INTERNET TELEPHONY — April 2013

Seeing Green: Service Visibility, Data Analytics Could Add Up Big

That's because facilities-based service providers have the ability to understand what's happening on their networks to predict congestion, for example...More>>>

Departments

The Channel
On RAD's Radar

The Top Hosted VoIP Companies in the U.S.
The largest provider of business hosted PBX is Comcast. With its acquisition of NGT and the retention of the smartest person in this space, Comcast has been growing steadily.

STRATEGIC SOLUTIONS SERIES

Shango Establishes a Common Service Orchestration Platform for Unified Communications
There's no doubt that while IP communications is still very much in its evolutionary days, it has disrupted the very way that carriers and service providers offer up and deliver voice and data communications and network services.

WIRELESS

Small Cells Await Their Big Debut
Small cells remain a hot topic in the wireless industry, and this area of interest certainly got its share of attention at the recent Mobile World Congress. But while expectations remain high for small cells, and some major wireless service providers have made public their plans to deploy large numbers of these network elements, the extent to which small cells actually have been implemented to date is quite limited. And one source tells INTERNET TELEPHONY that femtocells, an indoor mostly residential version of small cells, have been less than a success for service providers.

InfoVista Helps Expedite LTE Network Builds
InfoVista got its start in MPLS performance management and service assurance, but is expanding into mobile. The acquisition of privately-owned Mentum, which InfoVista announced and closed in late November, strengthened InfoVista's play in the radio access space.

SECURITY

Run, FIDO, Run: Alliance Works on Non-Proprietary Authentication
The goals of the FIDO Alliance are to define and promote protocols to enable a broad range of strong authentication options across all end user devices; enable stronger authentication and better user experience; support the international standardization of the FIDO protocols by a recognized standards body; work with existing standards not replace them; and make the protocol stack ubiquitously available on client devices.

Distributed Denial of Service Attacks: Arbor Networks Highlights the Challenges
It used to be that distributed denial of service attacks - for which the bad guys overwhelmed company servers with messages, thereby bringing web viewing and transactional capabilities to a grinding halt - were more major nuisance than possible long-term threat to enterprises.

Network Infrastructure

Why LTE Needs Diameter Signaling Management
As LTE networks are rolling out worldwide, there are many discussions going on about the critical need to manage signaling, in particular Diameter signaling. There are also discussions, and it's even fair to say some controversy, over the different methods to manage and control Diameter signaling in the most effective way.

Tekelec Introduces ThinkingNetworks Vision
The company has been rolling out product and messaging around various parts of this strategy over time, notes John Lenns, associate vice president of product management for Tekelec's policy management solutions. At Mobile World Congress earlier this year Tekelec introduced the ThinkingNetworks piece. Tekelec defines ThinkingNetworks as the phase at which networks become self-aware and automatically adjusting to the needs of services and applications.

USF Reform Relief for Rural Rate-of-Return Carriers
In late 2011, the Federal Communications Commission issued the Universal Services Reform Order and created the Connect America Fund to transition approximately $4.5 billion a year of federal subsidies to enable the build out of broadband services to rural communities. Last year, the CAF got off to a rocky start as it unintentionally delayed carriers' investment in broadband infrastructure as a result of the FCC over-rotating on rules and safeguards against spending abuse. The FCC allocated $300 million in the 2012 CAF Phase 1 funding for Tier 1 and Tier 2 price-cap carriers, but the FCC rules and obligations resulted in only $115 million of these funds being claimed -- leaving nearly $2 out of every $3 of this funding on the table.

OPEN SOURCE

Evolution Platform for Enterprise Lets Content Run Everywhere
The HTML5-based product offers what UIEvolution says is an efficient and economical solution for delivering cross-platform applications across screens - whether those screens are on a mobile phone, a tablet, a TV or within a vehicle. That enables simple, cross-platform experiences for end users, and allows for more affordable and efficient application creation, because software developers can write once and run their apps anywhere with UIEvolution.

Protecting Enterprises Against Software Audit Risks
Beyond the increasing likelihood of out-of-compliance software usage, a difficult economy and decreasing new license revenue have led providers to conduct more frequent audits. While audits previously occurred in response to whistleblowers or suspicious licensing behaviors, many providers now proactively audit all or most of their customers. For Fortune 500 companies, this can potentially result in multi-million dollar liabilities so it is critical to manage this growing area of risk with specific steps at each stage in the software lifecycle - during initial license acquisition, throughout the period of software usage, and in response to a provider audit.

Emerging Trends in Cloud Telephony for 2013
Cloud telephony - among the most important recent innovations in telecommunications - is poised for a banner year in 2013, thanks in part of the role so-called big data will play in improving the quality and depth of analytics and telecom applications.