In the first article in this series, we looked at some of Acme Packet (News - Alert) co-founder and CTO Patrick MeLampy’s predictions for the session border controller space for 2013. He talked about Wi-Fi and small cells, IMS 2.0 and the migration toward an all-IP world. Here are a few more of his predictions for this year.

MeLampy sees 2013 as the year of VoLTE. He feels that, even though handsets are not quite ready for prime time, he expects to see more VoLTE rollouts this year. He notes that this is great for operators, as it is cheaper to run one network for voice and data rather than two. It’s also simpler to set up and run and its cost structure is better as well. He also sees this as a trend that will spill into 2014 and beyond.

Also this year, MeLampy sees the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) evolving to focus on 4G networks and a more practical and pragmatic infrastructure. He says that it’s time for the group to rename itself, even though its stated goal of getting IP as the common voice carrier has not been achieved. He sees that some issues have not been resolved in the past 13 years, and it is time for the group to figure out matters like roaming, taking on a new way of thinking about these old issues.

Finally, MeLampy sees 2013 as the year the desk phone finally dies. In this age of BYOD and Lync, it is time to carve up the tombstone for the desk phone. He sees the future of WebRTC and UC technologies, allowing people to run applications in the server or the cloud but having control in their handsets. He acknowledges that the simple black desk phone is dead and that we expect to have graphics and computing power in our handsets.

There you have it! If MeLampy is right, 2013 should be an exciting year. We’ll track his predictions as 2013 moves forward and track all sort of other trends in this space as they emerge!

Want to learn more about SIP Trunking and how to integrate it into your current UC strategy? Don’t miss the SIP Trunking- UC Seminars collocated with ITEXPO Miami 2013, Jan 29- Feb. 1 in Miami, Florida.