INTERNET TELEPHONY — July 2012

Sansay Takes SBCs to the Next Level

Sansay Inc. opened for business a decade ago, bringing to market its high-performance session border controllers. Yet Sansay probably isn't the first name that comes to mind when you think SBC. But, company executives say, perhaps it should be - particularly if you're a service provider seeking a carrier-grade solution with top-drawer support, and a hardware and software warranty...

Getting Vertical

Chelsea Piers Gets in the Game with Toshiba's Strata CIX
The Chelsea Piers Sports & Entertainment Complex is a 28-acre entertainment complex built on four historic Hudson River piers. Opened in 1995, Chelsea Piers features a variety of sports facilities, including rock climbing walls, batting cages, ice rinks, a golf driving range, a gymnastics center, a bowling center, indoor turf playing fields and basketball courts, a 150,000-square-foot health club, pro shops, TV production studios, marina, restaurants and more.

Special Focus

Winners of the TMC Labs Innovation Awards Include the Latest and Greatest
2012 marks the 13th annual INTERNET TELEPHONY TMC Labs Innovation Awards, with several strong contenders in cloud, collaboration, unified communications, high bandwidth products and, of course, VoIP.

Departments

Network Infrastructure

How Policy-based Networking is Advancing and Facing Challenges
Policy has become a central theme of networking recently, and as wireless service providers invest in their networks with new 4G technology, there is talk about their interest in bringing new value-added pricing and packaging of wireless services along for the ride. Policy, vendors in this realm say, can help them do all that. But just how to implement policy in the network infrastructure and to what extent wireless operators will leverage policy to offer differentiated services remains to be seen.

Policy-Enabled Session Management: Your Ticket to Cost Savings, Service Differentiation and Productivity
Integrating robust policy control and enforcement capability with session management provides service providers and enterprises with an opportunity to both make money and save on operating costs. So what exactly is policy-enabled session management, and how does it help enterprises and service providers?

The Channel
On RAD's Radar

Three Ways to Stand Out in the Telecom Crowd
When I search for the term telecom agent, I receive 244 million results. Telecom broker has less with 12 million. More than 3,300 attended the last telecom agent show. How do you stand out in that crowd? Here are three ways.

A New Opportunity for VARs - Microsoft Lync and Hosted Lync
Today's businesses have more and more options when it comes to choosing a system for their voice communications, which means more and more questions for VAR partners tasked with implementing, managing and supporting these solutions. Businesses select either a premises-based IP PBX or a hosted service for their telephony system. Increasingly, businesses are also factoring unified communications into the equation either as a complementary piece to their existing IT and telecom architecture or as a standalone alternative for voice communications and collaboration.

Security

More Data Points Means Fewer Security Holes
There are two forms of security. The first is physical security, meaning physical access controls, and the second is cyber security, which deals with virus protection or the prevention of unauthorized network access. Companies must integrate both physical and cyber securities to better manage safety and intellectual property. As technology continues to develop, there are innovative and simple solutions used day-to-day within devices, to enhance security without incurring excessive expense.

Wireless

A Spectrum Crisis Still Looms
In 2010, the FCC's National Broadband Plan predicted a "looming spectrum crisis" would begin to affect mobile broadband networks by 2013 unless the government took action to reallocate spectrum from legacy applications to commercial networks. Analysts cognizant of the growth in demand for mobile bandwidth brought about the rise of the iPhone and the slow pace of advances in wireless efficiency agreed that action was warranted.

Small Cell Security: How to Protect Traffic on New-Generation Wireless and Backhaul Networks
Wi-Fi and small cells represent new opportunities for mobile operators, but also come with new security risks that must be addressed. Given the extraordinary uptick in data consumption via 3G- and 4G-enabled devices such as smartphones and tablets, operators are investing in the next generation of small cells to enhance the benefits provided by microcells deployed in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Cloud and Data Center

Big Data Explosion - Overwhelming Burden or Competitive Asset?
Managed efficiently, this type of machine-generated data can offer a treasure trove of intelligence that businesses can use to gain insights into things like subscriber behavior and customer churn, and to improve billing accuracy and service quality. But if your organization can't get a handle on the volume, dealing with telecommunications data can instead prove to be an expensive, resource-draining burden. A smart data management approach, especially when it comes to database selection, can have a big impact on the ability of a CSP to compete and thrive in the fast-paced and continually evolving telecommunications market. Here are several key considerations and trends worth following.