NEC Unified Solutions last week made several company changes designed to further its Univerge360 strategy that we discussed in our March 2008 newsletter. The company has established a portfolio management team led by Jay Krauser, previously general manager for NEC's product management group. The company also named Renato Mariani as general manager of marketing. Krauser's team will be responsible for strengthening and broadening "solutions NEC provides to customers, assist NEC channels with the distribution of these products, provide a single interface for partners [along with] proof of concept and interoperability testing for NEC's Univerge solution partner program" according to the company's statement. Mariani will lead marketing communications and field marketing teams focused on broadening NEC's SMB customer base and the company's large enterprise market penetration.

In other news that caught our attention last week, Cincinnati Bell introduced text messaging and SpinVox for the home phone, offering traditional wireless functionality on landlines. The Smart Home Phone combines high-speed Internet and home phone services. Customers can use the phone and service to “send and receive SMS text messages, review a list of their voicemail entries, play or delete them in any order, and even read them as text messages.” It can also be used “to look up information in the Yellow Pages, and read news, weather, and sports,” according to the company.

Cincinatti Bell is the first company to offer SMS on a landline home phone system, although in September 2008, AT&T launched its HomeManager service in nine initial markets, also combining access to Internet content and popular wireless phone applications with traditional home phone service. AT&T’s phone kit is manufactured by Samsung and the system is compatible with AT&T U-verse Voice and AT&T Unified Messaging (UM) features. AT&T wireless customers can also sync their address books across the HomeManager touch screen and home handset with AT&T mobile phone AT&T’s network service customers will also get AT&T Mobile Backup and Visual Voice Mail. The HomeManager package is initially available in nine AT&T markets.

Our observation: it looks like the enterprise market isn’t alone when it comes to wireless and wireline feature convergence. While the business market is focused on bringing unified communications traditionally found on the desktop to the employee’s mobile phone, service providers are beginning to combine useful mobile and landline features with voice and data services in the residential market.

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