Tommy Lee (News - Alert) -- insert Motley Crue joke here, he's probably heard 'em all before -- hits the road for snom again, starting with the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education’s Summer Seminar, hosted by UC Berkeley at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel.

The higher ed technology confab is "always one of the busier conferences for snom," company officials say, as it brings together "a broad cross-section of IT decision-makers from US colleges and universities."

Unified communications is expected to be a hot conversation topic in higher education soon, with schools such as Georgia Military College realizing the benefits of this technology on campus, snom officials say.

At the show, snom exhibited its portfolio of IP desktop phones with the special snom OCS firmware that enables these phones to integrate with both IP PBX (News - Alert) and Microsoft OCS R2.

Lee says “snom IP phones are ideal for both SIP and OCS platforms in higher education because they operate in PC, Mac and mixed environments, and therefore provide flexibility which enables universities to preserve their endpoint investment no matter which way they decide to upgrade.”

Earlier this year TMC (News - Alert) reported that the snom Americas team went to Los Angeles and were seen at The Cable Show in Los Angeles, an exhibition for the entire cable television ecosystem including content providers in the world of entertainment (television and movie producers and executives), multi-service operators (MSOs), and technology providers (infrastructure, equipment and applications).

Company officials say snom attended The Cable Show to showcase its executive IP phones for the business voice services market. "With operators increasingly searching for new revenue streams, business voice services including hosted VoIP, IP PBX, and unified communications applications are becoming an ever-increasing part of the MSO's service offering," they noted.