busy signal.
Iotum
When the phone rings, who is it? Is the caller scheduled to be part of a teleconference? Has the person called three times this hour? Is the caller your boss, or someone else who ought to override your Do Not Disturb feature?
Iotum, a VoIP service on the Asterisk platform, tries to define the relevance of a VoIP call as it arrives at your desk.
Iotum is worth watching because the company has just released Talk-Now, a next-generation product for the Blackberry. IT's potentially revolutionary because it lets users share their availability with some, but not all of their contacts, and eliminates phone tag by allowing users to know when the people they need to talk to are available to take their calls.
Switchvox
The VoIP field is so crowded that companies are even sharing biographical anecdotes. Switchvox entered the VoIP market the same accidental way as Fonality.
As it grew, Switchvox discovered that business phone systems were outrageously expensive and required a small army to maintain. They also found that other PBX operating systems were not robust enough, so Switchvox created their own system on the Asterisk platform. Today, Switchvox is a leading provider of PBX and VoIP phone systems for small-to medium-sized businesses.
TalkPlus
What can you use for prank calls, online dating and running your small business? A virtual phone number from TalkPlus.
When you sign up with TalkPlus, you’ll be able to choose one or more virtual phone numbers, which can be local to any location in any country, and point to your mobile phone. A local call placed in Europe could ring to your cell phone in New York.
You also have a management center that lets you customize your call-screening, black- or white-list, privacy, contact and voicemail options. You can have an office number that goes directly to voicemail after 5pm and a general phone number that you give to your family and friends. Use another phone number when you fill out applications and send the telemarketers to voicemail.
TalkPlus has teamed up with an online dating service to give users the opportunity to talk with each other without revealing their actual phone numbers. Theoretically, you could have a different virtual number for each dating partner. The service has yet to be spelled out, but should cost roughly $10 monthly.
Whaleback
Whaleback has designed a phone service for the small and medium business market, which it defines as any company needing between five and 1,500 phone stations.
Whaleback offers the first business phone solution built from the ground up for broadband to help reduce operating costs of small businesses. Its CrystalBlue Voice Service includes a separate "voice only" broadband connection inclusive in the monthly price; and the entire service is monitored and maintained around the clock.
The company says it allows SMBs to take advantage of robust voice features designed specifically for their needs, without the expense or headaches involved in managing telephony infrastructure. Whaleback sells the same service, whether you need ten phones or a thousand and ten.
SKYPE KILLERS
Jajah
Jajah made a name for itself when it released a Web-based callback system, a sort of long-distance run-around. Type in your number and the number you want to call, and Jajah calls you both, connecting the call via VoIP to your existing phone line. In early 2006, Jajah hired Yair Goldfinger, the mastermind behind Internet chat pioneer ICQ. With Goldfinger, Jajah has stepped up its competition to Skype, Google Talk and the Gizmo Project.
The startup recently expanded this service to let customers set up VoIP calls from their cell phones. Now, you can use Jajah from nearly every phone in the world. Jajah has also announced that it will support Apple’s iPhone when it hits the market in the summer of 2007.
Jajah is worth watching because it could someday be a Skype killer.
The Gizmo Project
When you’re competing against Skype, available in 27 languages and used by millions of people in nearly every country around the world for free, you don’t just need a product or an idea, you need a project.
Gizmo Project, developed by SIPPhone , is competing by building a VoIM product that works with Jabber and Asterisk. Gizmo has also added a voice component to the LiveJoural blogging community, increasing web-user interactivity and a whole new frontier in voice-over-Internet culture.
Calling out to a land-line phone costs a penny a minute; calling in costs $3 per month and Gizmo has made its All Calls Free plan available to businesses worldwide.
Nimbuzz
Sure, Skype has taken IM and turned it into a telephone, but only if you and your friend are both Skype users. But what if you want to call your MSN friend from your cell phone?
Nimbuzz is on top of it.
Founded in the Netherlands in 2004, Nimbuzz is revolutionizing mobile communications by allowing users to chat or call other Nimbuzz users, Google Talk users and MSN users across the world – potentially reaching over 500 million Internet capable mobile phones and BlackBerries already in use worldwide – without using VoIP.
Nimbuzz Voice depends on the availability of local access numbers, available in over 35 countries already, and is available for mobile phones, mobile web browsers and as a Windows-based PC client. It’s competing against similar services offered by Fring, Talkster, Vyke, iSkoot, Rebtel, Hullo and others.
Wengo
Not to be outdone by the Gizmo Project, French-based Wengo started its own project, the OpenWengo Project, which takes Gizmo’s Asterisk-basked platform one step further by making Wengo’s software open source and its services free.
While free may be a dubious profit-making strategy, it’s also a great way to generate a subscriber base while competing against Skype’s free service. Not only that, but by employing an open-source strategy to build Wengo’s VoIP architecture, the French startup is basically getting it’s R&D for free too. If Wengo can build a mousetrap better than Skype, then the subscriber base will exist for an array of revenue streams.
Jaxtr
Click-to-call – soon it will be a common link in your email sig file, on any blog you read and on any web advertisement that you ignore. These will all be brought to you by companies like Jaxtr.
Jaxtr is a social communications company based in Palo Alto, Calif., and founded with the mission of bringing voice to social networks and blogs. With the free j=Jaxtr service, users link their phones to their online network to hear from callers worldwide, while keeping their existing phone numbers private.
When users add their Jaxtr widget to a social networking profile or include a Jaxtr link in their email signature file, they make it easy for the recipient to call them. The caller clicks on the link or widget, enters his own phone number and then his phone rings. After he picks up the phone, Jaxtr connects him with the friend who sent the link, so the two can talk live using their existing wireless or landline phones for free.
As social networking sites become more media-rich, the appetite for Jaxtr’s Voice-to-Blog widgets will only grow.
MOBILE VOIP
Fring
Avi Shechter, the man behind Fring, attended the Davos World Economic Summit in 2007 where he told world leaders about a future where VoIP telephony would bring cheap, flat-rate calls to the whole world.
He built Fring from a concept of giving people the benefits of the Internet combined with the user-culture of mobile telephony. Rising to the challenge, Fring allows users to make free mobile calls, send instant messages to other Fring users and communicate with PC-based VoIP applications such as Skype and Google Talk.
The Fring Web site is a basic, text-only page with entry windows for your phone number and email address. You sign up, and download Fring onto your phone like a ringtone.
iSkoot
iSkoot has designed a magic key to unlock the door between the common cell phone and crystal-clear, yet dirt-cheap, IP voice networks. With iSkoot, users can make unlimited, superior quality voice calls, via next-generation software from their cell phones without the need for a computer or a WiFi hotspot.
And to top it off, it’s been certified by Skype. In January 2007, Skype confirmed that iSkoot met its usability and quality standards, making iSkoot the first third-party mobile client to make the grade.
Rebtel
For just $4 a month, wireless subscribers in the U.S. Can now call 38 countries, including France, the U.K. and Germany, and talk — for as long as you want — for only the cost of a local cell phone call.
What? That’s right. Welcome to Rebtel.
Rebtel is a Swedish company founded in January 2006. Within a year, Rebtel services has been made available in more than 36 countries.
Rebtel offers a range of international mobile telephony services at local rates. These services are all based on a system that allows people to use domestic numbers when calling abroad and international calls at local prices. Rebtel customers can make cheaper, better and easier calls abroad using local numbers for global friends and business partners. All you need is an ordinary mobile phone. There are no downloads, you don't have to buy a new mobile phone or SIM card, use a headset, switch operator or install any technology.
Tello
All you need to get a square peg in a round hole is a big enough hammer. Tello has built a tool that ties together disparate real-time communications applications so a customer can communicate with anyone instantly, whether it is using AOL's Instant Messenger or Sprint's ReadyLink push-to-talk application.
Tello's real-time services work across existing IP-enabled systems, enabling people to locate and communicate with co-workers, customers, suppliers, friends and perfect strangers.
Tello offers services to businesses and directly to individual users.
TelTel
TelTel has introduced the first flip phone for WiFi, which isn’t quite as cool as cell-to-WiFi convergence phones like the Nokia N80-IE, but it’s close.
Founded in 2003, TelTel provides Internet telephony services on the global TelTel managed, SIP-based, PsipTN™. It's capable of carrying voice, media, contents and a variety of hosted services, while providing interoperability with numerous IP end points. TelTel hosts the world’s largest SIP-based Internet telephony user community, with over 1.8 million registered users worldwide. In March 2006, TelTel secured $8.8 million in VC capital to improve its global VoIP network.
Truphone
Truphone is doing its part to merge the celluar and WiFi worlds. They now offer VoIP services that work on certain Nokia phones. With every phone call, you can toggle between dialing out on a WiFi or cellular network.
For people with cell-phone-only lifestyles, Truphone’s WiFi phone stands to save them bundles on monthly cellular plans.
In early January 2007, Truphone secured $24.5 million in new funding, which should give it the gas in the tank it needs to position itself in the coming war between WiFi and cellular networks.
(10 Comments)
This list presents our choices for some of the most exciting VoIP companies and products to watch.
By Jim Higdon on February 12th, 2007
If you’ve only heard about Vonage and Skype when it comes to VoIP, you’ve only scratched the surface. Dozens of startup companies from the U.S., Canada and Europe are bringing out innovative IP telephony products – from hooking up your cell phone, to the company phone system (free minutes!), to phones that switch from cellular signals to WiFi instantly. In fact, some of these startups are are over 12 to 18 months old and on the verge of being mature businesses. Here are our picks for the Top 25 new VoIP companies set to change the way we all work and do business… and the products are pretty cool, too.
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VONAGE STALKERS: RESIDENTIAL SERVICE PROVIDERS
SunRocket
Wouldn’t it be great to be the fastest-growing fish in a giant tank of sharks? That’s SunRocket’s position in the VoIP market.
While the company still has a relatively small customer base compared to Vonage or its corporate competition, SunRocket has become the fastest-growing company to offer residential VoIP services by focusing on customer service, and trying to be a phone company that people actually like.
How are they doing that? Sunrocket recently announced a new calling plan that drops rates to Asia to as low as one cent per minute. Although this plan will likely benefit mostly West Coast businesses and residential subscribers with relatives living in Asia, at 90 percent less than other major VoIP calling plans, it’s likely to be an effective wedge into the VoIP subscriber market.
As SunRocket continues to grow, it will either become a shark of it own or a tasty meal for one of its giant opponents to devour.
ViaTalk
Flat-rate phone service so cheap that you pay for it by the year instead of by the month – that’s ViaTalk’s angle, and it seems to be catching on.
Leveraging the 50,000 website customers hosted by parent company HostRocket, ViaTalk has quickly become a major player in the VoIP service industry with customers in 2,200 markets throughout all 50 States.
ViaTalk offers phone rates as low as $199 per year, with a year for free. Plus, ViaTalk provides all the features customers expect from traditional phone companies like e911, caller ID and voicemail, plus fax service.
COOL IT SOLUTIONS: STREAMLINED COMMUNICATION
FirstHand Technologies
Where’s your boss? On her mobile phone and out of the office – again! So how do you transfer her calls? Or patch her into the important, last-minute conference call? FirstHand Technologies has figured it out.
Based in Ottawa, FirstHand helps your IT department integrate mobile devices within the company’s phone system and provides single-number reachability for executives and sales staff on the go. Firsthand, formerly called SIPquest, changed its name in May 2006 when it secured $7 million in Series C funding.
OneConnect, a division of Globalive Communications, has been using a trial version of FirstHand’s Mobile Assistant for Blackberry devices since 2006, and intends to purchase the full commercial service in the first quarter of 2007. With the company’s release of its Enterprise Mobility Gateway, which allows access to features previously only available through their desktop phones, FirstHand is creating more services for more platforms. It's a company to watch as it develops.
GrandCentral
To win at this game, you gotta build a better mousetrap.
GrandCentral took the same problem solved by LogiTell and FirstHand – integrating mobile phone users into the office’s phone system – and found possibly the simplest solution with the widest potential impact to the workplace. Their final answer: all you need is one phone number.
Using VoIP plumbing, GrandCentral routes your calls so all of your phones ring when you get a call and also consolidates your voicemail using a handy Web interface. This interface allows you to organize your contacts into groups and setup automatic behaviors and filters for each incoming phone number.
When you answer a GrandCentral call, the interface first tells you who’s calling, then gives you several options. They offer the standard features, accept it or send it to voicemail. But also offer unique features including the option to accept and record the call, or GrandCentral’s trademarked ListenIn feature. With ListenIn, listen in real time as your caller leaves a voicemail with the ability to take the call at any time, you can also press 4 at any time during the call to start recording.
GrandCentral isn’t yet available outside the U.S. or even in every area code, but it’s a company on the move.
LignUp
As Abraham Lincoln once said, “A VoIP infrastructure divided against itself cannot stand.”
LignUp, a California based company with offices in Utah, China and Japan, has taken the 16th president’s words to heart and designed solutions to support, integrate and optimize a company’s IT architecture upon which its voice and data networks are built. The service is currently deployed in over 140 organizations around the world.
LignUp delivers a converged IP communications platform that includes hosted telephony, voice mail, unified messaging, auto attendant and other Web applications. The 100 percent software, native-SIP platform enables solution integrators and service providers to quickly create unique, high margin VoIP applications and services. In June 2006, LignUp secured a new round of funding worth nearly $10 million.
LignUp has been named to the Pulver 100 list of leading private VoIP companies, and has been recognized for innovation with the TMC Labs Innovation Award and the EuroStart Channel Excellence Award.
As the VoIP market organically grows, companies will need LignUp to keep their IP architecture humming.
Logitel
Good minds think alike, but LogiTel thinks faster, it was the first company to introduce complete integration of cell phones within a VoIP network.
Engineered to combine the highest reliability with ease of use, LogiTel products integrate VoIP, TDM and mobile capabilities with intelligent user interfaces. The result is an easy to implement, robust and flexible solution, backed by a commitment to superior customer support.
Their unique interfaces make LogiTel’s VoIP and wireless products easy to install and manage—so you don’t need to be a back office genius to use them.
MORE COOL IT SOLUTIONS: CONNECTING CUSTOMERS
BlueNote Networks
When guests enter their rooms at the four-diamond Seaport Hotel in Boston, they find a touch screen and voice-activated Web portal where the telephone used to be. The new VoIP system, by BlueNote Networks allows guests to place free VoIP-based local and domestic long distance calls, view current hotel and local attraction info, video and audio entertainment, travel updates and access to Web-based e-mail.
Founded in January 2005, BlueNote Networks deploys interactive real-time communication services for business customers in a new and compelling way. BlueNote Networks designed its award-winning SessionSuite, which allows businesses and their partners to embed interactive real-time communication services into a range of applications, web sites and internal business processes.
BlueNote Networks' innovative leadership has helped the company raise over $23 million in venture funding from investors that include Commonwealth Capital, Fidelity Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners.
DiVitas Networks
Next year, you will own a phone that works on a cellular connection, but switches to WiFi when it detects a network, allowing seamless VoIP-to-cell handoff. DiVitas Networks is the company that is making it possible.
While it’s a dream-come-true to cell phone users with residential WiFi, DiVitas is also solving business problems – like extending enterprise security, management and cost control to mobile communications. Users communicate their availability status simply by being detectable by the network, whether the underlying network is cellular, WiFi, Internet/IP WAN,or wireline.
DiVitas will be in the middle of the fight for the voice over WiFi market, and it's worth watching to see if they can perform better than the competition.
Fonality
Sometimes your best ideas come when you’re working on something else. Fonality never intended to provide superior IP PBX phone systems to 2,000 clients in 25 countries and all 50 states.
The startup’s original mission was as a residential VoIP provider. As the company’s phones started ringing, the startup’s founders were shocked at the price of basic phone systems, so they built their own in-house IP PBX network, adding features as time went on.
PBXtra has undergone a major overhaul to introduce scalability, security and ease-of-use.
Today's PBXtra is a robust and economical product built upon a Linux backbone, with the Asterisk platform. At the end of 2006, over 40,000 business users had placed more than 50 million calls using Fonality’s system.
GotVMail
Don’t let the name fool you. GotVMail is much more than just voicemail.
GotVMail understands what large telephony providers do not, the entrepreneur and very small business market, often with a workforce of one. GotVMail provides a nationwide toll-free or global local telephone number, and a customized main greeting that enhances the image, productivity and professionalism of small businesses with 1 - 10 employees for as little as $9.95 a month.
Incoming calls can be routed to multiple employee or department mailboxes using a dial-by-name directory, and can be forwarded or transferred to any phone, anywhere. It also provides "one stop" Web and Email delivery of all voice and fax messages, with an unlimited number of incoming calls so callers never hear a busy signal.
Iotum
When the phone rings, who is it? Is the caller scheduled to be part of a teleconference? Has the person called three times this hour? Is the caller your boss, or someone else who ought to override your Do Not Disturb feature?
Iotum, a VoIP service on the Asterisk platform, tries to define the relevance of a VoIP call as it arrives at your desk.
Iotum is worth watching because the company has just released Talk-Now, a next-generation product for the Blackberry. IT's potentially revolutionary because it lets users share their availability with some, but not all of their contacts, and eliminates phone tag by allowing users to know when the people they need to talk to are available to take their calls.
Switchvox
The VoIP field is so crowded that companies are even sharing biographical anecdotes. Switchvox entered the VoIP market the same accidental way as Fonality.
As it grew, Switchvox discovered that business phone systems were outrageously expensive and required a small army to maintain. They also found that other PBX operating systems were not robust enough, so Switchvox created their own system on the Asterisk platform. Today, Switchvox is a leading provider of PBX and VoIP phone systems for small-to medium-sized businesses.
TalkPlus
What can you use for prank calls, online dating and running your small business? A virtual phone number from TalkPlus.
When you sign up with TalkPlus, you’ll be able to choose one or more virtual phone numbers, which can be local to any location in any country, and point to your mobile phone. A local call placed in Europe could ring to your cell phone in New York.
You also have a management center that lets you customize your call-screening, black- or white-list, privacy, contact and voicemail options. You can have an office number that goes directly to voicemail after 5pm and a general phone number that you give to your family and friends. Use another phone number when you fill out applications and send the telemarketers to voicemail.
TalkPlus has teamed up with an online dating service to give users the opportunity to talk with each other without revealing their actual phone numbers. Theoretically, you could have a different virtual number for each dating partner. The service has yet to be spelled out, but should cost roughly $10 monthly.
Whaleback
Whaleback has designed a phone service for the small and medium business market, which it defines as any company needing between five and 1,500 phone stations.
Whaleback offers the first business phone solution built from the ground up for broadband to help reduce operating costs of small businesses. Its CrystalBlue Voice Service includes a separate "voice only" broadband connection inclusive in the monthly price; and the entire service is monitored and maintained around the clock.
The company says it allows SMBs to take advantage of robust voice features designed specifically for their needs, without the expense or headaches involved in managing telephony infrastructure. Whaleback sells the same service, whether you need ten phones or a thousand and ten.
SKYPE KILLERS
Jajah
Jajah made a name for itself when it released a Web-based callback system, a sort of long-distance run-around. Type in your number and the number you want to call, and Jajah calls you both, connecting the call via VoIP to your existing phone line. In early 2006, Jajah hired Yair Goldfinger, the mastermind behind Internet chat pioneer ICQ. With Goldfinger, Jajah has stepped up its competition to Skype, Google Talk and the Gizmo Project.
The startup recently expanded this service to let customers set up VoIP calls from their cell phones. Now, you can use Jajah from nearly every phone in the world. Jajah has also announced that it will support Apple’s iPhone when it hits the market in the summer of 2007.
Jajah is worth watching because it could someday be a Skype killer.
The Gizmo Project
When you’re competing against Skype, available in 27 languages and used by millions of people in nearly every country around the world for free, you don’t just need a product or an idea, you need a project.
Gizmo Project, developed by SIPPhone , is competing by building a VoIM product that works with Jabber and Asterisk. Gizmo has also added a voice component to the LiveJoural blogging community, increasing web-user interactivity and a whole new frontier in voice-over-Internet culture.
Calling out to a land-line phone costs a penny a minute; calling in costs $3 per month and Gizmo has made its All Calls Free plan available to businesses worldwide.
Nimbuzz
Sure, Skype has taken IM and turned it into a telephone, but only if you and your friend are both Skype users. But what if you want to call your MSN friend from your cell phone?
Nimbuzz is on top of it.
Founded in the Netherlands in 2004, Nimbuzz is revolutionizing mobile communications by allowing users to chat or call other Nimbuzz users, Google Talk users and MSN users across the world – potentially reaching over 500 million Internet capable mobile phones and BlackBerries already in use worldwide – without using VoIP.
Nimbuzz Voice depends on the availability of local access numbers, available in over 35 countries already, and is available for mobile phones, mobile web browsers and as a Windows-based PC client. It’s competing against similar services offered by Fring, Talkster, Vyke, iSkoot, Rebtel, Hullo and others.
Wengo
Not to be outdone by the Gizmo Project, French-based Wengo started its own project, the OpenWengo Project, which takes Gizmo’s Asterisk-basked platform one step further by making Wengo’s software open source and its services free.
While free may be a dubious profit-making strategy, it’s also a great way to generate a subscriber base while competing against Skype’s free service. Not only that, but by employing an open-source strategy to build Wengo’s VoIP architecture, the French startup is basically getting it’s R&D for free too. If Wengo can build a mousetrap better than Skype, then the subscriber base will exist for an array of revenue streams.
Jaxtr
Click-to-call – soon it will be a common link in your email sig file, on any blog you read and on any web advertisement that you ignore. These will all be brought to you by companies like Jaxtr.
Jaxtr is a social communications company based in Palo Alto, Calif., and founded with the mission of bringing voice to social networks and blogs. With the free j=Jaxtr service, users link their phones to their online network to hear from callers worldwide, while keeping their existing phone numbers private.
When users add their Jaxtr widget to a social networking profile or include a Jaxtr link in their email signature file, they make it easy for the recipient to call them. The caller clicks on the link or widget, enters his own phone number and then his phone rings. After he picks up the phone, Jaxtr connects him with the friend who sent the link, so the two can talk live using their existing wireless or landline phones for free.
As social networking sites become more media-rich, the appetite for Jaxtr’s Voice-to-Blog widgets will only grow.
MOBILE VOIP
Fring
Avi Shechter, the man behind Fring, attended the Davos World Economic Summit in 2007 where he told world leaders about a future where VoIP telephony would bring cheap, flat-rate calls to the whole world.
He built Fring from a concept of giving people the benefits of the Internet combined with the user-culture of mobile telephony. Rising to the challenge, Fring allows users to make free mobile calls, send instant messages to other Fring users and communicate with PC-based VoIP applications such as Skype and Google Talk.
The Fring Web site is a basic, text-only page with entry windows for your phone number and email address. You sign up, and download Fring onto your phone like a ringtone.
iSkoot
iSkoot has designed a magic key to unlock the door between the common cell phone and crystal-clear, yet dirt-cheap, IP voice networks. With iSkoot, users can make unlimited, superior quality voice calls, via next-generation software from their cell phones without the need for a computer or a WiFi hotspot.
And to top it off, it’s been certified by Skype. In January 2007, Skype confirmed that iSkoot met its usability and quality standards, making iSkoot the first third-party mobile client to make the grade.
Rebtel
For just $4 a month, wireless subscribers in the U.S. Can now call 38 countries, including France, the U.K. and Germany, and talk — for as long as you want — for only the cost of a local cell phone call.
What? That’s right. Welcome to Rebtel.
Rebtel is a Swedish company founded in January 2006. Within a year, Rebtel services has been made available in more than 36 countries.
Rebtel offers a range of international mobile telephony services at local rates. These services are all based on a system that allows people to use domestic numbers when calling abroad and international calls at local prices. Rebtel customers can make cheaper, better and easier calls abroad using local numbers for global friends and business partners. All you need is an ordinary mobile phone. There are no downloads, you don't have to buy a new mobile phone or SIM card, use a headset, switch operator or install any technology.
Tello
All you need to get a square peg in a round hole is a big enough hammer. Tello has built a tool that ties together disparate real-time communications applications so a customer can communicate with anyone instantly, whether it is using AOL's Instant Messenger or Sprint's ReadyLink push-to-talk application.
Tello's real-time services work across existing IP-enabled systems, enabling people to locate and communicate with co-workers, customers, suppliers, friends and perfect strangers.
Tello offers services to businesses and directly to individual users.
TelTel
TelTel has introduced the first flip phone for WiFi, which isn’t quite as cool as cell-to-WiFi convergence phones like the Nokia N80-IE, but it’s close.
Founded in 2003, TelTel provides Internet telephony services on the global TelTel managed, SIP-based, PsipTN™. It's capable of carrying voice, media, contents and a variety of hosted services, while providing interoperability with numerous IP end points. TelTel hosts the world’s largest SIP-based Internet telephony user community, with over 1.8 million registered users worldwide. In March 2006, TelTel secured $8.8 million in VC capital to improve its global VoIP network.
Truphone
Truphone is doing its part to merge the celluar and WiFi worlds. They now offer VoIP services that work on certain Nokia phones. With every phone call, you can toggle between dialing out on a WiFi or cellular network.
For people with cell-phone-only lifestyles, Truphone’s WiFi phone stands to save them bundles on monthly cellular plans.
In early January 2007, Truphone secured $24.5 million in new funding, which should give it the gas in the tank it needs to position itself in the coming war between WiFi and cellular networks.
Comcast Tops VOIP Providers in 2006
Comcast Tops VOIP Providers in 2006
ARTICLE DATE: 07.30.07
By Chloe Albanesius
Powered by cable telephony and bundled services, the market for Voice-over-the-Internet Protocol (VoIP) services grew by leaps and bounds in 2006, though some cable customers are unaware exactly how their service works, according to a Monday report from the Yankee Group.
ADVERTISEMENT Though initially plagued by quality concerns, VOIP technology has improved enough in recent years that major cable companies are bundling the service with their cable and Internet offerings. Issues remain in regard to 911 access, but that apparently did not deter customers signing on in 2006, report authors found.
Customers accessing VoIP via their cable provider jumped 167 percent in 2006 from 3.9 million subscribers to 6.3 million, the report said. The Yankee Group expects that number to reach 26.2 million by 2011.
Many cable users, however, are not aware that their phone service is basd on VOIP, not the traditional copper phone wiring. In a separate 2006 survey, the Yankee Group found that only 9.5 percent of cable telephony subscribers knew what powered their phone service.
Comcast recently emerged as the telephony leader when it reported 2.4 million subscribers during the first quarter of 2007, an 813 percent increase. Those numbers bested previous champ Vonage, a broadband VoIP provider, which struggled last year after a weak IPO and patent battles with Verizon, the report said.
Despite those issues, however, Vonage still managed to add 1.2 million lines in 2006, a 75 percent subscriber increase. The company also added 166,000 lines during the first quarter of 2007.
Maintaining that growth comes with a price – about $300 to attract every new subscriber, the report said. The hefty cost of acquiring new customers likely contributed to the downfall of another broadband VoIP provider, SunRocket, the Yankee Group suggested.
SunRocket suddenly closed up shop earlier this month without notifying its more than 200,000 customers. It too saw growth in 2006, but the cost of marketing its service coupled with the lack of additional financial backing ultimately crippled SunRocket, the report said.
Nonetheless, the Yankee Group predicts that broadband VoIP will grow from 2.8 million customers in 2006 to 6.4 million in 2011. The growth will likely be led by innovative technologies and decreased pricing, the report said.
Going forward, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) VoIP could be a major threat, the report said. This segment of the market is "almost negligible when compared with the overall consumer VoIP market" but it could explode in the coming years given ongoing fiber projects like Verizon's FiOS and AT&T's U-verse, it said.
FTTH VoIP could see its one millionth customer by the end of 2009 and 5.1 million customers by 2011, according to Yankee Group.
Other VoIP providers to see growth last year included cable providers Time Warner, which jumped to 1.86 million customers with the addition of 760,000 new subscribers in 2006, and Cablevision, which ended the year with 1.2 million VoIP customers, or approximately 26 percent of the homes in its footprint, the report said.
To succeed in the future, the Yankee Group suggests that broadband providers bundle their services, educate the public and protect their businesses through solid investment. On the cable front, providers need to differentiate through cross-functionality of services – like mobile phones – and make sure "their ducks are in a row" in regard to patent litigation, the report recommended. FTTH, meanwhile, could get ahead with a guaranteed quality of service, Yankee predicted.
Copyright (c) 2007 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
ARTICLE DATE: 07.30.07
By Chloe Albanesius
Powered by cable telephony and bundled services, the market for Voice-over-the-Internet Protocol (VoIP) services grew by leaps and bounds in 2006, though some cable customers are unaware exactly how their service works, according to a Monday report from the Yankee Group.
ADVERTISEMENT Though initially plagued by quality concerns, VOIP technology has improved enough in recent years that major cable companies are bundling the service with their cable and Internet offerings. Issues remain in regard to 911 access, but that apparently did not deter customers signing on in 2006, report authors found.
Customers accessing VoIP via their cable provider jumped 167 percent in 2006 from 3.9 million subscribers to 6.3 million, the report said. The Yankee Group expects that number to reach 26.2 million by 2011.
Many cable users, however, are not aware that their phone service is basd on VOIP, not the traditional copper phone wiring. In a separate 2006 survey, the Yankee Group found that only 9.5 percent of cable telephony subscribers knew what powered their phone service.
Comcast recently emerged as the telephony leader when it reported 2.4 million subscribers during the first quarter of 2007, an 813 percent increase. Those numbers bested previous champ Vonage, a broadband VoIP provider, which struggled last year after a weak IPO and patent battles with Verizon, the report said.
Despite those issues, however, Vonage still managed to add 1.2 million lines in 2006, a 75 percent subscriber increase. The company also added 166,000 lines during the first quarter of 2007.
Maintaining that growth comes with a price – about $300 to attract every new subscriber, the report said. The hefty cost of acquiring new customers likely contributed to the downfall of another broadband VoIP provider, SunRocket, the Yankee Group suggested.
SunRocket suddenly closed up shop earlier this month without notifying its more than 200,000 customers. It too saw growth in 2006, but the cost of marketing its service coupled with the lack of additional financial backing ultimately crippled SunRocket, the report said.
Nonetheless, the Yankee Group predicts that broadband VoIP will grow from 2.8 million customers in 2006 to 6.4 million in 2011. The growth will likely be led by innovative technologies and decreased pricing, the report said.
Going forward, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) VoIP could be a major threat, the report said. This segment of the market is "almost negligible when compared with the overall consumer VoIP market" but it could explode in the coming years given ongoing fiber projects like Verizon's FiOS and AT&T's U-verse, it said.
FTTH VoIP could see its one millionth customer by the end of 2009 and 5.1 million customers by 2011, according to Yankee Group.
Other VoIP providers to see growth last year included cable providers Time Warner, which jumped to 1.86 million customers with the addition of 760,000 new subscribers in 2006, and Cablevision, which ended the year with 1.2 million VoIP customers, or approximately 26 percent of the homes in its footprint, the report said.
To succeed in the future, the Yankee Group suggests that broadband providers bundle their services, educate the public and protect their businesses through solid investment. On the cable front, providers need to differentiate through cross-functionality of services – like mobile phones – and make sure "their ducks are in a row" in regard to patent litigation, the report recommended. FTTH, meanwhile, could get ahead with a guaranteed quality of service, Yankee predicted.
Copyright (c) 2007 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
VoIP by the Numbers
VoIP by the Numbers
- Subscribers, Revenues, Top Service Providers, Blogs and more...
Voice over IP (VoIP) has the potential to dramatically change the telecommunications landscape. Market forecasts exponential growth in VoIP within the next four years. Here are a compendium of revealing stats and trends on this transformational technology, based on leading research reports.
Market Size Forecasts: Researchers estimate residential VoIP customers to be any where between 12 million to 44 million in the US by 2010. Here are some of the size estimates:
U.S. VoIP Quick Stats
Residential Subscribers, 2006 9.6M
Residential Subscribers, 2010 44.0M
Vonage Subscribers, Q2'06 1.8M
Revenues, 2005 $1.1B
Mobile VoIP Revenues, 2012 $18.6B
Fixed VoIP Revenues, 2012 $11.9B
SMB Spend, 2005 $2.1B
SMB Spend, 2010 $8.9B
Spend on Equipment, 2008 $5.8B
Subs Growth per Month 100k
The number of residential VoIP customers (not including PC-to-PC services) more than tripled to 4.2 million in 2005 and is expected to grow by a compound annual rate of 43.9% through 2009, reaching 18.0 million. This was on the heels of an eightfold increase from 150,000 at the end of 2003 to 1.2 million at the end of 2004, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). The U.S. broadband market is expected to grow to 69.2 million by 2009, a 13.8% compound annual increase.
The number of subscribers to retail voice over IP (VoIP) services rose by 83% during 2005, from 10.3 million at the beginning of 2005 to over 18.7 million subscribers worldwide by the end of the year, according to Point Topic report.
IDC predicts that residential U.S. VoIP subscribers will grow from 10.3 million in 2006 to 44 million in 2010. The latest IDC forecast shows that VoIP will be used in 62% of broadband households in 2010.
eMarketer forecasts that by 2010, 32.6 million US households will subscribe to a VoIP service, up from 9.6 million at the end of 2006, equating to nearly 40% of all broadband households.
Telegeography pegged total US VoIP subscribers at 6.9 million in Q2 2006. Vonage leads the providers with 1.8 million subscribers as of the middle of 2006, while Time Warner Cable follows closely behind with 1.6 million subscribers.
Enterprise VoIP adoption in North America will more than double in 2010, according to a Infonetics Research survey. Almost half of small and two-thirds of large organizations in North America will be using VoIP products and services by 2010.
36% of large, 23% of medium, and 14% of small North American organizations interviewed were already using VoIP products and services in 2005
VoIP adoption will triple by 2010 among small organizations in North America
Revenue & Investment Estimates:
Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) estimates that VoIP revenue increased from $25 million in 2003 to $200 million in 2004 and $1.1 billion in 2005. Revenue is projected to increase 46.7% on a compound annual rate through 2009 reaching $5.1 billion.
Analysis from Frost & Sullivan North American Residential VoIP Services Markets reveals that revenues in this industry totaled $1.22 billion in 2005 and estimate to reach $13.2 billion in 2012.
Research firm Analysys projects that by 2012, Mobile VoIP services are forecast to generate revenues of $18.6 billion in the USA and $7.3 billion in Western Europe, compared with fixed VoIP revenues of $11.9 in the USA and $6.9 billion in Western Europe. The report says by 2015, mobile VoIP will carry 28% of all fixed and mobile voice minutes in the USA and 23% in Western Europe.
In 2005, small and medium-size companies spent $2.1 billion on Internet phone systems, equipment and services, compared with $4 billion for large businesses. By 2010, small-business spending should more than quadruple to $8.9 billion, according to market-research firm InfoTech.
U.S. RBOCs have been losing 150,000 subscriber lines per month so far this year, according to Telegeography. At the same time, Voice over IP (VoIP) service providers are adding about 100,000 subscribers per month. The balance of local service subscription losses — about 50,000 — are moving to wireless-only plans or canceling their secondary household lines.
TeleGeography predicts that VoIP service providers will capture 22% of all local exchange carriers’ existing customers, contributing to a cumulative loss of $18.2 billion in local service revenues between 2006 and 2010. Subscriber migration to VoIP also translates to $13.9 billion in lost long-distance revenues over the course of the next five years.
TeleGeography’s research indicates that of the current 5.4 million VoIP U.S. households, about 2.8 million have defected to cable MSOs’ VoIP services and have cancelled their local phone lines altogether.
By year-end 2005, Verizon had lost more than 8% of its residential phone subscribers.
Infonetics Research expects worldwide spending by service providers on next generation VoIP equipment to grow to $5.8 billion by 2008, from the estimated $1.73 billions in 2004. IP phone shipments grew strongly in 2Q06, up 17% to 2.1 million, and strong growth is forecast through 2009 as VoIP deployments extend beyond the network core to the desktop.
VoIP service revenue roughly doubled in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific from 2004 to 2005. Infonetics Research estimates that a combined $120 billion will be spent on VoIP services between 2005 and 2009 in the 3 regions. Other highlights include:
Between 2005 and 2009, VoIP service revenue will grow from:
$2.6 billion to $13.3 billion in North America
$2.3 billion to $12.7 billion in Europe
$4.2 billion to $12.9 billion in Asia Pacific
Percent of VoIP service revenue coming from residential vs. business customers:
51% in North America
72% in Europe
83% in Asia Pacific
IDC forecasts the worldwide VoIP semiconductor market to grow over $2.4 billion in 2009, with a compound annual growth rate of 38.9% for 2004-2009.
Service Providers Landscape:
Households subscribing to pure-play subscription VoIP services, who are either replacing or complementing existing traditional landline services, increased from 2.2 million in Q1 2006 to 2.9 million in Q2 2006, according to Telephia. (Telephia estimates exclude cable companies who offer “digital phone” services and free or pay-per-call VoIP services like Skype):
Vonage continues to own the largest market share of pure-play subscription VoIP consumers with a 53.9% share.
Verizon VoiceWing and AT&T CallVantage were tied for second place, each securing a 5.5% share. SunRocket followed with a 4% percent share, while Lingo claimed a 2.6% share. NetZero Voice rounded out the top five with a 2.5% share.
The number of worldwide total VoIP subscribers (residential and enterprise) is expected to almost double 2005 to 2006, when it will top 47 million, according to Infonetics Research:
Vonage leads in North American residential/SOHO VoIP subscriber market share, but is down from 34% in 2004 to 27% in 2005, resulting from fierce competition from cable MSOs, traditional telcos, and low-cost new entrants
Cable companies continue pushing to increase VoIP subscriber share: Cablevision and Time Warner Cable each have double-digit share and combined have 39% of all North American residential VoIP subscribers
AT&T, Comcast, and Cox are the only other providers with North American VoIP subscriber share greater than 3%
- Subscribers, Revenues, Top Service Providers, Blogs and more...
Voice over IP (VoIP) has the potential to dramatically change the telecommunications landscape. Market forecasts exponential growth in VoIP within the next four years. Here are a compendium of revealing stats and trends on this transformational technology, based on leading research reports.
Market Size Forecasts: Researchers estimate residential VoIP customers to be any where between 12 million to 44 million in the US by 2010. Here are some of the size estimates:
U.S. VoIP Quick Stats
Residential Subscribers, 2006 9.6M
Residential Subscribers, 2010 44.0M
Vonage Subscribers, Q2'06 1.8M
Revenues, 2005 $1.1B
Mobile VoIP Revenues, 2012 $18.6B
Fixed VoIP Revenues, 2012 $11.9B
SMB Spend, 2005 $2.1B
SMB Spend, 2010 $8.9B
Spend on Equipment, 2008 $5.8B
Subs Growth per Month 100k
The number of residential VoIP customers (not including PC-to-PC services) more than tripled to 4.2 million in 2005 and is expected to grow by a compound annual rate of 43.9% through 2009, reaching 18.0 million. This was on the heels of an eightfold increase from 150,000 at the end of 2003 to 1.2 million at the end of 2004, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). The U.S. broadband market is expected to grow to 69.2 million by 2009, a 13.8% compound annual increase.
The number of subscribers to retail voice over IP (VoIP) services rose by 83% during 2005, from 10.3 million at the beginning of 2005 to over 18.7 million subscribers worldwide by the end of the year, according to Point Topic report.
IDC predicts that residential U.S. VoIP subscribers will grow from 10.3 million in 2006 to 44 million in 2010. The latest IDC forecast shows that VoIP will be used in 62% of broadband households in 2010.
eMarketer forecasts that by 2010, 32.6 million US households will subscribe to a VoIP service, up from 9.6 million at the end of 2006, equating to nearly 40% of all broadband households.
Telegeography pegged total US VoIP subscribers at 6.9 million in Q2 2006. Vonage leads the providers with 1.8 million subscribers as of the middle of 2006, while Time Warner Cable follows closely behind with 1.6 million subscribers.
Enterprise VoIP adoption in North America will more than double in 2010, according to a Infonetics Research survey. Almost half of small and two-thirds of large organizations in North America will be using VoIP products and services by 2010.
36% of large, 23% of medium, and 14% of small North American organizations interviewed were already using VoIP products and services in 2005
VoIP adoption will triple by 2010 among small organizations in North America
Revenue & Investment Estimates:
Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) estimates that VoIP revenue increased from $25 million in 2003 to $200 million in 2004 and $1.1 billion in 2005. Revenue is projected to increase 46.7% on a compound annual rate through 2009 reaching $5.1 billion.
Analysis from Frost & Sullivan North American Residential VoIP Services Markets reveals that revenues in this industry totaled $1.22 billion in 2005 and estimate to reach $13.2 billion in 2012.
Research firm Analysys projects that by 2012, Mobile VoIP services are forecast to generate revenues of $18.6 billion in the USA and $7.3 billion in Western Europe, compared with fixed VoIP revenues of $11.9 in the USA and $6.9 billion in Western Europe. The report says by 2015, mobile VoIP will carry 28% of all fixed and mobile voice minutes in the USA and 23% in Western Europe.
In 2005, small and medium-size companies spent $2.1 billion on Internet phone systems, equipment and services, compared with $4 billion for large businesses. By 2010, small-business spending should more than quadruple to $8.9 billion, according to market-research firm InfoTech.
U.S. RBOCs have been losing 150,000 subscriber lines per month so far this year, according to Telegeography. At the same time, Voice over IP (VoIP) service providers are adding about 100,000 subscribers per month. The balance of local service subscription losses — about 50,000 — are moving to wireless-only plans or canceling their secondary household lines.
TeleGeography predicts that VoIP service providers will capture 22% of all local exchange carriers’ existing customers, contributing to a cumulative loss of $18.2 billion in local service revenues between 2006 and 2010. Subscriber migration to VoIP also translates to $13.9 billion in lost long-distance revenues over the course of the next five years.
TeleGeography’s research indicates that of the current 5.4 million VoIP U.S. households, about 2.8 million have defected to cable MSOs’ VoIP services and have cancelled their local phone lines altogether.
By year-end 2005, Verizon had lost more than 8% of its residential phone subscribers.
Infonetics Research expects worldwide spending by service providers on next generation VoIP equipment to grow to $5.8 billion by 2008, from the estimated $1.73 billions in 2004. IP phone shipments grew strongly in 2Q06, up 17% to 2.1 million, and strong growth is forecast through 2009 as VoIP deployments extend beyond the network core to the desktop.
VoIP service revenue roughly doubled in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific from 2004 to 2005. Infonetics Research estimates that a combined $120 billion will be spent on VoIP services between 2005 and 2009 in the 3 regions. Other highlights include:
Between 2005 and 2009, VoIP service revenue will grow from:
$2.6 billion to $13.3 billion in North America
$2.3 billion to $12.7 billion in Europe
$4.2 billion to $12.9 billion in Asia Pacific
Percent of VoIP service revenue coming from residential vs. business customers:
51% in North America
72% in Europe
83% in Asia Pacific
IDC forecasts the worldwide VoIP semiconductor market to grow over $2.4 billion in 2009, with a compound annual growth rate of 38.9% for 2004-2009.
Service Providers Landscape:
Households subscribing to pure-play subscription VoIP services, who are either replacing or complementing existing traditional landline services, increased from 2.2 million in Q1 2006 to 2.9 million in Q2 2006, according to Telephia. (Telephia estimates exclude cable companies who offer “digital phone” services and free or pay-per-call VoIP services like Skype):
Vonage continues to own the largest market share of pure-play subscription VoIP consumers with a 53.9% share.
Verizon VoiceWing and AT&T CallVantage were tied for second place, each securing a 5.5% share. SunRocket followed with a 4% percent share, while Lingo claimed a 2.6% share. NetZero Voice rounded out the top five with a 2.5% share.
The number of worldwide total VoIP subscribers (residential and enterprise) is expected to almost double 2005 to 2006, when it will top 47 million, according to Infonetics Research:
Vonage leads in North American residential/SOHO VoIP subscriber market share, but is down from 34% in 2004 to 27% in 2005, resulting from fierce competition from cable MSOs, traditional telcos, and low-cost new entrants
Cable companies continue pushing to increase VoIP subscriber share: Cablevision and Time Warner Cable each have double-digit share and combined have 39% of all North American residential VoIP subscribers
AT&T, Comcast, and Cox are the only other providers with North American VoIP subscriber share greater than 3%
US Lags in Global VoIP Market
US Lags in Global VoIP Market
The market for consumer VoIP services boomed in 2006, with Europe leading the way, reports In-Stat. Total VoIP subscribers worldwide increased by 34 million subscribers in 2006, the high-tech market research firm says.
“Europe showed the largest gain in consumer VoIP subscribers,” says Keith Nissen, In-Stat analyst. “The European consumer VoIP market increased by over 14 million subscribers last year. The European VoIP market is being aided by local loop unbundling, the introduction of cable telephony and triple-play service bundles, as well as operator consolidation. In contrast, US wireline operators added only 4 million VoIP subscribers in 2006. No one seems interested in selling anything other than plain-old-telephone-service”.
Recent research by In-Stat found the following:
The countries with the largest VoIP subscriber gains in 2006 include France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
In 2011, the US will represent only 18% of the global consumer VoIP market.
By 2011, In-Stat predicts the consumer VoIP market will total nearly $44 billion worldwide.
The research, “Europe Leads the Booming Consumer VoIP Market”, covers the worldwide market for Voice over Internet Protocol. It provides forecasts for global VoIP subscribers, segmented by region, through 2011. It also includes analysis of major VoIP markets around the world. Analysis of market drivers and challenges is provided.
The market for consumer VoIP services boomed in 2006, with Europe leading the way, reports In-Stat. Total VoIP subscribers worldwide increased by 34 million subscribers in 2006, the high-tech market research firm says.
“Europe showed the largest gain in consumer VoIP subscribers,” says Keith Nissen, In-Stat analyst. “The European consumer VoIP market increased by over 14 million subscribers last year. The European VoIP market is being aided by local loop unbundling, the introduction of cable telephony and triple-play service bundles, as well as operator consolidation. In contrast, US wireline operators added only 4 million VoIP subscribers in 2006. No one seems interested in selling anything other than plain-old-telephone-service”.
Recent research by In-Stat found the following:
The countries with the largest VoIP subscriber gains in 2006 include France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
In 2011, the US will represent only 18% of the global consumer VoIP market.
By 2011, In-Stat predicts the consumer VoIP market will total nearly $44 billion worldwide.
The research, “Europe Leads the Booming Consumer VoIP Market”, covers the worldwide market for Voice over Internet Protocol. It provides forecasts for global VoIP subscribers, segmented by region, through 2011. It also includes analysis of major VoIP markets around the world. Analysis of market drivers and challenges is provided.
VoIP subscriber growth in western Europe is skyrocketing
VoIP subscriber growth in western Europe is skyrocketing
TeleGeography’s new European VoIP Research Service projects that nearly 30 million consumer VoIP lines will be in service across Europe by end of 2007, up from 6.5 million at the beginning of 2006. The rapid growth of VoIP will change the way telcos do business in Europe, and challenges the historical stronghold of incumbent service providers.
However, while VoIP services are growing rapidly in all of western Europe, a closer look reveals stark differences in subscriber numbers, market penetration and growth rates across Europe (see figure). Some markets, like France and the Netherlands, have already reached a large portion of homes; others, like Spain, have low penetration levels, but are growing at a blistering pace.
TeleGeography’s European VoIP Research Service provides vital insight and data including:
Which countries are the largest markets for VoIP services, and which have the greatest long-term potential?
Who are the largest European VoIP service providers?
What impact will VoIP Have on switched telephone revenues?
How do trends in Europe compare with the US?
Source: TeleGeography’s European VoIP Research Servic
TeleGeography’s new European VoIP Research Service projects that nearly 30 million consumer VoIP lines will be in service across Europe by end of 2007, up from 6.5 million at the beginning of 2006. The rapid growth of VoIP will change the way telcos do business in Europe, and challenges the historical stronghold of incumbent service providers.
However, while VoIP services are growing rapidly in all of western Europe, a closer look reveals stark differences in subscriber numbers, market penetration and growth rates across Europe (see figure). Some markets, like France and the Netherlands, have already reached a large portion of homes; others, like Spain, have low penetration levels, but are growing at a blistering pace.
TeleGeography’s European VoIP Research Service provides vital insight and data including:
Which countries are the largest markets for VoIP services, and which have the greatest long-term potential?
Who are the largest European VoIP service providers?
What impact will VoIP Have on switched telephone revenues?
How do trends in Europe compare with the US?
Source: TeleGeography’s European VoIP Research Servic
Vonage slips to Comcast in VoIP subscribers
Vonage slips to Comcast in VoIP subscribers
By Peter Svensson, Associated Press
NEW YORK — Internet telephone company Vonage reported a much reduced loss for the second quarter Tuesday as it scaled back marketing, but it also saw a drastic drop in new subscribers.
The drop in recruitment means that Vonage is no longer the country's largest provider of Internet-based telephone service, a field it pioneered. Cable company Comcast reported 3 million digital phone subscribers at the end of the second quarter, surpassing Vonage's 2.45 million, an increase of just 57,000 lines from the first quarter.
The Holmdel, N.J., company is struggling in court with another old-line telecommunications company, Verizon Communications. In March, a jury found that Vonage infringed on three Verizon patents. The judge barred Vonage from signing up new customers, but that decision has been stayed while an appeals court considers it. In the mean time, Vonage is trying to work around the patented technologies.
Vonage posted a net loss of $34 million, or 22 cents per share, for the April-June period, down from $74 million, or $1.16 per share, in the same period last year.
Excluding one-time charges, Vonage lost $18 million, or 12 cents a share, substantially better than the average analyst estimate compiled by Thomson Financial at 34 cents a share. Analyst estimates generally exclude charges.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Verizon Communications | Comcast | VOIP | VONAGE
Revenue came to $206 million, $2 million short of analyst expectations but up 43% from $144 million in the second quarter of 2006.
Vonage, which once blanketed the Internet with its banner ads, spent $68 million on marketing in the second quarter, down from $91 million in the first quarter. However, it got less for its money: the market costing per added subscriber rose by $14 to $287.
Vonage's interim chief executive, Jeffrey Citron, said a more focused marketing effort has reduced the cost to about $250 per subscriber in June and July, and the company expects that cost level to be sustained through the third quarter.
Rather than focusing on building the Vonage brand, Citron said, the company is now directing its money to where it's most likely to recruit subscribers. For instance, its Web ads are now only showing up on the "highest-performing" sites.
Citron also said he expects subscriber additions to rise in the third quarter as new marketing initiatives take hold.
"I believe we're turning the corner on one of the most difficult periods of Vonage's history," he said.
The business of selling Voice over Internet Protocol service, or VoIP, independently of cable and phone companies has looked increasingly shaky in recent months. Vonage's legal troubles have no doubt scared off some potential subscribers. In July, rival SunRocket abruptly shut down, stranding more than 200,000 subscribers.
On June 30, Vonage had cash reserves of $344 million, down from $410 million three months earlier. Of the total, $66 million were tied up as collateral for a bond tied to the Verizon patent verdict. The company said it expected its "cash burn" to decline in the third quarter.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
By Peter Svensson, Associated Press
NEW YORK — Internet telephone company Vonage reported a much reduced loss for the second quarter Tuesday as it scaled back marketing, but it also saw a drastic drop in new subscribers.
The drop in recruitment means that Vonage is no longer the country's largest provider of Internet-based telephone service, a field it pioneered. Cable company Comcast reported 3 million digital phone subscribers at the end of the second quarter, surpassing Vonage's 2.45 million, an increase of just 57,000 lines from the first quarter.
The Holmdel, N.J., company is struggling in court with another old-line telecommunications company, Verizon Communications. In March, a jury found that Vonage infringed on three Verizon patents. The judge barred Vonage from signing up new customers, but that decision has been stayed while an appeals court considers it. In the mean time, Vonage is trying to work around the patented technologies.
Vonage posted a net loss of $34 million, or 22 cents per share, for the April-June period, down from $74 million, or $1.16 per share, in the same period last year.
Excluding one-time charges, Vonage lost $18 million, or 12 cents a share, substantially better than the average analyst estimate compiled by Thomson Financial at 34 cents a share. Analyst estimates generally exclude charges.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Verizon Communications | Comcast | VOIP | VONAGE
Revenue came to $206 million, $2 million short of analyst expectations but up 43% from $144 million in the second quarter of 2006.
Vonage, which once blanketed the Internet with its banner ads, spent $68 million on marketing in the second quarter, down from $91 million in the first quarter. However, it got less for its money: the market costing per added subscriber rose by $14 to $287.
Vonage's interim chief executive, Jeffrey Citron, said a more focused marketing effort has reduced the cost to about $250 per subscriber in June and July, and the company expects that cost level to be sustained through the third quarter.
Rather than focusing on building the Vonage brand, Citron said, the company is now directing its money to where it's most likely to recruit subscribers. For instance, its Web ads are now only showing up on the "highest-performing" sites.
Citron also said he expects subscriber additions to rise in the third quarter as new marketing initiatives take hold.
"I believe we're turning the corner on one of the most difficult periods of Vonage's history," he said.
The business of selling Voice over Internet Protocol service, or VoIP, independently of cable and phone companies has looked increasingly shaky in recent months. Vonage's legal troubles have no doubt scared off some potential subscribers. In July, rival SunRocket abruptly shut down, stranding more than 200,000 subscribers.
On June 30, Vonage had cash reserves of $344 million, down from $410 million three months earlier. Of the total, $66 million were tied up as collateral for a bond tied to the Verizon patent verdict. The company said it expected its "cash burn" to decline in the third quarter.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
VoIP service revenue hits $15.8B in 2006 boom expected to continue
VoIP service revenue hits $15.8B in 2006 boom expected to continue
CAMPBELL, California, August 8, 2007—Worldwide VoIP service revenue jumped 66% to $15.8 billion in 2006 after more than doubling in 2005, and is expected to more than triple by 2010, says Infonetics Research in its new VoIP Services and Subscribers report.
Hosted VoIP services continue to outpace managed IP PBX services by far, with residential services fueling the market, but the business segment is also growing, and will continue to, the report says.
“Asia Pacific has been leading the VoIP services scene for a couple of years, with Japan’s SoftBank pioneering the service and taking a strong lead, but the EMEA and North America regions have gained some ground at the expense of Asia in the last two years. The Latin American-Caribbean region is also posting impressive growth and gaining share,” said Stéphane Téral, principal analyst at Infonetics Research and lead author of the report.
Other highlights from the report:
Worldwide revenue from residential hosted VoIP services jumped 68% between 2005 and 2006; managed IP PBX service revenue grew 45%
The number of worldwide residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers nearly doubled between 2005 and 2006, to 46.5 million, 46% of which are in Asia Pacific
71% of worldwide VoIP service revenue came from residential/SOHO customers in 2006, 29% from business customers; revenue from both residential and business customers will increase steadily at least through 2010
SoftBank is the world's largest VoIP service provider with 18% subscriber market share, followed (in order) by NTT, Vonage, France Télécom, and Time Warner Cable
Infonetics' report tracks residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers, managed IP PBX services, and hosted VoIP services split by residential/SOHO vs. business (with trunking/VoIP VPN vs. IP Centrex/hosted IP breakouts) in North America, EMEA, Asia Pacific, Latin America-Caribbean, and worldwide. The North American revenue forecast includes US and Canada breakouts.
The report includes regional subscriber market share, tracking Cableco, Comcast, Digilinea, France Télécom, Free, ONO, NTT, PCCW, SoftBank, Time Warner, Vonage, Vono, and others.
Download report highlights at www.info.infonetics.com. For sales, contact Larry Howard, vice president, at larry@infonetics.com or +1 (408) 583-3335.
Infonetics Research (www.infonetics.com) is an international market research and consulting firm specializing in data networking and telecom. Services include quarterly market share and forecasting, end-user and service provider survey research, and service provider capex analysis.
美VoIP第4大業者SunRocket公司關閉 VoIP業者發展之路蒙陰影
美VoIP第4大業者SunRocket公司關閉 VoIP業者發展之路蒙陰影
(寄信給作者) 2007/08/03
詹子嫻／台北
日前華盛頓郵報（The Washington Post）報導網路電話業者SunRocket突然關閉，預計超過20萬用戶被迫停話，不少SunRocket用戶採預付制，1年199美元的電話費不知道能否拿回來。從網路電話服務供應商（Internet Telephony Service Provider；ITSP）的角度來看，應不樂見此事發生，不僅為網路電話的前景蒙上陰影，更凸顯了ITSP的經營困境。
在台灣多數人可能對SunRocket感到陌生，不過，由於SunRocket費率便宜，費率設計新穎，像是瞄準亞裔市場推出撥打大陸等亞洲國家電話，每分鐘只要1分錢（penny per minute）的方案，成立3年吸引不少客戶，居全美網路電話市佔率第4名，前3名依序為Vonage、Verizon及AT&T。
ITSP發展之路究竟面臨哪些問題，第1、市場競爭激烈：VoIP市場競爭激烈已久，ITSP除面對同業、新興業者如Jajah、Rebtel之外，還得應付在旁環伺的傳統電話公司與有線電視多系統經營業者（Multi System Operator；MSO），為了搶奪市佔，只好流血砍價。第2、純語音服務不夠看：相較於網路服務供應商（ISP）或MSO能提供線路、語音、視訊3合1（Triple Play）綑綁服務（bundle service），純語音功能自然失去競爭力。
因此不論是Vonage用戶數下降，或SunRocket客戶成長率停滯、縮編人力等，在在證實VoIP成為不折不扣的「紅海」，想要從中賺進大把銀子更是難上加難，有鑑於此，VoIP業者紛紛從其他服務制賺取營收，例如加值服務及廣告。
觀察台灣VoIP市場亦有類似狀況，經營VoIP的二類電信業者眾多、競爭大，加上E.164-based的070電話發展屢受阻礙，初期同樣得以低廉費率吸引大眾轉換，VoIP市場確實不易經營。
當Skype全球發燒後，網路電話以「重新振作」之姿，再度返回市場，但隨著VoIP業者獲利不佳、甚至關閉等消息不斷，VoIP還是隻金雞母嗎、或是如何讓VoIP成為搖錢樹？答案有待業者思考！
(寄信給作者) 2007/08/03
詹子嫻／台北
日前華盛頓郵報（The Washington Post）報導網路電話業者SunRocket突然關閉，預計超過20萬用戶被迫停話，不少SunRocket用戶採預付制，1年199美元的電話費不知道能否拿回來。從網路電話服務供應商（Internet Telephony Service Provider；ITSP）的角度來看，應不樂見此事發生，不僅為網路電話的前景蒙上陰影，更凸顯了ITSP的經營困境。
在台灣多數人可能對SunRocket感到陌生，不過，由於SunRocket費率便宜，費率設計新穎，像是瞄準亞裔市場推出撥打大陸等亞洲國家電話，每分鐘只要1分錢（penny per minute）的方案，成立3年吸引不少客戶，居全美網路電話市佔率第4名，前3名依序為Vonage、Verizon及AT&T。
ITSP發展之路究竟面臨哪些問題，第1、市場競爭激烈：VoIP市場競爭激烈已久，ITSP除面對同業、新興業者如Jajah、Rebtel之外，還得應付在旁環伺的傳統電話公司與有線電視多系統經營業者（Multi System Operator；MSO），為了搶奪市佔，只好流血砍價。第2、純語音服務不夠看：相較於網路服務供應商（ISP）或MSO能提供線路、語音、視訊3合1（Triple Play）綑綁服務（bundle service），純語音功能自然失去競爭力。
因此不論是Vonage用戶數下降，或SunRocket客戶成長率停滯、縮編人力等，在在證實VoIP成為不折不扣的「紅海」，想要從中賺進大把銀子更是難上加難，有鑑於此，VoIP業者紛紛從其他服務制賺取營收，例如加值服務及廣告。
觀察台灣VoIP市場亦有類似狀況，經營VoIP的二類電信業者眾多、競爭大，加上E.164-based的070電話發展屢受阻礙，初期同樣得以低廉費率吸引大眾轉換，VoIP市場確實不易經營。
當Skype全球發燒後，網路電話以「重新振作」之姿，再度返回市場，但隨著VoIP業者獲利不佳、甚至關閉等消息不斷，VoIP還是隻金雞母嗎、或是如何讓VoIP成為搖錢樹？答案有待業者思考！
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
U.S. makes VoIP strides, but Europe is taking the lead
U.S. makes VoIP strides, but Europe is taking the lead
European incumbents, competitors drive new growth
by Sean Buckley
Mon, September 10. 2007
Despite some slowdowns with the closing of competitive VoIP providers such as Sunrocket (ceased operations earlier this summer) and the troubles of Vonage, the U.S. residential VoIP market continues to be a vibrant sector of growth.
While it’s true that the troubles of competitive VoIP providers have slowed down the growth of US VoIP, the cable operator’s voice drive has leveled out that trend.
According to Telegeography’s US VoIP Research Service, the number of U.S. consumers rose from 6.5 million in mid-2006 to 11.8 million by Q2 2007. (See Figure 1.)
By 2011, TeleGeography predicts that the number of U.S. VoIP subscribers will climb to 23.3 million, a factor that will driven mainly by the cable operator’s aggressive deployment of IP telephony services. Evidence of the growth in cable telephony is being seen not only on the retail side, but also the wholesale market side. Level 3, for example, which sells both traditional fiber connections and VoIP services to cable operators, is seeing this first hand.
“Cable today is the fastest growing wholesale segment that we serve,” said Sureel Choksi, President, Wholesale Markets for Level 3. “That growth is driven by growing backbone data requirements to support high- speed Internet and video and also driven by growth in VoIP and traditional voice.”
Europe takes charge
Despite the vibrant VoIP market that exists in the U.S., it pales in comparison to the growth that’s being seen in the European market. In recent years, the Europe and U.S. markets were seeing similar growth patterns, but then in 2006 the two markets began to splinter apart. There are many factors that are contributing to Europe’s lead over the U.S. in the VoIP race.
In addition to stronger activity from incumbent service providers (France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and BT), open access to incumbent local loops, aggressive competition and pricing have lead to Europe’s aggressive VoIP growth.
What’s more, TeleGeography says that while European incumbent providers account for 26 percent of VoIP subscribers, U.S. incumbent carriers (AT&T, Verizon and Qwest) have not made as big of a push into the residential VoIP market.
TeleGeography predicts if these above trends continue by 2011, European VoIP penetration will be twice what it will be in the U.S.
“VoIP service in the U.S. has emerged as a mainstream service that is causing traditional services providers some headaches,” Stephan Beckert, TeleGeogrpahy analyst, said. “However, in Europe, VoIP could fundamentally change the structure of the fixed-line market.”
Bridging TDM-to-IP
Those headaches that Beckert and other analysts are referring will likely be abated by new platforms from Tekelec that effectively enable a serviced provider to offer new multimedia services now, but provide a path for service providers to migrate to an IMS architecture on their own terms.
As service providers migrate to an IP and ultimately an IMS-based network architecture, there will be an ongoing need to support services in the legacy and IP and IMS domain.
Tekelec’s TekCore SIP Signaling Router (SSR), for one, allows a service provider to provide unified signaling over the TDM, 2G/3G, and ultimately the IMS network.
By implementing a unified core signaling in their next-gen network, the SSR can enable service providers to use their softswitches to better support session management for multimedia SIP endpoints. (see: Tekelec bridges the TDM-to-IP divide)
These platforms address what Venture Development Corporation says are responses to the reality of the fact that there will be hybrid TDM/IP networks will exist for years to come.
“Whole network change-outs of TDM to IP are likely to be the exception—not the rule,” says the VDC study.
European incumbents, competitors drive new growth
by Sean Buckley
Mon, September 10. 2007
Despite some slowdowns with the closing of competitive VoIP providers such as Sunrocket (ceased operations earlier this summer) and the troubles of Vonage, the U.S. residential VoIP market continues to be a vibrant sector of growth.
While it’s true that the troubles of competitive VoIP providers have slowed down the growth of US VoIP, the cable operator’s voice drive has leveled out that trend.
According to Telegeography’s US VoIP Research Service, the number of U.S. consumers rose from 6.5 million in mid-2006 to 11.8 million by Q2 2007. (See Figure 1.)
By 2011, TeleGeography predicts that the number of U.S. VoIP subscribers will climb to 23.3 million, a factor that will driven mainly by the cable operator’s aggressive deployment of IP telephony services. Evidence of the growth in cable telephony is being seen not only on the retail side, but also the wholesale market side. Level 3, for example, which sells both traditional fiber connections and VoIP services to cable operators, is seeing this first hand.
“Cable today is the fastest growing wholesale segment that we serve,” said Sureel Choksi, President, Wholesale Markets for Level 3. “That growth is driven by growing backbone data requirements to support high- speed Internet and video and also driven by growth in VoIP and traditional voice.”
Europe takes charge
Despite the vibrant VoIP market that exists in the U.S., it pales in comparison to the growth that’s being seen in the European market. In recent years, the Europe and U.S. markets were seeing similar growth patterns, but then in 2006 the two markets began to splinter apart. There are many factors that are contributing to Europe’s lead over the U.S. in the VoIP race.
In addition to stronger activity from incumbent service providers (France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and BT), open access to incumbent local loops, aggressive competition and pricing have lead to Europe’s aggressive VoIP growth.
What’s more, TeleGeography says that while European incumbent providers account for 26 percent of VoIP subscribers, U.S. incumbent carriers (AT&T, Verizon and Qwest) have not made as big of a push into the residential VoIP market.
TeleGeography predicts if these above trends continue by 2011, European VoIP penetration will be twice what it will be in the U.S.
“VoIP service in the U.S. has emerged as a mainstream service that is causing traditional services providers some headaches,” Stephan Beckert, TeleGeogrpahy analyst, said. “However, in Europe, VoIP could fundamentally change the structure of the fixed-line market.”
Bridging TDM-to-IP
Those headaches that Beckert and other analysts are referring will likely be abated by new platforms from Tekelec that effectively enable a serviced provider to offer new multimedia services now, but provide a path for service providers to migrate to an IMS architecture on their own terms.
As service providers migrate to an IP and ultimately an IMS-based network architecture, there will be an ongoing need to support services in the legacy and IP and IMS domain.
Tekelec’s TekCore SIP Signaling Router (SSR), for one, allows a service provider to provide unified signaling over the TDM, 2G/3G, and ultimately the IMS network.
By implementing a unified core signaling in their next-gen network, the SSR can enable service providers to use their softswitches to better support session management for multimedia SIP endpoints. (see: Tekelec bridges the TDM-to-IP divide)
These platforms address what Venture Development Corporation says are responses to the reality of the fact that there will be hybrid TDM/IP networks will exist for years to come.
“Whole network change-outs of TDM to IP are likely to be the exception—not the rule,” says the VDC study.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Monthly news by Mercator
IP Communications Newsletter
Mercator Capital is a privately-held investment bank focused on mergers & acquisitions, private placements, and strategic advisory services. Mercator's IP Communications Newsletter is a monthly analysis and commentary on the major business stories impacting the convergence of voice, video, data, and wireless communications.
1. iPhone – Redefining Telecom?
The June 29 iPhone launch was perhaps the most hyped telecom launch ever, and we find it interesting mostly because it was led by a company making its first foray into telecom. This story has been covered endlessly from many perspectives, but we will take a stab at commenting on the more pertinent strategic issues.
No other product launch in recent memory seems to have impacted so many companies and people, and for this reason alone, warrants coverage. The June 29 launch went largely as expected – Apple captured the hearts and wallets of the gadgerati, and the shortcomings of AT&T’s EDGE network quickly became apparent. If the product and service are successful, both companies stand to gain considerably from the iPhone.
Since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at MacWorld back in January (discussed in our February issue), the build-up has done wonders for Apple’s valuation, driving the company’s market cap from $70 billion to over $115 billion in six months, and it looks now like they have a worthy successor to the iPod for their next growth engine. AT&T, by association with one of the strongest consumer tech brands on earth, gains the cool factor with the most valuable demographic segment in the market.
Ultimately, the iPhone is a testament to the strength of the Apple brand more than the underlying technology. The iPhone is not perfect, and there is a real danger of it becoming a Swiss Army knife that meets a variety of needs but is not a game-changer. Much like the Motorola Razr, the iPhone raises the bar for mobility, but in a more radical way, they seek to redefine the entire smartphone experience. Never before has a single product or brand had this amount of power to shape the communications landscape. In time, we think Apple may succeed, but our view is that the June 29 launch is “iPhone 1.0”. There will be a lot of learning from this launch, and we believe Apple will build on it, and are focusing on the long-term global launch. It has already been reported that Apple is planning a nano version of the iPhone, perhaps by the end of this year.
AT&T also has a lot to gain from leveraging the power of Apple’s brand. In the wireless market, AT&T is going through their own re-branding process now that they own 100% of Cingular, and are shifting back to the AT&T name. During this transition, however, Verizon has been capturing more growth among new cellular subscribers. Verizon’s churn rate is considerably lower, with the most recent numbers being 1.1% compared to 1.7% for AT&T. As a result, Verizon has caught up to AT&T, with each now having roughly 62 million subscribers. For this reason alone, AT&T may have felt compelled to partner with Apple, especially since Verizon earlier passed on the iPhone. Verizon may claim to have a superior network, and have attractive smartphone partners, but for the time being iPhone will make AT&T the hot brand.
AT&T has invested heavily to upgrade their EDGE network, including $50 million just before the iPhone launch. However, the limitations of EDGE to support this phone are well known, and it is not clear why the phone was not designed to use the faster 3G HSDPA network, which is closer in performance to the 3G EVDO network used by both Verizon and Sprint Nextel.
We see one of two scenarios unfolding. The good news scenario would see AT&T remedy its network issues to properly support the full range of features that make the iPhone so compelling. That said, it remains to be seen how much subscribers will use battery-draining features such as music and video at the risk of depleting their power for phone usage. If the iPhone can somehow work to its potential on the EDGE network, AT&T can leverage their exclusive deal with Apple to great success. In this scenario, the iPhone’s relatively high price will not impede sales, enabling Apple’s brand power to command healthy margins. This will also deliver strong margins for AT&T as they will not need to subsidize subscribers to drive sales.
Conversely, if the EDGE network does not meet users’ performance expectations, the bad news scenario would see the iPhone plod along, but with some bumps in the road, such as the brief service outage subscribers experienced during the launch. In this scenario, perceptions of the iPhone could shift to being an expensive gadget, having a touch screen that only a geek could love, being an oversized iPod that happens to be a phone, and having a battery that is inconvenient and expensive to replace. Such an outcome would play nicely into Verizon’s hands, vindicating their view that the network trumps the device, and their wisdom in not succumbing to Apple’s initial demands. Verizon would also have more time to upgrade their handset line-up and get closer to feature parity with the iPhone, which would mitigate much of AT&T’s first mover advantage with Apple.
Strategically, we see the iPhone launch being important on several fronts. First, the iPhone is a very advanced consumer device, and Verizon may have more success catering to this market by offering less expensive, unlocked phones that deliver sufficient value for mainstream subscribers. The second front is the business market, which Apple is trying to crack by touting the iPhone as a smartphone. In this market, price is secondary to functionality, but they would be up against very established brands, especially Nokia and RIM. We are sceptical that business users will embrace a touch screen, a lesson that Microsoft learned years ago with their Pocket PC. Furthermore, the Apple brand will carry less weight in the business market, and we feel that Verizon is less at risk with business users than with consumers.
We will continue to monitor the iPhone story, with particular focus on how the three principal players – Apple, AT&T and Verizon – behave. It will be interesting to see whether Apple can make the iPhone a game-changer like the iPod, or if in the end, it becomes just another over-hyped consumer device.
2. Espial IPO – Staking Their Claim in IPTV Middleware
On June 8, Espial Group Inc. became a public company, listing on Canada’s premier exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). Going public is usually viewed as an exit strategy, but in Espial’s case, it appears to be a way of raising growth capital, and we have mixed views on the path they have taken.
First, it must be noted that the initial reception has been very positive. Espial’s IPO opened at $7.00, and generated about $25 million on the sale of some 3.5 million shares. This was supplemented by an over-allotment option that was exercised on June 15, yielding an additional $3.5 million. After deducting underwriting fees and expenses, Espial’s net proceeds from the IPO came in at $26.9 million, which is more than what the company raised from VC investors in two previous rounds dating back to 2000. Not only was the IPO over-subscribed, but the price has steadily climbed and has been trading around $9.00 for some time, a healthy 29% above the opening. This values the company with a market cap around $80 million, and an enterprise value of around $55 million net of cash, on 2006 revenues of $10.6 million.
Before considering what Espial will do with this money and their strong valuation, some context is in order. Espial is one of the few remaining independent IPTV middleware vendors, with the closest being Orca Interactive and Minerva Networks. Myrio is another important middleware vendor, but they are now part of the Nokia Siemens Networks business. These vendors are all competing against Microsoft, who is well positioned to dominate the middleware market, especially via their partnership with Alcatel-Lucent. For more detail, please see our IPTV middleware coverage in the May 2007 issue.
A primary reason behind the IPO is that Espial has been able to hold its own in this environment, and they see a strong upside for their technology. IPTV middleware is a key enabler for scale, which service providers will need to do as their trials expand to full deployment. There are actually two components for a complete middleware solution – one at the head-end that resides on the network server. The other is client-based, and is housed in the set-top box. Together, they ensure a consistent end user experience that provides customizable viewing choices along with integrated support for back end systems such as billing and support.
Espial’s Evo IPTV Service Platform provides these capabilities, and a differentiator for them is the platform’s modular nature, as well as being based on open standards. This allows for flexibility across a range of deployment scenarios, making Espial more adaptable than the all-inclusive Microsoft offering. That said, we expect Microsoft will end up dominating the Tier 1 market, where the norm is a single vendor, single point of contact solution.
Espial, on the other hand, thrives in a best-of-breed environment, and at this stage of the market’s development, is in no immediate danger of fading away. This has, in fact, been borne out by their base of over 45 carrier customers, including Tier 1's such as NTT and Belgacom. Espial’s customer base is complemented by a diverse network of channel partners, including Sumitomo and NEC in Japan, Nokia Siemens and Motorola in Europe, Cisco/Scientific-Atlanta in the U.S. All told, this translates into a global presence, with particular strength in Asia and Europe, which are the leading IPTV markets. Espial began deploying in 2003, and by their estimate, has sold over one million licenses to date.
All of these pieces add up to a strong story, but for a company moving to the next level, their IPO strategy leads us to wonder if this was the best route to take. An IPO definitely makes a statement that Espial has the means to control their own destiny, not just to become a leading independent middleware vendor, but also attempt to compete with Microsoft in some markets. They have stated that the funding will allow them to build on their 2006 spend of $5 million on R&D. Espial currently has two pending patents and two issued patents, and continued investment in their intellectual property will be money well spent. This market is still emerging, and we feel that a strategy of building out the capabilities of their Evo platform will be the best way to create sustainable competitive advantage.
With that said, we must also ask why they chose to list in Canada. The TSX may be Canada’s leading exchange, but it is not where one would expect to find an IPTV middleware vendor. Perhaps they could have raised more money on NASDAQ; then again, most $10-20 million revenue companies do not fare very well on NASDAQ. Going forward, the TSX may limit their ability to attract additional investment that will be needed should they choose to become a consolidator, though it is worth noting that Espial has stated they have no immediate acquisition plans. London's AIM was also a plausible alternative, but track records for other early stage Canadian companies such as Newport Networks have not necessarily proven as positive case studies.
On the other hand, it may be that as a Canadian company, they chose to list on home soil as a show of support for the domestic tech community. If so, a TSX listing may make sense given that their current capital requirements are modest. Another contributing factor is that VenGrowth, one of Espial’s venture investors, is also publicly traded on TSX, and they have strong connections to the exchange, which likely enabled the listing and contributed to the positive reception to Espial's IPO.
But given Espial’s relatively small size and short history, why go public, and why go now? Recent telecom IPOs have had mixed results, and IPTV is not widely understood or truly proven as a mainstream technology that average investors can fully embrace. It is possible that the company’s Board and management team felt that an IPO was the best alternative to raising capital from private sources. Clearly the company was able to raise a substantial amount of capital – over $25 million – without the existing investors having to kick in any additional money. But at the same time, the event did not provide any liquidity to its investors, and now the company has to deal with the extra overhead of operating as a small public company, subject to the scrutiny and expectations of Wall Street (or Bay Street, as the case may be).
Finally, as investment bankers, we must pose the question if an IPO was the best alternative for a company of their stature. Clearly, Espial believes strongly in their future as an independent, but in terms of return on investment, it remains to be seen if they would have been better off exiting via acquisition. We are seeing very lucrative exits right now, and we think it may have been possible to achieve a higher valuation in a strategic sale, and provide more near-term liquidity to investors. But now that the valuation has been set by the public markets, the company’s exit possibilities via acquisition may be more limited, or at the very least its financials are more transparent. We wish them the best of luck, and congratulate Espial on the strong performance thus far.
3. ShoreTel IPO – PBX Vendor Consolidation Continues
Mercator has been closely following the enterprise communications market, and has been anticipating a consolidation trend among the vendors for some time. In our March issue, we focused on the opportunities we see in the hosted IP market, and in June, we evaluated the Mitel/Inter-Tel deal, which has yet to close. With Avaya also being bought out, and Cisco making a strong push in the SMB market (covered in the May issue), there is considerable consolidation taking place, especially among PBX and IP PBX vendors.
Not only are traditional PBX vendors struggling to transition their offerings to IP, but a growing number are trying to address the SMB market, which many view as an untapped growth opportunity. This remains to be seen, as it has a distinct set of challenges, and our view is that vendors with a history with SMB are better positioned for success than new entrants. One established vendor, ShoreTel, has focused on SMB customers from day one, and was hoping that a successful IPO would raise enough capital to allow them to keep pace with their competitors, and secure their standing as a leading Tier 2 player.
This sets the stage for our focus on ShoreTel’s rocky, yet ultimately successful, initial public offering. The company originally set the terms of their IPO on June 11, and indicated a pricing range of $8.50 to $10.50 per share. On June 27, the company priced at $10.50, the top end of the range, with the expectation to begin trading the next day on June 28. But that same night they locked in the terms of the IPO, the company was slapped with a patent infringement lawsuit by Mitel, an event that was not previously disclosed as a potential risk factor, which subsequently placed the IPO on hold. After a few more days of delay, the offering was re-priced at $9.50 per share, and the shares began trading on July 3.
ShoreTel’s shares opened at $9.80 on July 3, and closed at $12.15, for a 28% gain on Day 1. Since then the stock has traded between $12.00-$13.00, giving the company a market capitalization of over $500 million. The company’s underwriters confirmed that the over-allotment was fully exercised, resulting in about 9 million shares being sold, and netting the company around $80 million in cash from the IPO. Clearly the Mitel lawsuit did not provide too much of an overhang on the business to prevent it from completing its offering.
Similar to Espial, this is a relatively small company, but ShoreTel has been on a healthy growth path, and an IPO sends some strong messages to the IP PBX market. Their 2006 revenues were $61.6 million, more than triple 2004 sales of $18.8 million. They are modestly profitable, having achieved several quarters of profitability and posting earnings of $4.2 million at the end of Q1 07. Their market valuation around $500 million is a much higher multiple than the $691 million that Mitel is paying for Inter-Tel, which has revenues of over $450 million. Shoretel’s IPO puts the company closer to the top end of the IP PBX food chain, giving them far more control over their destiny than if they had remained private.
Aside from helping themselves, the IPO is good news for enterprises and SMBs, who are in a difficult environment for making buying decisions around telephony and communications systems. Considering just the aforementioned companies in this article, it is easy to see why businesses would be apprehensive about making investments in mission-critical technologies that also have a long lifespan. Telecom systems are often in place for 10 years or more, and given how IP is continuously evolving, buyers need to believe their vendor will be here for the long run.
All of ShoreTel’s offerings are IP-based, though some people argue that Shoretel’s combined switch/gateway architecture make it more of a legacy TDM PBX with an IP wrapper. Though designed as a next generation PBX from day one, it is not considered a pure IP PBX by some experts who look at software-based native SIP solutions as more elegant approaches. That being said, Shoretel is known for its high marks for simplicity and strong customer satisfaction, so for businesses ready to migrate to an IP-based phone system, Shoretel’s IPO may give a stronger sense of security as an established brand name.
The proceeds from the IPO will allow ShoreTel to continue its focus on innovation and R&D. We feel this is the best way for them to carve out a niche that can be defended, as competitive pressures from majors like Cisco, Avaya and Nortel will only increase. Their latest IP PBX release, ShoreTel 7, has several innovative features that are built around ease of use, and intuitive integration between traditional calling features and PC-based communications.
One is a programmable toolbar, which provides click-to-call functionality from the desktop. Another is Auto Find Me, which provides a nice twist from most Find-Me/Follow-Me features, in that a call can continuously be transferred until a call is picked up. This capability would be particularly useful in contact centers, as would another feature we like – customizable ring tones. Aside from these features, ShoreTel recently announced their Managed Services Program, which provides SMBs an affordable solution for IP telephony.
In closing, we think that the ShoreTel IPO is another example of a successful exit for a telecom company, though longer-term it remains to be seen if they can remain independent, competing against companies who are orders of magnitude larger.
4. Art of the Deal: Google Acquires GrandCentral
With billion dollar deals being the norm lately, it may seem unusual to feature such a small acquisition here. Though earlier rumored, official announcements were made on July 2 that Google had acquired GrandCentral Communications. There has been little public press about this deal, and we believe that the value was in the area of $50 million. This is minuscule by Google’s standards, but we think the business implications are far more important than the dollars involved.
GrandCentral has received a significant attention in the past few months, and is just one of many companies coming to market now with services and applications targeted at mobile users. Their application is built around the idea that people have multiple phone numbers, and it would be easier to manage them in a centralized manner. To do this, GrandCentral issues the caller a phone number to which all your phone numbers are attached. This allows people to just give out a single phone number, so callers do not have to keep trying multiple numbers to reach someone. Intuitively, this is a convenient service to use, especially since it is free, yet it is little more than a new twist on unified messaging. In April, they launched a mobile version, which has only served to increase GrandCentral’s popularity.
GrandCentral was launched in late 2005, and reportedly raised about $6 million. The company’s two founders were fresh from a successful exit with Dialpad Communications, which was acquired by Yahoo in June 2005. At the time, this deal was seen as a way for Yahoo to compete with Skype, as they had been late to market with voice. We see some parallels to what Google is doing here, and it stands to reason that the experience of GrandCentral’s founders was a key factor in this deal. It was during their recent second round of fundraising that Google recognized this opportunity, and bypassed the VCs by buying the company outright.
At first glance, it is easy to see how GrandCentral could complement Gmail and even GoogleTalk. Gmail would serve an inbox for voicemail across all your phone numbers, where messages can be played back (in MP3), forwarded, prioritized, deleted, etc. This utility makes Google much more interesting beyond Instant Messaging as a communications platform, and more importantly, helps drive voice traffic on to their network.
In that regard, GrandCentral would appear to be better off as the gatekeeper in a large and growing network, than to be a standalone offering that anyone can use for free. Despite being well received at last year’s Demo conference, and the subsequent critical acclaim from the press and users, there is no apparent business model here. This supports our view that it is very difficult to build a business around an application or utility, especially without a user-based revenue stream. Furthermore, users can only benefit from GrandCentral by changing their behavior.
For GrandCentral to be successful, users must adopt new approaches. In order to make the service useful, users would have to add a new phone number to their letterhead, business cards, etc., and they must also get all the people who call them to get in the habit of using this single number. Unless this happens, there is no real benefit to using GrandCentral. And if it does happen, the service needs to work properly, all the time. Since GrandCentral is still only a Beta release, we question whether it is the right technology for Google to invest in. There have been several accounts of missed calls, dropped transfers, etc. during their beta, and when a free service for something as important as telephony does not work, it will not last long.
The bigger question is what Google plans to do with GrandCentral. Aside from the complementary nature of GrandCentral described above, we believe there is something bigger and more fundamental to Google’s aspirations. Our view is that Google is looking to extend their advertising-driven business model from text and video to voice. Search provides the basis for a very profitable, self-perpetuating text business. YouTube does the same for them in video with an endless stream of free, user-generated content.
Google lacks such a generator in the voice space, and we believe this is why they launched GOOG-411 in April, which is a free directory assistance service meant to compete directly with toll-based 411 calls. The same logic applies to GrandCentral, because once their application runs on Google’s network, they will have access to a host of voice messages, generated either by the subscriber or the callers leaving messages. Clearly, this raises some privacy issues we cannot address in our analysis, and is an example what Google is doing that is causing many to question their reach into our personal lives.
That aside, voice data may be of long-term strategic value to Google, and GrandCentral is a good way to begin to acquire it. Simply put, the more voice traffic they can aggregate, the more data points they will have to develop speech recognition expertise, which is a fundamental building block for their business model to work with voice. It can be argued that Google could develop this expertise more quickly and efficiently by licensing speech recognition from vendors such as Nuance. However, it appears that Google wants voice to be a core competence, so they appear to be less interested in partnering.
Regardless of the valuation, we are a little puzzled as to why Google chose GrandCentral now compared to some other potentially more valuable options. GrandCentral seems to bring only one piece of the speech recognition and unified communications pie, and it is not yet a revenue generating service, still operating in beta. Clearly there are still other independent companies available that could complement GrandCentral, including established companies such as Iotum and Parus Interactive, both of which have been mentioned in previous Mercator newsletters. Only time will tell if Google will be able to make GrandCentral a central part of its grand plans to dominate the Internet.
5. Financial Highlights
Company Product/Services Development Details
Andrew Communication equipment and systems provider Acquisition Acquired by CommScope for $2.7B
Aventail Provider of SSL VPN remote access solutions Acquisition Acquired by SonicWall for $25M
CableMatrix Technologies Offers software platforms for enabling broadband operators to deploy Internet services Acquisition Acquired by Sandvine Corporation for an undisclosed amount
Digital Envoy Provides Internet protocol intelligence technology solutions Acquisition Acquired by Landmark Communications for an undisclosed amount
Fonav Provider of unified communications platform Acquisition Acquired by Trolltech AS for an undisclosed amount
GrandCentral Communications Provider of unified communications solutions Acquisition Acquired by Google for estimated $50M
Neon Communications Provider of network transport services Acquisition Acquired by RCN for $260M
NewHeights Software Internet software Acquisition Acquired by CounterPath Solutions for $14.7M
Tegic Communications Provider of communication technologies Acquisition Acquired by Nuance Communications for $265M
VoIP Solutions Provides Voice over IP (VoIP) solutions to the communications industry Acquisition Acquired by WQN for an undisclosed amount
Aylus Networks Provider of multimedia sharing technology for mobile networks Financing Raised $15M
BroadLogic Network Technologies Provides broadband networking equipment Financing Raised $17M
Hammerhead Systems Provides aggregation, interworking, and migration solutions for Ethernet services Financing Raised $10M
LiveVox Provider of hosted and tailored Internet voice services Financing Raised $7.1M
Nimbuzz Provider of VoIP and telecommunications applications Financing Raised $10M
Ortiva Wireless Provider of mobile content delivery solutions Financing Raised $15M
PermissionTV Provider of Internet video technology Financing Raised $9M
Radlive Provider of enterprise telephony solutions Financing Raised $7.7M
Revision3 Internet television network Financing Raised $8M
Tatara Systems Provider of converged mobile solutions Financing Raised $8M
Veoh Networks Provides a system for distributing television and video content Financing Raised $26M
Mercator Capital is a privately-held investment bank focused on mergers & acquisitions, private placements, and strategic advisory services. Mercator's IP Communications Newsletter is a monthly analysis and commentary on the major business stories impacting the convergence of voice, video, data, and wireless communications.
1. iPhone – Redefining Telecom?
The June 29 iPhone launch was perhaps the most hyped telecom launch ever, and we find it interesting mostly because it was led by a company making its first foray into telecom. This story has been covered endlessly from many perspectives, but we will take a stab at commenting on the more pertinent strategic issues.
No other product launch in recent memory seems to have impacted so many companies and people, and for this reason alone, warrants coverage. The June 29 launch went largely as expected – Apple captured the hearts and wallets of the gadgerati, and the shortcomings of AT&T’s EDGE network quickly became apparent. If the product and service are successful, both companies stand to gain considerably from the iPhone.
Since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at MacWorld back in January (discussed in our February issue), the build-up has done wonders for Apple’s valuation, driving the company’s market cap from $70 billion to over $115 billion in six months, and it looks now like they have a worthy successor to the iPod for their next growth engine. AT&T, by association with one of the strongest consumer tech brands on earth, gains the cool factor with the most valuable demographic segment in the market.
Ultimately, the iPhone is a testament to the strength of the Apple brand more than the underlying technology. The iPhone is not perfect, and there is a real danger of it becoming a Swiss Army knife that meets a variety of needs but is not a game-changer. Much like the Motorola Razr, the iPhone raises the bar for mobility, but in a more radical way, they seek to redefine the entire smartphone experience. Never before has a single product or brand had this amount of power to shape the communications landscape. In time, we think Apple may succeed, but our view is that the June 29 launch is “iPhone 1.0”. There will be a lot of learning from this launch, and we believe Apple will build on it, and are focusing on the long-term global launch. It has already been reported that Apple is planning a nano version of the iPhone, perhaps by the end of this year.
AT&T also has a lot to gain from leveraging the power of Apple’s brand. In the wireless market, AT&T is going through their own re-branding process now that they own 100% of Cingular, and are shifting back to the AT&T name. During this transition, however, Verizon has been capturing more growth among new cellular subscribers. Verizon’s churn rate is considerably lower, with the most recent numbers being 1.1% compared to 1.7% for AT&T. As a result, Verizon has caught up to AT&T, with each now having roughly 62 million subscribers. For this reason alone, AT&T may have felt compelled to partner with Apple, especially since Verizon earlier passed on the iPhone. Verizon may claim to have a superior network, and have attractive smartphone partners, but for the time being iPhone will make AT&T the hot brand.
AT&T has invested heavily to upgrade their EDGE network, including $50 million just before the iPhone launch. However, the limitations of EDGE to support this phone are well known, and it is not clear why the phone was not designed to use the faster 3G HSDPA network, which is closer in performance to the 3G EVDO network used by both Verizon and Sprint Nextel.
We see one of two scenarios unfolding. The good news scenario would see AT&T remedy its network issues to properly support the full range of features that make the iPhone so compelling. That said, it remains to be seen how much subscribers will use battery-draining features such as music and video at the risk of depleting their power for phone usage. If the iPhone can somehow work to its potential on the EDGE network, AT&T can leverage their exclusive deal with Apple to great success. In this scenario, the iPhone’s relatively high price will not impede sales, enabling Apple’s brand power to command healthy margins. This will also deliver strong margins for AT&T as they will not need to subsidize subscribers to drive sales.
Conversely, if the EDGE network does not meet users’ performance expectations, the bad news scenario would see the iPhone plod along, but with some bumps in the road, such as the brief service outage subscribers experienced during the launch. In this scenario, perceptions of the iPhone could shift to being an expensive gadget, having a touch screen that only a geek could love, being an oversized iPod that happens to be a phone, and having a battery that is inconvenient and expensive to replace. Such an outcome would play nicely into Verizon’s hands, vindicating their view that the network trumps the device, and their wisdom in not succumbing to Apple’s initial demands. Verizon would also have more time to upgrade their handset line-up and get closer to feature parity with the iPhone, which would mitigate much of AT&T’s first mover advantage with Apple.
Strategically, we see the iPhone launch being important on several fronts. First, the iPhone is a very advanced consumer device, and Verizon may have more success catering to this market by offering less expensive, unlocked phones that deliver sufficient value for mainstream subscribers. The second front is the business market, which Apple is trying to crack by touting the iPhone as a smartphone. In this market, price is secondary to functionality, but they would be up against very established brands, especially Nokia and RIM. We are sceptical that business users will embrace a touch screen, a lesson that Microsoft learned years ago with their Pocket PC. Furthermore, the Apple brand will carry less weight in the business market, and we feel that Verizon is less at risk with business users than with consumers.
We will continue to monitor the iPhone story, with particular focus on how the three principal players – Apple, AT&T and Verizon – behave. It will be interesting to see whether Apple can make the iPhone a game-changer like the iPod, or if in the end, it becomes just another over-hyped consumer device.
2. Espial IPO – Staking Their Claim in IPTV Middleware
On June 8, Espial Group Inc. became a public company, listing on Canada’s premier exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). Going public is usually viewed as an exit strategy, but in Espial’s case, it appears to be a way of raising growth capital, and we have mixed views on the path they have taken.
First, it must be noted that the initial reception has been very positive. Espial’s IPO opened at $7.00, and generated about $25 million on the sale of some 3.5 million shares. This was supplemented by an over-allotment option that was exercised on June 15, yielding an additional $3.5 million. After deducting underwriting fees and expenses, Espial’s net proceeds from the IPO came in at $26.9 million, which is more than what the company raised from VC investors in two previous rounds dating back to 2000. Not only was the IPO over-subscribed, but the price has steadily climbed and has been trading around $9.00 for some time, a healthy 29% above the opening. This values the company with a market cap around $80 million, and an enterprise value of around $55 million net of cash, on 2006 revenues of $10.6 million.
Before considering what Espial will do with this money and their strong valuation, some context is in order. Espial is one of the few remaining independent IPTV middleware vendors, with the closest being Orca Interactive and Minerva Networks. Myrio is another important middleware vendor, but they are now part of the Nokia Siemens Networks business. These vendors are all competing against Microsoft, who is well positioned to dominate the middleware market, especially via their partnership with Alcatel-Lucent. For more detail, please see our IPTV middleware coverage in the May 2007 issue.
A primary reason behind the IPO is that Espial has been able to hold its own in this environment, and they see a strong upside for their technology. IPTV middleware is a key enabler for scale, which service providers will need to do as their trials expand to full deployment. There are actually two components for a complete middleware solution – one at the head-end that resides on the network server. The other is client-based, and is housed in the set-top box. Together, they ensure a consistent end user experience that provides customizable viewing choices along with integrated support for back end systems such as billing and support.
Espial’s Evo IPTV Service Platform provides these capabilities, and a differentiator for them is the platform’s modular nature, as well as being based on open standards. This allows for flexibility across a range of deployment scenarios, making Espial more adaptable than the all-inclusive Microsoft offering. That said, we expect Microsoft will end up dominating the Tier 1 market, where the norm is a single vendor, single point of contact solution.
Espial, on the other hand, thrives in a best-of-breed environment, and at this stage of the market’s development, is in no immediate danger of fading away. This has, in fact, been borne out by their base of over 45 carrier customers, including Tier 1's such as NTT and Belgacom. Espial’s customer base is complemented by a diverse network of channel partners, including Sumitomo and NEC in Japan, Nokia Siemens and Motorola in Europe, Cisco/Scientific-Atlanta in the U.S. All told, this translates into a global presence, with particular strength in Asia and Europe, which are the leading IPTV markets. Espial began deploying in 2003, and by their estimate, has sold over one million licenses to date.
All of these pieces add up to a strong story, but for a company moving to the next level, their IPO strategy leads us to wonder if this was the best route to take. An IPO definitely makes a statement that Espial has the means to control their own destiny, not just to become a leading independent middleware vendor, but also attempt to compete with Microsoft in some markets. They have stated that the funding will allow them to build on their 2006 spend of $5 million on R&D. Espial currently has two pending patents and two issued patents, and continued investment in their intellectual property will be money well spent. This market is still emerging, and we feel that a strategy of building out the capabilities of their Evo platform will be the best way to create sustainable competitive advantage.
With that said, we must also ask why they chose to list in Canada. The TSX may be Canada’s leading exchange, but it is not where one would expect to find an IPTV middleware vendor. Perhaps they could have raised more money on NASDAQ; then again, most $10-20 million revenue companies do not fare very well on NASDAQ. Going forward, the TSX may limit their ability to attract additional investment that will be needed should they choose to become a consolidator, though it is worth noting that Espial has stated they have no immediate acquisition plans. London's AIM was also a plausible alternative, but track records for other early stage Canadian companies such as Newport Networks have not necessarily proven as positive case studies.
On the other hand, it may be that as a Canadian company, they chose to list on home soil as a show of support for the domestic tech community. If so, a TSX listing may make sense given that their current capital requirements are modest. Another contributing factor is that VenGrowth, one of Espial’s venture investors, is also publicly traded on TSX, and they have strong connections to the exchange, which likely enabled the listing and contributed to the positive reception to Espial's IPO.
But given Espial’s relatively small size and short history, why go public, and why go now? Recent telecom IPOs have had mixed results, and IPTV is not widely understood or truly proven as a mainstream technology that average investors can fully embrace. It is possible that the company’s Board and management team felt that an IPO was the best alternative to raising capital from private sources. Clearly the company was able to raise a substantial amount of capital – over $25 million – without the existing investors having to kick in any additional money. But at the same time, the event did not provide any liquidity to its investors, and now the company has to deal with the extra overhead of operating as a small public company, subject to the scrutiny and expectations of Wall Street (or Bay Street, as the case may be).
Finally, as investment bankers, we must pose the question if an IPO was the best alternative for a company of their stature. Clearly, Espial believes strongly in their future as an independent, but in terms of return on investment, it remains to be seen if they would have been better off exiting via acquisition. We are seeing very lucrative exits right now, and we think it may have been possible to achieve a higher valuation in a strategic sale, and provide more near-term liquidity to investors. But now that the valuation has been set by the public markets, the company’s exit possibilities via acquisition may be more limited, or at the very least its financials are more transparent. We wish them the best of luck, and congratulate Espial on the strong performance thus far.
3. ShoreTel IPO – PBX Vendor Consolidation Continues
Mercator has been closely following the enterprise communications market, and has been anticipating a consolidation trend among the vendors for some time. In our March issue, we focused on the opportunities we see in the hosted IP market, and in June, we evaluated the Mitel/Inter-Tel deal, which has yet to close. With Avaya also being bought out, and Cisco making a strong push in the SMB market (covered in the May issue), there is considerable consolidation taking place, especially among PBX and IP PBX vendors.
Not only are traditional PBX vendors struggling to transition their offerings to IP, but a growing number are trying to address the SMB market, which many view as an untapped growth opportunity. This remains to be seen, as it has a distinct set of challenges, and our view is that vendors with a history with SMB are better positioned for success than new entrants. One established vendor, ShoreTel, has focused on SMB customers from day one, and was hoping that a successful IPO would raise enough capital to allow them to keep pace with their competitors, and secure their standing as a leading Tier 2 player.
This sets the stage for our focus on ShoreTel’s rocky, yet ultimately successful, initial public offering. The company originally set the terms of their IPO on June 11, and indicated a pricing range of $8.50 to $10.50 per share. On June 27, the company priced at $10.50, the top end of the range, with the expectation to begin trading the next day on June 28. But that same night they locked in the terms of the IPO, the company was slapped with a patent infringement lawsuit by Mitel, an event that was not previously disclosed as a potential risk factor, which subsequently placed the IPO on hold. After a few more days of delay, the offering was re-priced at $9.50 per share, and the shares began trading on July 3.
ShoreTel’s shares opened at $9.80 on July 3, and closed at $12.15, for a 28% gain on Day 1. Since then the stock has traded between $12.00-$13.00, giving the company a market capitalization of over $500 million. The company’s underwriters confirmed that the over-allotment was fully exercised, resulting in about 9 million shares being sold, and netting the company around $80 million in cash from the IPO. Clearly the Mitel lawsuit did not provide too much of an overhang on the business to prevent it from completing its offering.
Similar to Espial, this is a relatively small company, but ShoreTel has been on a healthy growth path, and an IPO sends some strong messages to the IP PBX market. Their 2006 revenues were $61.6 million, more than triple 2004 sales of $18.8 million. They are modestly profitable, having achieved several quarters of profitability and posting earnings of $4.2 million at the end of Q1 07. Their market valuation around $500 million is a much higher multiple than the $691 million that Mitel is paying for Inter-Tel, which has revenues of over $450 million. Shoretel’s IPO puts the company closer to the top end of the IP PBX food chain, giving them far more control over their destiny than if they had remained private.
Aside from helping themselves, the IPO is good news for enterprises and SMBs, who are in a difficult environment for making buying decisions around telephony and communications systems. Considering just the aforementioned companies in this article, it is easy to see why businesses would be apprehensive about making investments in mission-critical technologies that also have a long lifespan. Telecom systems are often in place for 10 years or more, and given how IP is continuously evolving, buyers need to believe their vendor will be here for the long run.
All of ShoreTel’s offerings are IP-based, though some people argue that Shoretel’s combined switch/gateway architecture make it more of a legacy TDM PBX with an IP wrapper. Though designed as a next generation PBX from day one, it is not considered a pure IP PBX by some experts who look at software-based native SIP solutions as more elegant approaches. That being said, Shoretel is known for its high marks for simplicity and strong customer satisfaction, so for businesses ready to migrate to an IP-based phone system, Shoretel’s IPO may give a stronger sense of security as an established brand name.
The proceeds from the IPO will allow ShoreTel to continue its focus on innovation and R&D. We feel this is the best way for them to carve out a niche that can be defended, as competitive pressures from majors like Cisco, Avaya and Nortel will only increase. Their latest IP PBX release, ShoreTel 7, has several innovative features that are built around ease of use, and intuitive integration between traditional calling features and PC-based communications.
One is a programmable toolbar, which provides click-to-call functionality from the desktop. Another is Auto Find Me, which provides a nice twist from most Find-Me/Follow-Me features, in that a call can continuously be transferred until a call is picked up. This capability would be particularly useful in contact centers, as would another feature we like – customizable ring tones. Aside from these features, ShoreTel recently announced their Managed Services Program, which provides SMBs an affordable solution for IP telephony.
In closing, we think that the ShoreTel IPO is another example of a successful exit for a telecom company, though longer-term it remains to be seen if they can remain independent, competing against companies who are orders of magnitude larger.
4. Art of the Deal: Google Acquires GrandCentral
With billion dollar deals being the norm lately, it may seem unusual to feature such a small acquisition here. Though earlier rumored, official announcements were made on July 2 that Google had acquired GrandCentral Communications. There has been little public press about this deal, and we believe that the value was in the area of $50 million. This is minuscule by Google’s standards, but we think the business implications are far more important than the dollars involved.
GrandCentral has received a significant attention in the past few months, and is just one of many companies coming to market now with services and applications targeted at mobile users. Their application is built around the idea that people have multiple phone numbers, and it would be easier to manage them in a centralized manner. To do this, GrandCentral issues the caller a phone number to which all your phone numbers are attached. This allows people to just give out a single phone number, so callers do not have to keep trying multiple numbers to reach someone. Intuitively, this is a convenient service to use, especially since it is free, yet it is little more than a new twist on unified messaging. In April, they launched a mobile version, which has only served to increase GrandCentral’s popularity.
GrandCentral was launched in late 2005, and reportedly raised about $6 million. The company’s two founders were fresh from a successful exit with Dialpad Communications, which was acquired by Yahoo in June 2005. At the time, this deal was seen as a way for Yahoo to compete with Skype, as they had been late to market with voice. We see some parallels to what Google is doing here, and it stands to reason that the experience of GrandCentral’s founders was a key factor in this deal. It was during their recent second round of fundraising that Google recognized this opportunity, and bypassed the VCs by buying the company outright.
At first glance, it is easy to see how GrandCentral could complement Gmail and even GoogleTalk. Gmail would serve an inbox for voicemail across all your phone numbers, where messages can be played back (in MP3), forwarded, prioritized, deleted, etc. This utility makes Google much more interesting beyond Instant Messaging as a communications platform, and more importantly, helps drive voice traffic on to their network.
In that regard, GrandCentral would appear to be better off as the gatekeeper in a large and growing network, than to be a standalone offering that anyone can use for free. Despite being well received at last year’s Demo conference, and the subsequent critical acclaim from the press and users, there is no apparent business model here. This supports our view that it is very difficult to build a business around an application or utility, especially without a user-based revenue stream. Furthermore, users can only benefit from GrandCentral by changing their behavior.
For GrandCentral to be successful, users must adopt new approaches. In order to make the service useful, users would have to add a new phone number to their letterhead, business cards, etc., and they must also get all the people who call them to get in the habit of using this single number. Unless this happens, there is no real benefit to using GrandCentral. And if it does happen, the service needs to work properly, all the time. Since GrandCentral is still only a Beta release, we question whether it is the right technology for Google to invest in. There have been several accounts of missed calls, dropped transfers, etc. during their beta, and when a free service for something as important as telephony does not work, it will not last long.
The bigger question is what Google plans to do with GrandCentral. Aside from the complementary nature of GrandCentral described above, we believe there is something bigger and more fundamental to Google’s aspirations. Our view is that Google is looking to extend their advertising-driven business model from text and video to voice. Search provides the basis for a very profitable, self-perpetuating text business. YouTube does the same for them in video with an endless stream of free, user-generated content.
Google lacks such a generator in the voice space, and we believe this is why they launched GOOG-411 in April, which is a free directory assistance service meant to compete directly with toll-based 411 calls. The same logic applies to GrandCentral, because once their application runs on Google’s network, they will have access to a host of voice messages, generated either by the subscriber or the callers leaving messages. Clearly, this raises some privacy issues we cannot address in our analysis, and is an example what Google is doing that is causing many to question their reach into our personal lives.
That aside, voice data may be of long-term strategic value to Google, and GrandCentral is a good way to begin to acquire it. Simply put, the more voice traffic they can aggregate, the more data points they will have to develop speech recognition expertise, which is a fundamental building block for their business model to work with voice. It can be argued that Google could develop this expertise more quickly and efficiently by licensing speech recognition from vendors such as Nuance. However, it appears that Google wants voice to be a core competence, so they appear to be less interested in partnering.
Regardless of the valuation, we are a little puzzled as to why Google chose GrandCentral now compared to some other potentially more valuable options. GrandCentral seems to bring only one piece of the speech recognition and unified communications pie, and it is not yet a revenue generating service, still operating in beta. Clearly there are still other independent companies available that could complement GrandCentral, including established companies such as Iotum and Parus Interactive, both of which have been mentioned in previous Mercator newsletters. Only time will tell if Google will be able to make GrandCentral a central part of its grand plans to dominate the Internet.
5. Financial Highlights
Company Product/Services Development Details
Andrew Communication equipment and systems provider Acquisition Acquired by CommScope for $2.7B
Aventail Provider of SSL VPN remote access solutions Acquisition Acquired by SonicWall for $25M
CableMatrix Technologies Offers software platforms for enabling broadband operators to deploy Internet services Acquisition Acquired by Sandvine Corporation for an undisclosed amount
Digital Envoy Provides Internet protocol intelligence technology solutions Acquisition Acquired by Landmark Communications for an undisclosed amount
Fonav Provider of unified communications platform Acquisition Acquired by Trolltech AS for an undisclosed amount
GrandCentral Communications Provider of unified communications solutions Acquisition Acquired by Google for estimated $50M
Neon Communications Provider of network transport services Acquisition Acquired by RCN for $260M
NewHeights Software Internet software Acquisition Acquired by CounterPath Solutions for $14.7M
Tegic Communications Provider of communication technologies Acquisition Acquired by Nuance Communications for $265M
VoIP Solutions Provides Voice over IP (VoIP) solutions to the communications industry Acquisition Acquired by WQN for an undisclosed amount
Aylus Networks Provider of multimedia sharing technology for mobile networks Financing Raised $15M
BroadLogic Network Technologies Provides broadband networking equipment Financing Raised $17M
Hammerhead Systems Provides aggregation, interworking, and migration solutions for Ethernet services Financing Raised $10M
LiveVox Provider of hosted and tailored Internet voice services Financing Raised $7.1M
Nimbuzz Provider of VoIP and telecommunications applications Financing Raised $10M
Ortiva Wireless Provider of mobile content delivery solutions Financing Raised $15M
PermissionTV Provider of Internet video technology Financing Raised $9M
Radlive Provider of enterprise telephony solutions Financing Raised $7.7M
Revision3 Internet television network Financing Raised $8M
Tatara Systems Provider of converged mobile solutions Financing Raised $8M
Veoh Networks Provides a system for distributing television and video content Financing Raised $26M
Thursday, May 17, 2007
VoIP Solution provider vs service provider
VoIP solution provider including wholesales, CPE provider and System provider developing the product day by day. Every vendor compete with themselves rather than their competitors. When they do lots of effort on the product and proud to show their customer, service provider. Then, they found they are so really interested in the poroduct itself.
It is quite different from the mobile phone vendor. They are not so care about those service provider. They just care about what people, really end user, like. Of course, those mobile srevice provider still not so interested in the new tehcnology. Why, it just because the service provider only care about the voice traffic.
Back to the VoIP service provider, there are 2 kinds of service provider. ITSP and Carrier. Carrier own the existing analog voice service, while ITSP own nothing. If carrier promote the VoIP too much, it will be harm to their existing analog voice business. The ITSP service provider is the best candidate for those equipment provider. Yet, most of the ITSP does not have enough capital to provide free equipment to end user. It will be stuggle for the equipment provider to judge whether to lower price by cuuting their margin or keep the same price and build the barrier for the subscriber to join the ITSP's service.
In my opinion, those are not real good business. There comes the chance when enterprise solution become popular and mature. If a enterprise need a IP PBX which could replace their existing PBX and with boundle the service it could also make the toll saving call. Then it is good for business user and service provider. Eauipment provider could sell it with its own promotion and bring the customer to those service provider. The service provider will happy if they bring the solution.
Being tired of developing more than 20 voice products IP Phone, TA, Gateway, IAD, WiFi Phone, and even videophone, I did not find the future of the VoIP equipment provider. Up to this year, I saw lots of IP PBX with open source, Asterisk, SER, Tribox, and SIPX. I saw the futuer, The equipment provider will not so much rely on the service provider.
Kevin @ home May 17, 2007
It is quite different from the mobile phone vendor. They are not so care about those service provider. They just care about what people, really end user, like. Of course, those mobile srevice provider still not so interested in the new tehcnology. Why, it just because the service provider only care about the voice traffic.
Back to the VoIP service provider, there are 2 kinds of service provider. ITSP and Carrier. Carrier own the existing analog voice service, while ITSP own nothing. If carrier promote the VoIP too much, it will be harm to their existing analog voice business. The ITSP service provider is the best candidate for those equipment provider. Yet, most of the ITSP does not have enough capital to provide free equipment to end user. It will be stuggle for the equipment provider to judge whether to lower price by cuuting their margin or keep the same price and build the barrier for the subscriber to join the ITSP's service.
In my opinion, those are not real good business. There comes the chance when enterprise solution become popular and mature. If a enterprise need a IP PBX which could replace their existing PBX and with boundle the service it could also make the toll saving call. Then it is good for business user and service provider. Eauipment provider could sell it with its own promotion and bring the customer to those service provider. The service provider will happy if they bring the solution.
Being tired of developing more than 20 voice products IP Phone, TA, Gateway, IAD, WiFi Phone, and even videophone, I did not find the future of the VoIP equipment provider. Up to this year, I saw lots of IP PBX with open source, Asterisk, SER, Tribox, and SIPX. I saw the futuer, The equipment provider will not so much rely on the service provider.
Kevin @ home May 17, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Digium, Fonality in ‘Free’ IP PBX Fight
Digium, Fonality in ‘Free’ IP PBX Fight
Written by Paul Kapustka Thursday, January 25, 2007 at 3:00 AM PT 6 comments
Open-source IP PBXs were supposed to target the incumbent telephony world’s lunch. But right now the Asterisk community finds itself in a food fight over the free, small-installation market, between upstart Fonality and the house of Asterisk itself, Digium.
The two well-funded companies have been in a constant state of bickering. The fight over the open source PBX market reminds us of the early skirmishes in the Linux land, where every new feature or a milestone merited a news announcement.
Digium on Wednesday announced some upgrades to its AsteriskNOWoffering, including simpler ways to purchase IP phones and VoIP services. The Digium upgrades follow closely the release earlier this month of version 2.0 of Fonality’s Trixbox, another Asterisk-based offering that provides GUI-based setup of a simple, small IP PBX deployment. For users, it’s all good since the competition spurs development and makes moving to an IP telephony setup easier and easier. Hey, there’s even a geekout video from Asterisk big brain Mark Spencer, showing you how easy it is to install!
For the vendors, it’s mainly a lead-generation play where turnkey IP PBX offerings hopefully lead to an upsell of pricier supported versions. And maybe then they take more food off traditional telco suppliers’ plates.
In the meantime, it should be interesting to watch the low-level open source dance as it plays out. For a bit of background, Asterisk is the open source code developed by Spencer, who heads both Asterisk as well as Digium, the commercial entity that sells and supports Asterisk-based wares.
Fonality, which drew some blogosphere heat from Marcelo “Voxilla” Rodriguez about the company’s hosted-services model, is doing its best to be the pirate ship in the Asterisk market, using the open source code as the base for new business models.
Fonality CEO Chris Lyman spent some time on the phone with us to talk open source IP PBX and Trixbox, which (like AsteriskNOW) is an all-you-need product, combining the IP PBX with a Linux distro and some useful apps (like conference calling) all in the same download or CD.
“Trixbox is basically a huge lead source for us,” Lyman says, noting that the downloads (he claims there are 80,000 a month) are mainly going to telephony geeks or other Linux types who want to play around with or install a phone system. Whee. “They can play with it [TrixBox] all day long,” Lyman says. “But when real IT directors need communications, they look for enterprise-grade stuff with extensive support.”
Which both Fonality and Digium are only too happy to sell you. For more on Asterisk, read Alec Saunders’ update of Digium’s news.
Written by Paul Kapustka Thursday, January 25, 2007 at 3:00 AM PT 6 comments
Open-source IP PBXs were supposed to target the incumbent telephony world’s lunch. But right now the Asterisk community finds itself in a food fight over the free, small-installation market, between upstart Fonality and the house of Asterisk itself, Digium.
The two well-funded companies have been in a constant state of bickering. The fight over the open source PBX market reminds us of the early skirmishes in the Linux land, where every new feature or a milestone merited a news announcement.
Digium on Wednesday announced some upgrades to its AsteriskNOWoffering, including simpler ways to purchase IP phones and VoIP services. The Digium upgrades follow closely the release earlier this month of version 2.0 of Fonality’s Trixbox, another Asterisk-based offering that provides GUI-based setup of a simple, small IP PBX deployment. For users, it’s all good since the competition spurs development and makes moving to an IP telephony setup easier and easier. Hey, there’s even a geekout video from Asterisk big brain Mark Spencer, showing you how easy it is to install!
For the vendors, it’s mainly a lead-generation play where turnkey IP PBX offerings hopefully lead to an upsell of pricier supported versions. And maybe then they take more food off traditional telco suppliers’ plates.
In the meantime, it should be interesting to watch the low-level open source dance as it plays out. For a bit of background, Asterisk is the open source code developed by Spencer, who heads both Asterisk as well as Digium, the commercial entity that sells and supports Asterisk-based wares.
Fonality, which drew some blogosphere heat from Marcelo “Voxilla” Rodriguez about the company’s hosted-services model, is doing its best to be the pirate ship in the Asterisk market, using the open source code as the base for new business models.
Fonality CEO Chris Lyman spent some time on the phone with us to talk open source IP PBX and Trixbox, which (like AsteriskNOW) is an all-you-need product, combining the IP PBX with a Linux distro and some useful apps (like conference calling) all in the same download or CD.
“Trixbox is basically a huge lead source for us,” Lyman says, noting that the downloads (he claims there are 80,000 a month) are mainly going to telephony geeks or other Linux types who want to play around with or install a phone system. Whee. “They can play with it [TrixBox] all day long,” Lyman says. “But when real IT directors need communications, they look for enterprise-grade stuff with extensive support.”
Which both Fonality and Digium are only too happy to sell you. For more on Asterisk, read Alec Saunders’ update of Digium’s news.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
NXP, DSP Group create cordless, VoIP biz in $345M deal
NXP, DSP Group create cordless, VoIP biz in $345M deal
By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- Electronic News, 5/14/2007
With the aim of creating a market leader in the cordless and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) residential telephony market, Eindhoven, Netherlands-based NXP Semiconductors and Santa Clara, Calif.-based fabless semiconductor supplier DSP Group Inc. said today they are combining their cordless and VoIP terminals businesses within DSP Group in a transaction expected to be as much as $345 million and giving NXP a 12 percent share in DSP Group.
DSP Group said it will pay $270 million to NXP for the Philips spin-off’s cordless and VoIP terminals business, consisting of $200 million in cash and $70 million in the issuance of DSP Group’s common stock on the basis of the average closing price per share for DSP Group’s common stock on NASDAQ Global Market during the twenty business days ending on the fifth business day prior to the closing of the transaction,
NXP’s cordless and VoIP business is currently part of the company’s mobile and personal business unit and is a supplier of RF chipsets, basebands, software and system solutions for DECT, DECT 6.0, WDCT 2.4, 5.8, Analog 900, 2.4, 5.8, VoIP/MTA, USB Softphones, and VoIP Gateways. In 2006, NXP said the group sold approximately 300 million products in digital cordless.
DSP Group also said it will make a contingent cash payment of up to $75 million payable based on future revenue performance.
The transaction is expected to be positive to earnings per share of DSP Group this year and beyond, excluding transaction expenses, intangible amortization and other one time charges in connection with the acquisition.
NXP reported that it’s cordless and VoIP terminals business generated approximately $220 million revenue last year and comprises approximately 200 staff based at locations around the world, most of whom will transfer to the DSP Group.
Frans van Houten, president and CEO of NXP noted in a statement, “This transaction will create a strong combination with the scale to grow its business. It allows NXP to focus our growth on the six chosen market segments: cellular phones, personal entertainment, home electronics, automotive, identification and multi market semiconductors.”
“Additionally, with the proceeds we will be able to strengthen these segments, for example with future acquisitions. I am confident that this deal will benefit our global customers in the cordless market, as they will be served well by this new strong market leader,” van Houten added.
Eli Ayalon, chairman and CEO of the DSP Group commented, “Combining our operations creates a powerful force that will put DSP Group firmly into a leadership position in terms of scale and technology for the benefit of all major customers in our industry.”
“We will have a much stronger European presence to help us accelerate the penetration of VoIP and DECT technologies in the region and will have a more powerful research and development engine that will benefit from the advanced NXP process technologies. NXP will also become a strategic investor and will get a seat on the Board of Directors of DSP Group, and will not transfer its shares of DSP Group common stock for at least two years following the closing,” Ayalon added.
The transaction is expected to close in Q3.
By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- Electronic News, 5/14/2007
With the aim of creating a market leader in the cordless and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) residential telephony market, Eindhoven, Netherlands-based NXP Semiconductors and Santa Clara, Calif.-based fabless semiconductor supplier DSP Group Inc. said today they are combining their cordless and VoIP terminals businesses within DSP Group in a transaction expected to be as much as $345 million and giving NXP a 12 percent share in DSP Group.
DSP Group said it will pay $270 million to NXP for the Philips spin-off’s cordless and VoIP terminals business, consisting of $200 million in cash and $70 million in the issuance of DSP Group’s common stock on the basis of the average closing price per share for DSP Group’s common stock on NASDAQ Global Market during the twenty business days ending on the fifth business day prior to the closing of the transaction,
NXP’s cordless and VoIP business is currently part of the company’s mobile and personal business unit and is a supplier of RF chipsets, basebands, software and system solutions for DECT, DECT 6.0, WDCT 2.4, 5.8, Analog 900, 2.4, 5.8, VoIP/MTA, USB Softphones, and VoIP Gateways. In 2006, NXP said the group sold approximately 300 million products in digital cordless.
DSP Group also said it will make a contingent cash payment of up to $75 million payable based on future revenue performance.
The transaction is expected to be positive to earnings per share of DSP Group this year and beyond, excluding transaction expenses, intangible amortization and other one time charges in connection with the acquisition.
NXP reported that it’s cordless and VoIP terminals business generated approximately $220 million revenue last year and comprises approximately 200 staff based at locations around the world, most of whom will transfer to the DSP Group.
Frans van Houten, president and CEO of NXP noted in a statement, “This transaction will create a strong combination with the scale to grow its business. It allows NXP to focus our growth on the six chosen market segments: cellular phones, personal entertainment, home electronics, automotive, identification and multi market semiconductors.”
“Additionally, with the proceeds we will be able to strengthen these segments, for example with future acquisitions. I am confident that this deal will benefit our global customers in the cordless market, as they will be served well by this new strong market leader,” van Houten added.
Eli Ayalon, chairman and CEO of the DSP Group commented, “Combining our operations creates a powerful force that will put DSP Group firmly into a leadership position in terms of scale and technology for the benefit of all major customers in our industry.”
“We will have a much stronger European presence to help us accelerate the penetration of VoIP and DECT technologies in the region and will have a more powerful research and development engine that will benefit from the advanced NXP process technologies. NXP will also become a strategic investor and will get a seat on the Board of Directors of DSP Group, and will not transfer its shares of DSP Group common stock for at least two years following the closing,” Ayalon added.
The transaction is expected to close in Q3.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
MIC：品牌業者有助提升整體台灣IP Phone
MIC：品牌業者有助提升整體台灣IP Phone
根據資策會資訊市場情報中心(MIC)的觀察，全球IP Phone出貨持續增溫，兩大品牌業者中，Cisco持續耕耘中高階市場，Avaya則在低階市場取得優勢。而在中國大陸等地廠商的低價攻勢競爭中，國際品牌業者的訂單將成為台灣IP Phone廠商出貨的成長助力。
MIC指出，在各型企業用戶以完全更換(語音系統)、逐步取代或者新舊共存之VoIP採用比重均提升下，Cisco在2006年IP Phone全球出貨超過400萬台，而Avaya從2006年第二季之後，在企業市場之單季銷售，已突破百萬條(IP Lines)大關，另外包括Nortel、Alcatel等業者帶動下，2006年全球IP Phone出貨超過9百萬台，同時品牌廠商也推出外觀、功能更多元的IP Phone產品。
根據資策會MIC執行之經濟部ITIS的調查統計，2007年第一季台灣企業VoIP產業中，網路電話機(IP Phone)總出貨量達1,490千台，年成長率42%；企業VoIP閘道器(Enterprise VoIP Gateway)總出貨量達276千埠，年成長率為42.4%。在產值部分，2007年第一季台灣企業VoIP設備產業總產值達78百萬美元，年成長率為18.3%。
分析2007年第一季台灣廠商企業VoIP設備出貨狀況，首先在IP Phone部分，受到海外市場與兩岸三地市場之連續假期影響，IP Phone訂單出現小幅下滑，但與去年同期相較，Cisco與Nortel兩大業者，以及Thomson在歐洲出貨成長帶動下，台灣整體IP Phone仍持續成長；另外在VoIP Gateway部分，由於主要業者之出貨屬於標案性質，隨著部分合約即將到期，導致本季台灣代工訂單總需求受到影響，影響整體出貨表現。
觀察2006下半年之全球企業VoIP市場發展，MIC表示，除節省費率的訴求外，服務業者與設備業者正尋求VoIP之新賣點，前者推動FMC、Host VoIP、VPN等服務，而後者也加強產品功能整合，並陸續進行購併，滿足企業多元應用之要求；另外用戶端設備發展更加多樣化，更多服務業者推出Cordless VoIP Phone與Video Phone，而設備業者則推出單、雙模手機。對應至台灣業者，面對VoIP商機，各業者也陸續布局IP PBX、IP Phone、Wi-Fi Phone等產品。
展望2007年第二季與第三季全球企業VoIP市場以及台灣出貨趨勢，首先SMB市場將有更明顯之成長，原因可先從服務業者角度觀察，VoIP已開放之國家如美國與法國之一、二類電信與有線電視業者都將大規模推動SMB之VoIP相關服務；接續在設備業者部分，在微軟宣布將進軍SMB VoIP市場下，Cisco、Avaya等既有企業VoIP設備業者也更積極佈局SMB市場，預料這些國家在服務方案與設備都更多元化發展下，將吸引更多SMB業者採用VoIP。
另從產業競爭角度觀察，MIC指出，各國設備業者為爭取電信業者標案，特別是中國大陸廠商，持續壓低IP Phone以及VoIP Gateway的報價，標案成交價格每埠可低至30美元下，無形擠壓包括台灣廠商在內的設備業者未來之生存空間。
至於台灣企業VoIP產業在IP Phone部分，Cisco以及Nortel之訂單仍是台灣IP Phone主要出貨維繫，不過Avaya已經與台灣廠商進行少數VoIP產品開發，微軟之企業VoIP計畫也已展開，其三個硬體設備之專案已積極尋找台灣廠商合作，而包括友訊、廣達等台灣業者也爭取與微軟在SMB產品上之合作機會，預料下半年在企業VoIP市場更熱絡下，品牌業者將有助提升台灣廠商整體IP Phone出貨。
在VoIP Gateway部分，除台灣中華電信NGN標案外，台灣業者將持續耕耘新興VoIP市場，爭取更多一類與二類電信業者之VoIP Gateway合作訂單。預估2007年第二季與第三季，台灣IP Phone出貨將分別達1,611與1,887千台，年成長率45%與48%；企業VoIP閘道器預估為311以及414千埠，年成長率達28%與52%。
根據資策會資訊市場情報中心(MIC)的觀察，全球IP Phone出貨持續增溫，兩大品牌業者中，Cisco持續耕耘中高階市場，Avaya則在低階市場取得優勢。而在中國大陸等地廠商的低價攻勢競爭中，國際品牌業者的訂單將成為台灣IP Phone廠商出貨的成長助力。
MIC指出，在各型企業用戶以完全更換(語音系統)、逐步取代或者新舊共存之VoIP採用比重均提升下，Cisco在2006年IP Phone全球出貨超過400萬台，而Avaya從2006年第二季之後，在企業市場之單季銷售，已突破百萬條(IP Lines)大關，另外包括Nortel、Alcatel等業者帶動下，2006年全球IP Phone出貨超過9百萬台，同時品牌廠商也推出外觀、功能更多元的IP Phone產品。
根據資策會MIC執行之經濟部ITIS的調查統計，2007年第一季台灣企業VoIP產業中，網路電話機(IP Phone)總出貨量達1,490千台，年成長率42%；企業VoIP閘道器(Enterprise VoIP Gateway)總出貨量達276千埠，年成長率為42.4%。在產值部分，2007年第一季台灣企業VoIP設備產業總產值達78百萬美元，年成長率為18.3%。
分析2007年第一季台灣廠商企業VoIP設備出貨狀況，首先在IP Phone部分，受到海外市場與兩岸三地市場之連續假期影響，IP Phone訂單出現小幅下滑，但與去年同期相較，Cisco與Nortel兩大業者，以及Thomson在歐洲出貨成長帶動下，台灣整體IP Phone仍持續成長；另外在VoIP Gateway部分，由於主要業者之出貨屬於標案性質，隨著部分合約即將到期，導致本季台灣代工訂單總需求受到影響，影響整體出貨表現。
觀察2006下半年之全球企業VoIP市場發展，MIC表示，除節省費率的訴求外，服務業者與設備業者正尋求VoIP之新賣點，前者推動FMC、Host VoIP、VPN等服務，而後者也加強產品功能整合，並陸續進行購併，滿足企業多元應用之要求；另外用戶端設備發展更加多樣化，更多服務業者推出Cordless VoIP Phone與Video Phone，而設備業者則推出單、雙模手機。對應至台灣業者，面對VoIP商機，各業者也陸續布局IP PBX、IP Phone、Wi-Fi Phone等產品。
展望2007年第二季與第三季全球企業VoIP市場以及台灣出貨趨勢，首先SMB市場將有更明顯之成長，原因可先從服務業者角度觀察，VoIP已開放之國家如美國與法國之一、二類電信與有線電視業者都將大規模推動SMB之VoIP相關服務；接續在設備業者部分，在微軟宣布將進軍SMB VoIP市場下，Cisco、Avaya等既有企業VoIP設備業者也更積極佈局SMB市場，預料這些國家在服務方案與設備都更多元化發展下，將吸引更多SMB業者採用VoIP。
另從產業競爭角度觀察，MIC指出，各國設備業者為爭取電信業者標案，特別是中國大陸廠商，持續壓低IP Phone以及VoIP Gateway的報價，標案成交價格每埠可低至30美元下，無形擠壓包括台灣廠商在內的設備業者未來之生存空間。
至於台灣企業VoIP產業在IP Phone部分，Cisco以及Nortel之訂單仍是台灣IP Phone主要出貨維繫，不過Avaya已經與台灣廠商進行少數VoIP產品開發，微軟之企業VoIP計畫也已展開，其三個硬體設備之專案已積極尋找台灣廠商合作，而包括友訊、廣達等台灣業者也爭取與微軟在SMB產品上之合作機會，預料下半年在企業VoIP市場更熱絡下，品牌業者將有助提升台灣廠商整體IP Phone出貨。
在VoIP Gateway部分，除台灣中華電信NGN標案外，台灣業者將持續耕耘新興VoIP市場，爭取更多一類與二類電信業者之VoIP Gateway合作訂單。預估2007年第二季與第三季，台灣IP Phone出貨將分別達1,611與1,887千台，年成長率45%與48%；企業VoIP閘道器預估為311以及414千埠，年成長率達28%與52%。
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