As the FCC has increased penalties for violating CPNI, service providers are improving their policies regarding the requirement. Customer information such as name, address and billing telephone number, is known as "Customer Proprietary Network information," or CPNI. Additionally, service features, class of service, phone charges, billing and call records are considered elements of CPNI. The FCC has issued a requirement that all parties with access to CPNI must give the customer the option of disallowing the information to be used for certain marketing activates and certainly restricting its resell to third parties. The penalties are such that each violation carries a substantial fine. Over the next few weeks, Broadvox and its partners will be implementing new policies to maintain compliance with the FCC’s order regarding CPNI. Our customers will be given the option of allowing us to use their information to market additional features and services and provide the information to third parties.

Personally, I hope that they read the policy and take the time to appreciate its potential impact on how their CPNI can be used. In today’s environment of tell all, privacy seems to be losing out. Interestingly, although Facebook has over 500 million subscribers willing to share a lot of personal information, only 46% like doing so. Innately, they may understand that they are losing bits of their privacy and certainly gobs of their time, but they cannot resist.

 The August eNewsletter was released this week and is well worth reading to see what Broadvox is up to. However, it also contains a fun element. We are giving away hundreds of Metoo screaming monkeys to people who request them. You will soon be able to join a thundering horde of travelers that take pictures of Metoo in locations around the world. The pictures and videos we receive will be posted on Flickr and IPMAN Adventures.com.  One lucky photographer will receive a free Amazon Kindle, Compliments of Broadvox.

Work should be hard, rewarding and fun.

Have a great weekend and see you Monday!

Cost savings continues to lead as the reason for transitioning from TDM to SIP based facilities. The decision may be driven by the lower cost per voice path or the fact that SIP Trunks can be provisioned in units of one up to the capacity of the available broadband. This is in contrast to a T1, which is deployed in units of 24 and normally turns up as a fractional T (approximately 12 voice paths) or a full T. SMBs and enterprise branch offices can be deployed and supported much more efficiently and cost effectively with a SIP Trunking based network architecture than a TDM architecture.

In Infonetics’ most recent study, they also concluded that two additional reasons are offered by IT Directors.

The first is Simplification.

TDM circuits are essentially physical facilities tied to physical locations. IP communications consist of virtual circuits supported by physical elements. The virtual nature of SIP Trunking provides for easy centralization of communications tying any number of remote locations to a centralized IP PBX or corporate network hub. This increases the availability of converged services while decreasing the need for regional or application specific service providers. Moving to fewer service providers and potentially a centralized bill is a major benefit to larger companies.

This leads to the second reason, New Applications.

Although most studies, including this one, refer to the new applications as just beginning, it is important to note that Unified Communications, HD Voice and advanced video applications have measurable levels of penetration.  Moreover, they frequently require an IP based infrastructure in order to take advantage of all the new features. For example HD Voice cannot transit from and IP network to PSTN. It is only works as an IP call end-to-end today.

Finally, a service that Broadvox has always offered as a SIP Trunking option, call bursting, is gaining market awareness. Call bursting allows a business to have a variable number of voice paths or concurrent call sessions based upon current traffic. This is especially useful to companies that have traffic flow that vary greatly based upon time of day, seasonal or even marketing activity such as “call now” offerings.

The IP ecosystem may have areas that are negatively impacted by the current economic conditions, but we also have areas that are flourishing, such as SIP Trunking.

See you on Friday.

Going into the weekend, I had already decided on my recipe of the week, Crab Cakes. With that done, I could cook in a more relaxed fashion because my recipe was set. That is until I saw an episode of Man v. Food Puerto Rico. The premise of the show is to find some interesting and tasty dishes in a given city and then close out the program with some type of eating challenge. The challenge was to eat an eight-pound platter of meat and other stuff, not very interesting cuisine or television for that matter. However, the first dish of the show, Chuleta Kan-Kan, grabbed my attention. Chuleta Kan-Kan is a deep-fried pork chop that includes the pork belly and rind. In the freezer, I had a pair of thick pork chops (1 ½ inches) in a marinade. I don’t remember all of the ingredients, but I can say they included soy sauce, Chinese five-spice and crushed red peppers. (I frequently freeze meat with a marinade, so that it gains flavor as it thaws in the refrigerator, and is ready to cook when I get home.) In this case, I tightly wrapped the thawed chops in aluminum foil and roasted them for 90 minutes at 325^oF. I unwrapped them, saving the meat juices for dipping, and deep-fried the chops for 5 minutes in 350^oF oil. It was an OMG moment. The crispy exterior belied the fall apart interior. Every bite was exquisite with the au jus. Proper Chuleta Kan-Kan includes the pork belly and crispy pork rind but I assure you this is worth trying. However, since I was not planning on a recipe, I have no idea as to ingredient amounts, weights and such. So I am giving you what I think is the best Crab Cake recipe in the world  to enjoy, Chuleta Kan-Kan another time.

SIP Trunking Continues to Grow

Last week, I noted that Frost and Sullivan reported a decline in overall IP Communications spending among enterprise customers. Spending was down for all systems, TDM, hybrid and IP PBXs. However, for those positioning and selling SIP Trunks there is good news indeed. Infonetics recently completed a survey showing that SIP Trunking is gaining in market share and soon will be the second most deployed trunking type behind the ever-venerable T1. The basic facts reported by Infonetics are the following:

·         The number of SIP trunks provided by ITSPs worldwide more than doubled in 2009. This establishes SIP Trunking as one of the fastest growing VoIP services in 2009.

·         The enterprise SBC market grew 53% in 2009, to $61 million versus the enterprise telephony market, which declined 22% in 2009.

·         SIP Trunking is the only trunking technology gaining traction. Half of survey respondents plan to use SIP trunks by 2012

While all of that is very reassuring to Broadvox and ITSPs in general, the rationale for deciding to transition from TDM to SIP/IP communications has changed somewhat. The number one reason remains the same, cost savings. As usual, I find Infonetics use of the word “trunk” as interchangeable with the phase “concurrent call sessions” confusing for those new to SIP. However, the discussion of purchasing concurrent call sessions one at a time versus 12-24 channels of T1 was interesting as a cost savings component. Normally, we begin by pointing out the greater than 50% savings over each TDM line/circuit. Both are effective in identifying immediate and beneficial cost savings.

More on Wednesday…

Congressmen Rick Boucher (D-VA) Chairmen of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet, and Lee Terry (R-NE) have introduced a bill to address the outdated priorities, contribution participants and recipients of the Universal Service Fund. As expected, the bill will add broadband to the mix of mandatory services for unserved markets.

According to the two congressional representatives, “The measure will expand who pays into the Fund, control the growth of the Fund and modernize the Fund by allowing its use for the deployment of high-speed broadband service.”

Exactly what this means to ITSPs like Broadvox and the currently participating CLECs and ILECs is unknown. However, I always get a little bit suspicious when I see that AT&T, Verizon and Qwest endorse an effort. They never have the interest of a Broadvox as a priority. Rather, they see this as opportunity to expand their networks with the additional funding provided by a broader set of contributors.

Most of you understand that expanding broadband to unserved markets will provide Broadvox and other VoIP/SIP Trunking providers’ access to new markets. At this time, the focus of Boucher and Terry is on rural markets, which will do little to grow our bottom line revenues. Previously, I pointed out that the US needs to expand its broadband offering in the served and underserved markets before spending billions on these rural deployments. We stand either last or next last among the G7 for broadband speeds and prices. We need to move up that list quickly to establish properly establish ourselves as leaders in IP communications.

The proposed bill will require the USF to support the build out of high-speed broadband infrastructure. However, it continues to look to the FCC to define “high speed”. The current definition of 256K or better is inadequate. With the exploding array of application and services, such as movie downloads, video clip transfers, photo album sharing, music streaming, etc. we need to look at base speeds that are in the range of 5 Mbps and up. If that is established as the definition for “high speed”, then the size of the underserved markets will expand several multiples. The new legislation should then include urban, suburban and rural areas as eligible for USF funding. That would make any new USF contributions by VoIP, WiMax and other broadband carriers more worthwhile.

Clearly, now is the time to comment to the FCC and Capital Hill on this effort to revise the USF and monitor the legislation closely.

See you on Monday with more thoughts and a new recipe.

The latest research from Frost and Sullivan regarding the enterprise telephony market contains some expected data and one bit of surprising news. It is expected that during a recession sales of telephony equipment dropped. Frost and Sullivan estimate the reduction in growth from 2008 to 2009 is 20.4%. The surprise was the decline in the market for converged and native IP systems. IP line shipments declined 24.2%. The recession accounts for most of the decline but the Nortel bankruptcy also affected sales.

The report does forecast growth over the coming years, albeit at an anemic CAGR of 1.1% over a seven-year period.

While this report focuses on the enterprise telephony market, it will be interesting to see if SMBs are reacting in the same fashion. Has the overall market declined and has the SMB transition to IP communications also declined?

If the global statistics are accurate, what then are the specific numbers for the US? Broadvox continues to see very good growth in SIP Trunking and our SIP related wholesale products. However, we have noticed the length of time enterprise prospects are taking to make decisions. The opportunities are very large but the time to close has been greatly extended. This is reinforced by the latest numbers from Frost and Sullivan.

I will be very interested in seeing their report for the SMB space.

See you Friday.