* News from the FCC, Telcordia, Alcatel, Acme Packet, France Telecom, Sprint, Qwest
Today, a “quick news grab-bag” of some snapshots of convergence-related news events that happened over the last few weeks.
Today, a “quick news grab-bag” of some snapshots of convergence-related news events that happened over the last few weeks.
First, the good news: the FCC extended its deadline for VoIP service providers to warn their customers that E-911 services may not work. The order required the service of subscribers who hadn’t acknowledged the limitations to be suspended until the users positively acknowledged the notifications. Now the bad news: the extended deadline expired at the end of September, although the FCC noted that it would not enforce the ruling for VoIP suppliers that had achieved a 90% or better notification reply rate.
On a separate front, it has been a busy few weeks for product and service launches. Telcordia launched its IP Multimedia Subsystem product with the “Maestro IMS Portfolio,” which is made up of a suite of products provided by Telcordia and its partner. Telcordia has already deployed several components of the platform for Tier 1 service providers and PTTs.
Alcatel demonstrated IMS-based services between WiMAX, DSL and 3G users. The demonstration showed how Alcatel’s IMS solution today can be extended into the broadband wireless domain using IP WiMAX technology, and it included typical IMS services like audio-video and data messaging, video telephony, push-to-speak and push-to-show.
Acme Packet unveiled its next generation session border control platform, the Net-Net 9000. It supports fixed-mobile converged architectures as defined by the 3G Partnership Project IMS standards.
France Telecom launched its Business Talk IP targeted at large corporate clients that want to leverage existing IP-VPN platforms. It also launched Business Talk IP aimed at small and midsize business and includes unlimited national calls to fixed-lines with prices starting at EUR 12 per user.
Sprint announced a joint development effort with Avaya to offer VoIP over both wireline and wireless networks. (We’ll have more on the Sprint announcement in a future issue of the newsletter.)
Finally, Qwest announced an alliance with Microsoft to offer VoIP and converged communications services to the small and midsize business market.
(Note to PR teams: please feel free to keep those announcement e-mails coming, although we can’t promise to cover them all.)
