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Thomas Nolle

Reality Check

By Thomas Nolle

Nolle is president of  CIMI Corp., a technology assessment firm in Voorhees, N.J. He can be reached at (609) 753-0004 or via e-mail.

PBT vs. MPLS: What if nobody wins?
07/22/08
Who wins the PBT/MPLS wars? Quite likely neither, because the fight may change how networks move data.
Facing the Sundance reality
06/11/08
Cablevisions' acquisition of Sundance and Newsday may light the direction the industry has to take. The industry is being transformed by content but we’re not even thinking much about how that content gets produced or how it’s paid for.
Thinking beyond IMS
05/06/08
For a half decade, the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) has been either the savior of mobile service stability and progress or the last bastion of walled-gardenism, so to speak. The emotionalism of the discussion has obscured a really important question. Is IMS enough of the right answer to drive the future in any direction at all? Do we need IMS, or more, or less?
Picocell technology could help make fixed-mobile convergence a reality
03/25/08
An interesting thing happened in 1999. The unit price of a long-distance voice call to consumers, which had been falling since the early 1980s, finally crossed over the cost curve and long-distance voice became a loss leader. This eventually led to the acquisition of the long-distance giants by the regional Bells. It was certainly one of those pivotal events in telecom history, but another 1999 event might be even more important.
Cisco’s succession plan, or lack thereof
01/15/08
John Chambers announced recently that he’d stay on at Cisco for another three to five years, and Charlie Giancarlo departed. Cisco now seems back where it started with respect to a Chambers successor. Clearly every company that expects to last more than a couple of decades needs a succession strategy for its top position, but just as clearly there are real problems coming up with one. Cisco’s not the first tech company to have a charismatic and possibly impossible-to-follow leader. Leaders with strong personalities have sometimes fared well, sometimes badly.
Carrier Ethernet grows up
11/20/07
There has been interest in carrier Ethernet for a decade or more — and let’s be honest — more than a little hype, too.
Where now, Yahoo?
10/09/07
Let’s say you’re the new CEO of Yahoo. You’re running an outfit that’s maybe one of the oldest brands in the portal marketplace, but your company has been eclipsed in revenue and stock performance by upstart Google. You, the new CEO, are on the hook to fix the problem. What do you do?
Content delivery networks: Does more mean less?
09/10/07
The Internet is poised on the edge of a content explosion. For years now there has been a group of companies that grew up to help with Internet content delivery with products called (no surprises here either) content delivery networks.
Triple play or triple threat?
07/31/07
Things are supposed to happen in threes, and the trio the networking space has been focusing on is the “triple play” of voice, data and video service. But a new triple has emerged, one that’s potentially a greater influence on the industry — and for some at least it’s not a good influence.
Love Hurts: A telecom melodrama
07/03/07
The industry’s love of a good story may be creating bad outcomes.
Vertical lessons from over the water
05/31/07
Anyone who travels outside the United States quickly realizes that the people "over there" know a lot more about us than we do about them.
Does WebEx change the Cisco model?
04/05/07
Cisco's acquisition of WebEx is in many ways as startling as if Alcoa had bought an aluminum canoe company. Cisco makes network gear, and WebEx is a consumer of network technology. The apparent disconnect has created all kinds of speculation on the motivation behind the deal, and the big question is whether WebEx is an indicator, or even a driver, of a major change in the Cisco model - and if so, to what?
Will Soapstone end routing's magic kingdom?
02/27/07
Today, an unlikely company is singing its own proud song, and maybe it will mark the end of routing's magical age. The company? Avici Systems. The song? Universal control plane.
Is FMC going to change wireline?
01/31/07
You can't complain that there's nothing going on in the area of fixed-mobile convergence, but there are some questions about exactly what is happening. The market has sent three different signals over the last few months, and just how FMC might impact the fixed or wireline service side of networking depends on which signal prevails.
The new telecom deal?
01/04/07
There is little question that the Democrats' telecom policies differ from those of the Republicans, at least at the rhetorical level.
Can T-Mobile launch an FMC arms race?
11/30/06
Fixed-mobile convergence has always been seen in the United States as one of the pawns in the game of RBOCs vs. cable companies. Now T-Mobile is taking an early FMC position that may cause both RBOCs and cable companies to jump-start their own efforts.
Just how far can WiMAX go?
11/03/06
Last month's WiMAX World conference further raised the profile of a technology that's gotten a lot of attention for years, despite the fact that the standards are only now starting to gel.
FCC auction results and the wireless future
10/02/06
Providers affiliated with the major wireline carriers largely have dominated wireless services in the United States. By analyzing the bid winners in last month's FCC spectrum auction for Advanced Wireless Services, we can gain some insights into the future.
Can FMC unite the diverse carrier drivers?
09/11/06
The RBOCs' profit reports for the last quarter show some common trends in their revenues: legacy services and public switched telephone network lines are down, while mobile wireless and consumer broadband are up. Having two market areas up and only one down isn't bad, but if the RBOCs have to invest big bucks in both wireless and consumer broadband, it could crimp their profits. If they have to make a choice, some of our assumptions about the future will not come true. But maybe they don't have to choose - and maybe they can't.
What's behind the slowing of IT job losses?
08/07/06
Recently, there's been some good news - sort of. According to the latest data, the loss of IT jobs has slowed to the lowest level since 2000. Losing less isn't the same as gaining more, but it's at least movement in the right direction, and it makes one wonder what's behind it.
Market mass or open standards?
05/22/06
At Interop this month, we heard keynotes from two network vendors who are not only archrivals in a business sense but also in their approach to the market. Cisco represents market power, account control. Juniper represents open standards. Who will win, and will the market win with them?
Is FMC the 'real' convergence?
05/08/06
VoIP convergence used to mean a bunch of softswitches, media gateways, replacing Class 5 switches and - not accidentally - spending telecom dollars that used to be spent on traditional TDM on VoIP voice instead. Not much of that ever happened. Today, carrier planners at all levels are focusing on a new kind of convergence - fixed-mobile convergence (FMC). This time may be the charm.
Will the AT&T-BellSouth merger hurt IP TV?
04/10/06
Bottom line, the AT&T and BellSouth states' combined prospect base is a more difficult market for IP TV than the AT&T states' base alone. Lightspeed was supposed to roll out last year, then early this year, then late this year . . . and this was before the BellSouth deal. It's just not logical to believe adding BellSouth to the mix will change things for the better. Lightspeed's future is getting darker.
Absence of strategy, or strategy of absence?
03/06/06
Didn't we once look to giants such as Cisco and Juniper for their insights about how the industry was going to develop? Their rear-view mirrors have taken over for their windshields, vision-wise. Are these two companies so dumbed down by the aftermath of the bubble that they have no idea what's happening in an industry they've largely shaped? Or is it that they don't want to do strategy anymore?
Is Apple creating the FCC's worst fear?
02/06/06
The FCC and the courts have taken the RBOCs' side for the past five years. The master regulatory strategy has been simple: Let the RBOCs and the cable companies fight it out to create competition. To equalize the regulations on both players, the FCC has made DSL pretty much wholesale-proof. But the FCC proposition is based on the assumption that streaming video, IPTV, is a good business. If it's not, then protecting it with regulations won't help. This is where Apple comes in, because Steve Jobs took a giant step toward making IPTV a non-issue when he announced the Video iPod.

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