Larry had the chance to attend VoiceCon Spring 2007 in Orlando last week. Unlike many of the past shows that seemed to have a central theme espoused by the exhibitors and keynote speakers, this time the messages and news were widespread — something we attribute to the maturing VoIP industry.

A few conference highlights:

* Ericsson announced its Enterprise Mobility Gateway that enables mobile devices to fully integrate with the corporate communications network, on 2G/3G mobile devices as well as dual-mode mobile/Wi-Fi devices. One unique feature that is very valuable to enterprises is mobile least cost routing.

* Adtran announced that Verizon Business is adding Adtran's NetVanta Ethernet switches and Total Access 900 Multiservice Access Gateways (MSAG) to its list of certified VoIP customer premises equipment (CPE) for its VoIP services, including IP Flexible T1, IP Integrated Access and Hosted IP Centrex. The device is targeted to smaller enterprises that need only a T-1 (or a few T-1s) and lists for under $4,000 – a good value given the many features available.

* Johan Krebbers, Group IT architect of Royal Dutch Shell, reviewed why his company found value in the VoIP and unified communications solution offered by Microsoft and Nortel — proving that the two infrastructure providers are getting visible market traction with their joint development.

* Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft Business Division predicted that by 2010 more than 100 million people will be able to make phone calls from Microsoft Office system applications such as Outlook, and Word and that, in the same timeframe, a VoIP network will cost half of what it does today.

Next time: Some innovations demonstrated at VoiceCon from Clarus Systems and LightSpan.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.